All of us experience stress in life. It could be getting to work or school on time, it could be more complex like paying bills or emotional stress, or health stresses. Either way all of us experience some kind of stress that affects our bodies. When it comes to our overall health, stress can affect the way our body is reacting and cause problems with losing weight, getting fit, and reaching an overall goal. Our body is made to handle stress by the fight or flight reactions that happen in the amygdale and hypothalamus in our brain. These functions are the “command center” of our brain and send messages through hormones to our body in order to react to the command. This is some technical stuff were talking about here, but the stresses we experience everyday affect our bodies and can make it hard to lose weight, get fit, and the overall health functions of our bodies. I could go on and on about how the body reacts to the chemical reactions from the hormones and how the messages get relayed thought out the body, but I’m just going to generalize just so you understand how this reaction works.
1. The amygdale gets the message that there is a stress occurring, and starts the emotional processing by sending a distress signal to the hypothalamus.
2. The hypothalamus is the command center, it communicates to the nervous system and sends a message to the sympathetic nervous system to respond to the perceived stress signal.
3. This triggers the fight or flight response.
4. The hormone adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, and it circulates though out the body and brings on the physiological changes from the stressor.
5. The heart beats faster, blood pressure increases, the lungs open up, and sight and hearing are shaper at this time. Oxygen is sent to the brain to help with the alertness.
6. Once the adrenaline has subsided from the stress reactions, and a second reaction is sent to the response system called HPA axis. The hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands are reacted.
7. This is the “gas pedal” of the sympathetic nervous system and as long as the brain continues to perceive something dangerous, the brain releases corticotrophin hormone and its sent to the pituitary gland then triggering the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone.
8. These hormones are sent to the adrenal glands and release cortisol. The body stays up on this high alert until the treat passes and the parasympathetic nervous system starts the “break” of the stress response.
This is a general run down of how the body reacts to stress. It’s really intense stuff, there is more information on line if you want to learn more, but I want to get into the main point…. How stress affects fitness and losing weight!
The hormone cortisol regulates blood pressure and the bodies use of macronutrients also the release of insulin so that our bodies can convert sugars (glucose) to energy. If we have too much cortisol, it affects the suppressed thyroid functions, lowered immune response, and imbalanced blood sugar.
If this stress and cortisol are a long term affect, then there are more damaging effects. Loss of muscle which slows metabolism, increased blood sugar which will increase appetite of the bad carbs like sugar and can lead to insulin resistance, and accumulation of body fat from stress! So the excess cortisol makes it hard for your body to burn fat for energy, which makes it hard to sustain weight loss which makes it hard to lose fat and makes it difficult to get the fitness results you want!
So how do we deal with stress and reduce stress…..
Well, here are just some basic ways to deal with stress, so here are some ideas to help cope or deal with stress on your own. If your stressors are more serious you may want to talk to a doctor and figure out ways that can help out also.
1. Work your body out- exercise a little bit everyday. Even if its just walking around the block, take some good deep breaths and clear your mind so you can naturally calm yourself and let your body relax. Swimming, walking, jogging, playing sports, taking your dog to the park. All are good ways to get up and get fresh air and get your blood flowing.
2. Get enough sleep- Your body needs to rest and needs to be able to recover from everyday life. This gives our body a way to restore energy to make it though the next day. Also getting into regular sleeping habits so your body is used to a schedule.
3. Eating good food- Be healthy and think of your body as a temple, don’t put junk in it! Your body wants to eat and feel good too! Fast food and processed food isn’t going to help you lose weight or reduce stress. Drink water and low sugar drinks…(try to stay away from drinks with processed sugars). Fruits, complex carbs, teas, nuts, protein (good protein) and veggies.
4. Take a deep breath and RELAX!- your body needs to be able to relax and it’s a great way to reduce stress. If you don’t let your body rest it never gets to repair itself or recover. When relaxing keep your mind open and just breath. Let your body and mind know that everything is ok and your stresses will be easier to cope with.
Like I said before this might not work for everyone, but some of the info might help you recover or handle stress better. There are tons of articles online to look up about ways to deal with stress and how the stress reaction happens. So do your research and figure out what works for you, if you need to visit a doctor then take that step, if it’s just a matter of being able to cope with stress, maybe try yoga or breathing techniques with eating healthier, sleeping better, and drinking more water. Listen to your body and think about the hormones that are involved in sending the messages though out our bodies. It’s a science for sure and there is so many chemical reactions happening in our bodies and its hard to sum all of them up in one blog post. Either way, I hope this article helps connect the dots and you can take the steps to reducing stress.
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