Stress, Inflammation and Aging Part 1: How Stress Affects the Body

The further along I get in my practice, the more I feel like stress and inflammation are the literally the root of all evil in the body. Indeed, even the American Medical Association notes stress as the basic cause of more than 60% of all human illness and disease.

For that reason, I've decided to dedicate the next several months of my newsletter to this single topic - Stress and its interplay with inflammation and aging - to help you understand what it is, what it does, and what we can do about it.

For this installment - how stress affects the body - the Institute of Heart Math has a great picture summary, and you can click HERE to see it enlarged on the Institute of Heart Math website.

Physiologically, stress activates the Sympathetic Nervous System, or your "fight or flight" action. Hormones such as adrenaline increase, your heart rate and your blood pressure goes up. Increased energy is made available to your thigh muscles in particular to help you run while digestion and growth are both slowed down, to name the mot notable actions.

Its already plain to see how in the short term, this stress response is an amazing adaptation for survival, but in the long term chronic stress can become devastating to your health.

This is because your body doesn't differentiate a large stress from a small one - the basic hormonal cascade and neurological response is the same. Prologued exposure to stress hormones contributes to an alarming number of illness such as:

• increased risk of heart attack and stroke
• muscular pain and tension
• TMJ/TMD and teeth grinding
• headaches and back pain
• insomnia
• dizziness
• decreased sex drive
• irritable bowel syndrome

and the list just goes on.


Luckily, there is a lot we can do to manage stress even if we can't decrease it due to life circumstance, and with the propensity of stress to create illness, managing stress needs to be a top priority for all of us. Here are my top four stress management go to items:

In the immediate, when you feel stressed #1 is to Breathe. Stop, take a deep breath and just feel your heart center and breathe. Its amazing how much more centered you can feel in just a few short breaths if you take the time to do it.

Get Acupuncture is always at the top of my list. New research is beginning to prove that Acupuncture can down-regulate the sympathetic nervous system for prolonged periods.

Take care of the basics: Exercise, Sleep & Diet - Exercise especially.

Increase your B Vitamins - B vitamins, B6 and B12 especially, play an important roll in neurological function. And your body excretes what it doesn't need, so better to have too much rather than not enough.

Of course there is a lot more than can be done, especially when you get into the specifics of diet and supplementation, but these are the first steps and the easiest ones you can take to start balancing your life and keeping stress in line.

In the coming months I will talk more about each of these - diet, supplementation, meditation and breath work - and how they interact with the Stress-Inflammation and Aging continuum and most importantly, more information about what you can do to stay on top of it.

Until next time - Rebecca