Part 33 - Best Not To Stress
Story Highlights
- Understanding Stress
- The Impact on Your Body
- Long Term Dangers
- How To Combat Stress
Understanding Stress
Everyone knows about the caveman - fight or flight principle but in today's age this has evolved into something much more threatening to your every day health. Modern day pressures can kick this state of over readiness into an ever present level of reactivity which screws up hormones, brain signals, blood pressure and heart rates. Before we get onto that though, let's break down the original response.
When you're presented with a life threatening situation your body very cleverly mobilises all systems in order to direct all available energy, to one goal survival. When that goal is achieved everything should be re-set, but problems arise when the re-set signals don't get through. In today's age we are no-longer hunted or confronted with quite as much tribal warfare, but pyscological factors such as fear of missing that flight or not being able to afford a ticket home, can induce a constant state of hyper arousal. When you don't or can't turn off this is when the damage is done.
The Impact On Your Body
In a worse case scenario, clinically known as chronic stress, the shutdown and re-balancing commands are disrupted, causing the brain and body to get stuck. The physical impact of this can be devastating. Think of it like this. Your body is an aeroplane on the runway, queuing to take off. Your engines are running hot, you're on the verge of creating enough thrust to defy gravity but you never get the go ahead to take off. You and your engines can't sustain this level of readiness forever and the wear and tear will start to show.
Stress goes all the way down to the microscopic level and impacts on the interaction between key molecules and the cells in the important parts of your body. During prolonged periods of stress your body taps into extra supplies of glucose and oxygen. Blood glucose levels rise and are extracted from where they're stored in the liver. Your breathing quickens too so that more oxygen is absorbed, your heart rate and blood pressure go up and the blood flow to the brain and muscles is increased, thereby giving you more energy for your delayed and sustained, fight or flight.
Long Term Dangers
Body parts not crucial for this endeavour are slowed down and come to a virtual standstill. Your sex drive and digestion become low priorities - so a low level of carnal urges and a diminished appetite are tell tale signs of extended stress! If you're stressed for too long then your Hippocampus deep in your brain - doesn't receive the correct message from the stress hormone cortisol. As a result the hippocampus doesn't shut down the stress response and the whole turn off cycle goes to hell. A vicious cycle is therefore created.
This cycle makes your body increasingly susceptible to disease and understandably so. Throw it all together and think about what raised blood sugar levels, a heightened heart rate, high blood pressure, a repressed immune system and a reduced level of digestion, will do to you.
How To Combat Stress
Before you can restructure your travel plans or your lifestyle for that, you need to identify and understand the causes. This isn't psycho babble - bull excrement. It's fact. If you can identify and address the psychological cause of stress then you're half way there.
Stress is a creature of habit so if your every day routine is nurturing this creature, then you need to cut off it's food source and starve the little blighter to death. For example - if you get worked up at jam packed tourist attractions on your round the world trip, either skip them and head to lesser known sights, or head there super early in the morning and miss the crowds.
In other words - it's all in your head, you can fix it and all you have to do is chill, step back and take a different approach. Your body will re-set the rest when it's convinced that you don't need it to be ready for a modern day, psychological fight or flight.
- Rob Savage
