The Chemistry of Stress…
Your body chemistry changes fundamentally every time you react to stress. Stress starts in the mind. We perceive a situation as requiring our immediate attention, car driving too close - hostile reaction from a colleague, financial crisis or impossible deadline. Rapid signals stimulate the adrenalin glands produce adrenalin. Within seconds your heart is pounding, the breathing changes, stores of glucose are released into the blood, the muscles tense and the blood thickens. You are ready for fight or flight, this is a representation of how much glucose is released, mainly by breaking down glycogen held in the muscles and the liver. To get fuel in to the body cells such as muscles, your pancreas release two hormones, insulin and glucagon. Insulin aided by a substance released from the liver, glucose tolerance factor, helps to carry this fuel out of the blood, glucagon tops up the blood sugar level if it gets too low. All this happens as a result of a stressful thought! You may wonder where all this extra energy and increased alertness come from, well the energy is diverted from your body’s normal repair and maintenance jobs like digesting, cleansing and rejuvenating. So every moment you spend in a stressful state you speed up your aging process. Prolonged stress is even more insidious than that - like a car driven too fast the body goes out of balance and starts to wear out. Cortisol levels rise and before longyour body cannot respond to stress like it used to. As a consequence your energy levels drop, you fall asleep after meals, cannot sleep, wake up too much, sweat too much, get headaches and in an attempt to regain control you turn to stimulants, coffee, chocolate, nicotine etc and of course it becomes increasing difficult to relax with these stimulants - the thing is that most become addicted to stress, its like they try to take holiday, head for the beach but pick up a paperback thriller at the airport and try to find other thrill seeking adventures to keep that adrenalin pumping because without this stress they come crashing down to reveal their true state of adrenalin exhaustion. This is why some people feel ill or exhausted when they take time off. All stress consumes our energy. It means that our body cells are starved of fuel nutrients like B vitamins, Vitamin C , calcium and magnesium. Research states that you double your need for vitamins when you are in a stressful state. Stress levels are directly linked to ones diet..fast releasing sugars create a state of stress in the body, stimulating the release of cortisol, so avoid eating things like white bread, sweets and breakfast cereals(processed kinds) - slow releasing carbs on the other hand provide an even keel of consistent energy. Energy nutrients important in a diet to control stress would include Vitamin B6, zinc, Vitamin B3 and chromium now available as a complex called cromium polynicotinate. Others would be Vitamins B1,B2, B3,B5, co enzyme Q, vitamin C, iron, copper, magnesium, B12 specifically is required to make adrenalin. Choline is another excellent addition that I add to my childrens diet and is an excellent addition to all lifters diets as it reduces stress levels and cortisol deposits,enhances memory funtionality ,breaks down fat in the liver and drastically improves immunity, I give it to them in the formof crushed lecithin, but you can also derive choline from eggs, soybeans, peanuts and fish — research does state that lecithin is best for its high absorption rate.
Wonderful day to all…
"See the things that you want as already yours. Know that they will come to you at need. Then let them come. Dont fret and worry about them. Dont think about your lack of them. Think of them as yours, as belonging to you, as already in your possession."Rober Collier (1885-1950).
July 3, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I was just reading about this last night in fact…I have read vinettes of this along the way I suppose, as I recognized much of the facts….but one I did not know was the biorythm of Cortisol and it is as it’s highest the morning- starting around 3am to begin to awaken the body and have it sharp and ready for action between 6-8am… guessing it is also synchronized with light and acradyian rythms. But, yes, the world is stressed and it is a daily fight to not get sucked in