Let’s Control Our Stress!

 Stress.  It is both everywhere and nowhere.  There was a time when a stressor (a distinct thing that poses a threat to our survival) could be easily identified and dealt with.  An example of when stressors were obvious would be during the Holocene era when a saber tooth tiger was coming after you.  Or in instances where you had to find food to survive – and fast!  There was an action you could take to deal with these stressors – Run!  Eat.  Hide. Fight! Gather. Hunt.   Today’s stressors appear in other forms – some of which are not so apparent or easy to pin down, and which we have limited control over.  These may emerge as credit card debt, inflation, high gas prices, and on and on.  We need to first identify the stressor, or stressors before we can take the necessary and healthy actions to control our response to them.

There is little we can do about certain aspects of our lives – except fret.  And it is this thing we do — the fretting and the stressing — that runs us down.   Deepak Chopra is famous for saying “there are no diseases of the body apart from the mind” and for every emotion there is a physiological response.  Walter Cannon and Hans Selye wrote many scientific papers about the physiology of stress, but it has never really been taken seriously by mainstream medicine.  We are still seeing the effects of this failed medical model.  Back in the 60’s we could see it with benzodiazepine addiction. Today we see it with the rampant abuse of opioids, resulting in society’s inability to get control of this crisis.  And Big Pharma is still making billions as people die. 

The way the body responds to stress is through the secretion of cortisol.  There is a little gland that sits atop of the kidneys called the adrenal gland.  When our amygdala (the almond shaped nuclei in our brains) gets hijacked by a stressor it sends a signal — one among many — to the adrenals which then mounts a stress response to the rest of the body. In essence, it is preparing our body for danger – which this can be a real and present danger or just a perceived threat that may or may not come.  Whether or not our body accurately interprets the threat does not interrupt the process whereby our blood is flooded with cortisol.   A few of the negative effects of long-term stress can include high blood pressure, weight gain, memory loss, and fatigue.

We can’t just shut down the body’s emergency response system.  It’s hardwired into us, but you can take certain actions that regulate the Amygdala and support the adrenal glands.  In Herbert Benson’s famous book, The Stress Response he found that yoga, breathing, and meditation had powerful effects on the parasympathetic nervous system. This system controls rest, repair, and reproduction and is opposite of the sympathetic nervous system – which controls fight, flight and freeze reactions.  

Herbs that heal the adrenal glands are Ashwagonda  (Withania somnifera), Licorice (Glycyrrhize glabra) and Rehmannia (Rehmannia glutinosa).  When taken together this trio form an adrenal tonic that reduces the damaging effects of cortisol and helps the adrenals remain healthy. 

We can’t always control interest rates, the price of gas or world affairs, but we can implement healthy healing techniques for ourselves, and these little kindnesses help us cope and thrive!