How does stress affect your health? If you want to get healthier, stop doing these 8 things!

Imagine for a second you’re outside enjoying a splendid day on a new hiking trail that you just discovered. Today it’s just you and your little pup. You’re surrounded by dense forest and the canopy is creating mystical shadows all around. You suddenly hear a rustle in the leaves. You tell yourself it’s probably just a squirrel. You keep walking. The rustling gets a little louder. Then you see it. A black bear has decided to join you on your special outing today. You just realized that you just accidentally stumbled upon a black bear and its 3 adorable little cubs.
 
Your heart starts racing. If someone checked your blood pressure right now you’d be certain it was through the roof. Your pupils dilate as they prepare to absorb as much of this scene as they possibly can. Your blood is redirected to your muscles and is shunted away from those bodily processes that can wait until later. Now is not the time to be wasting energy on digesting food, or strengthening the immune system, or making babies! Right now your muscles need all the manpower they can get. Glucose to the rescue! Glucose is right there on the scene, ready to feed those muscles copious amounts of sugar!
 
Sounds like a great survival mechanism we’ve got in place, huh? Well, it’s a great system if and when it’s being used as designed. Unlike our ancestors and unlike wild animals that have similar survival mechanisms in place, we are fortunate that we don’t often encounter such imminent threats to our physical bodies.
 
The whole problem is, that while our logical minds understand this reality, our bodies remain in the dark. Our bodies are on standby, ready to prepare us for what they perceive to be physical threats to our health. But in our modern society, the threats we face most often don’t require this full body response anymore. The great irony is, this stress response itself becomes the most significant physical threat of all!

How stress can make you fat
When you’re stressed your body releases the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol causes higher insulin levels because it’s trying to help your muscles absorb sugar, in case they need the energy for the fight or flight response. This also makes you hungrier, specifically for high fat, sugar-laden foods a.k.a. “comfort foods”. The only problem is these common societal stressors are mental or emotional stressors. They’re not physical. You’re not actually burning off any extra calories for fight or flight like your body thinks it is!
 
To make matters worse, the type of fat that accumulates as a result of chronically elevated cortisol levels is the dangerous kind. It’s the kind that accumulates around your midsection. As if life’s stressors weren’t enough, now here’s a new one added to the mix…a dangerous potbelly!
 
How stress cause other health problems
All the ways that the stress response helps us when we’re being chased by mamma bear are the same things that can hurt us if our bodies think we’re chronically being chased by society’s “mamma bear” equivalents. Stress can cause chronically elevated blood sugar levels, obesity, impaired immune functioning, G.I troubles, fertility issues and heart problems, to name a few. So healthy living is not just about getting enough exercise and eating well. Healthy living is also about managing stress.
 
How to take back control
As a species, we’re relatively good at modifying our environments to minimize physical threats. But it’s just as important to modify our environments for the more subtle threats that we encounter on a regular basis. These can be endless meetings, work deadlines, heavy traffic, disagreements with your spouse, stressors related to your children, etc. To our bodies, these things are just as scary and just as threatening to our wellbeing as coming in between a mother bear and her cubs!
 
Perceived lack of control over our lives can make stress even worse, causing a cycle that becomes hard to break if left unchecked. There are stressors that happen to us and then there are stressors caused by our own actions. Death of a loved one, loss of a job, illness, divorce…these are less predictable stressors, and are not within our control. Then there are those daily actions that we may be performing that could be inadvertently causing a stress response.

8 things you may be doing that are making you more stressed
 
1.) Too much exercise
Who knew there was such thing as too much of a good thing?? Everything in moderation. This applies to the bad and the good. Our bodies don’t know the difference between a planned workout and being chased by a lion. To the body, the response is the same…time to move! While exercise is a great stress reliever, too much of it can cause too much of a stress response.
 
2.) Not exercising enough
While being mindful not to overdo it, it’s important to get enough exercise to build up your stress threshold a bit. Current recommendations say we should get between 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic physical exercise per week OR 75-100 minutes of high intensity physical aerobic exercise per week.
 
Each time your body is exposed to something, it prepares itself to respond better to it the next time. Exercise trains your body to be stronger in the face of all perceived threats. In addition to releasing ‘feel good’ chemicals, it also triggers your body’s repair mode.
 
3.) Endless worrying
I’m a self-identified doomsayer worrywart. So this one is a personal challenge for me. I’m still a work in progress. But worrying can trigger the stress response. I try to keep worrying at a minimum by setting aside a certain amount of time each day to worry. I might write out plans and to-do lists. Financial worries, work worries, family worries, health worries. It’s no wonder we’re all stressed! Practice identifying worrying thoughts as they creep up and then nip them in the bud immediately. Positive self-talk is key.
 
4.) Drinking too much caffeine
One of the highlights of my day is sipping on my morning espresso, made with my old fashioned Bialetti espresso maker. But give me a second cup and my heart starts beating faster and I start feeling jittery.
 
As with exercise, caffeine comes with its own set of health benefits. But also like exercise, too much can be detrimental for your health. Caffeine is a stimulant. It can increase heart rate, blood pressure and trigger that fight/flight response in us. We all have varying sensitivity levels to caffeine. Listen to your body and learn what amount works for you.
 
5.) Not getting enough sleep
Our bodies differ. One person may feel great after 6 hours of sleep while another person might need 10 hours. The only way to know what works for you is to check in with yourself and see how you feel each day.
 
6.) Excess sugar consumption
Sugar crashes don’t just cause “hangry-ness” and irritability. Constant sugar spikes followed by inevitable crashes can also be quite taxing on your body. Eating lower glycemic foods can help provide more balanced, sustainable energy levels throughout the day.
 
7.) Not prioritizing yourself
Put your oxygen mask on first! This is not selfish. You’ll never be able to adequately help anyone else unless and until you help yourself.
 
8.) Rushing around and being disorganized
Take a deep breath. Stop running all over the place. We’re finally learning that multitasking doesn’t actually work. Jumping from one task to another and doing everything half-heartedly isn’t working. It’s only adding to your overall stress levels.
 
Takeaway
Our stress response has aided our survival for a long time and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. Nor do we want it to! Imagine if a stray dog wakes up one morning and decides that your legs look like leg chops. You’d be grateful to have this system in place and ready to go! But ideally, our stress response is preserved for those instances when we truly need to call on it to save our lives. We don’t want it to be turned on all the time because as we’ve seen, this can lead to chronic health problems.
 
If you don’t make the decision to prioritize your health today, then health issues will eventually just add on to your growing list of modern day stressors.  What do you think you can do today to ease your stress levels?