April is International Stress Awareness Month, which makes it a perfect time for me to use this blog space to talk about stress and its impact on the mind and the body. Stress is actually a normal, healthy reaction to our environment. It allows our bodies to perform at their best when faced with danger or other challenges. However, extended, ongoing, and chronic stress can wear our bodies down. If our bodies remain in a heightened state of “fight or flight” that is often associated with stress response, there is both a physical and emotional toll that is paid. The Cleveland Clinic points out several typical short-term consequences of prolonged stress, including body aches, chest pain, exhaustion, difficulty sleeping, headaches, dizziness, muscle tension, as well as emotional impacts like anxiety, depression, irritability, and even panic attacks. The Stress Management Society in the United Kingdom goes on to detail some more serious, long-term health risks that include cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and a corresponding risk of stroke, digestive challenges, fertility difficulties and decrease in libido, and even possible linkages to the development and spread of some cancers.
Never has it been more important to have a handle on stress. The pandemic of the past two and a half years has presented us with stressors that we never could have imagined. Social isolation, increased fear of illness, sorting through endless information and misinformation, watching our vulnerable loved ones suffer and perish from the virus without being able to be with them at their greatest time of need, loss of income, and so many other challenges faced us throughout this unprecedented time. Now, as the pandemic winds down, the world continues to be an increasingly stressful place. International conflicts, a struggling economy, near-daily reports of gun violence across the country, polarized national and international politics, and just the day-to-day challenges of life, work, and family continue to provide a potentially stressful environment for us all.
So, ongoing stress can be harmful to our health, and we live in a world that hurls one stressor after another at us continuously. This makes stress management particularly important. Here are a few tips for coping with the stress that we all regularly face…
- Recognize that these are stressful times, not just for you but for everyone around you. Knowing that you are facing stress better prepares you to manage it. Knowing that others around you are similarly stressed allows you to be more forgiving of unintended and unanticipated bumps, bruises, delays, and inconveniences that we all continue to wrestle with as a result of living in an increasingly stressful world.
- Be sure that your diet is not a significant contributor to your stress. During the pandemic, many of our diets suffered as we relied on carry-out food and easy-to-prepare processed meals. Such meals are often full of inflammatory agents that cause a great deal of internal stress on our bodies. Restaurants have reopened across the country now, and it is also easier and safer to grocery shop for whole foods that can be prepared at home. Now that options are once again becoming more plentiful, break pandemic-induced habits of making poor food choices. Get back to eating more whole foods and balanced meals.
- If you are able, be sure to get some regular exercise. This doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym – walk around the mall or outside, do some jumping jacks, dance to your favorite music, or just sit in your chair and move your arms about. Any activity is good activity. Physical activity helps to regulate and balance our bodies and also allows us to burn off some of those extra calories that many of us ate as a coping mechanism for social isolation. In addition, exercise helps us relieve and regulate stress, and it recharges our internal batteries.
- Add or increase nutrients like GABA, Gaba-Max, Inositol, and L-Thionine in your nutrient therapy protocol. These nutrients (and others) help to regulate stress in our brains and bodies, so adding or increasing the dosage can help manage any increased stress we might be facing at any given time. Contact a nurse at Mensah Medical for suggestions on nutrients that can help you manage stress.
- Check your pyrroles. During particularly stressful times, it is highly likely that people are suffering from elevated pyrrole levels, or even have full-blown Pyrrole Disorder. Pyrrole Disorder is a condition of stress intolerance, and it robs the body of critical nutrients that aid in the body’s production of important neurotransmitters. A lack of those neurotransmitters can lead to anxiety and/or depression, which of course just makes our stress (and our stress intolerance) even worse. You can reach out directly to DHA Laboratory to order a simple pyrrole test, or feel free to schedule an appointment with our office and let us know that you want to include a pyrrole test as part of your biochemical testing (we will probably recommend one regardless, especially if you tell us you are feeling stressed).
- Seek out help when you need it. One positive societal trend of late, perhaps in response to the pandemic and the other societal stressors I mentioned above, is a greater acceptance of people seeking out help to maintain their mental health. Don’t get me wrong – there is still an unfortunate and undeserved stigma associated with mental health concerns, but that stigma is lessening significantly, and people are more and more comfortable seeking out the help that they need. Psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, life coaches, or just sympathetic family and friends can all offer a great outlet for working through your stress. There are countless support groups and online resources available as well, including one that we partner with, the free, online mental health support community “Amity” which is run by our friends at Journey’s Dream, an online, integrative mental health resource hub.
All of these stress reduction tips are useful at any time, but they are particularly important during these times of increased trauma and turmoil. Of course, the best advice we can ever offer in times of stress is to stay safe, stay healthy, and stay balanced.
