Your Stress Response and How to Tame it

Your Autonomic Nervous System includes two components: the “fight or flight” stress response, called the Sympathetic Response, and the “rest and digest” response, called the Parasympathetic Response.

The fight or flight response prompts a variety of physiological actions to give you quick energy and allow you to survive a stressful event. One is the production of cortisol, the stress hormone, which increases blood pressure, blood sugar, and suppresses the immune system.

Other actions are acceleration of heart and lung action, inhibition or complete shutdown of digestion, dilation of blood vessels for muscles, tunnel vision, and shaking.

In our busy lives, it is easy to get stuck in the fight or flight state indefinitely. Whereas in the past, our ancient ancestors would have been required to fight or flee a wild animal attack once in awhile, these days we are bombarded with stressful events all day, every day.

Rush hour traffic, continuously reviewing your “to do” list, deadlines at work, eating processed and junk foods, little exposure to the outside, toxic environmental and relational exposures, and chronic disease either in ourselves or our family are just some examples of extremely stressful situations that continuously prompt the fight or flight physiological actions that I just mentioned.

And the sad part is, because the primary mechanism of the fight or flight response is to prompt the body to increase cortisol (stress hormone), chronic disease can develop, which is itself a stressful situation and can perpetuate the cycle.

A few of the impacts of chronically high cortisol are insulin resistance, lowered liver detoxification capacity, and increased intestinal permeability. That means, in other words, that being chronically stressed can eventually lead to diabetes, liver toxicity, and leaky gut. Even if you’re eating a really good diet! The best food is not nourishing if it isn’t being digested.

SO. The point is to make a conscious choice to reduce areas of diet and lifestyle stress. And it does have to be a conscious choice, because most peoples’ “normal” daily lives are inherently stressful just as they are. Sometimes we can change where we work, or who we live with, or what our commute is like, or how many activities our kids participate in, but sometimes not. If not, we have to find ways to manage the stress.