How Are You Reducing Stress?

If you’ve been following any of the shows lately you’ll notice that I’ve been very fascinated lately about stress. A while ago my wife and I were coming up short on money and weren’t able to pay rent. She’s a hair stylist and her business just dropped off.

And in my “other” job we had lost some clients. All of a sudden we weren’t able to pay rent. On top of that we has some family drama as well as some issues with a friend of ours. Those three things coupled together caused me to get some gray hairs in my chin and her to put on weight. At the time we had just got a dog named Maggie Brown. She’s a mini long haired dachshund. Thank God for that dog because having her helped to ease the stress levels for both of us!

It was at that time that I learned first had what stress can do to a person. I wasn’t sleeping, we were exhausted and it was just a really eye opening experience as to just how much stress can affect your body. Soon we’re going to have Danny Roddy on our show and he’s doing a lot of work looking into the research of Dr. Ray Peat who talks extensively about stress.

Some people like Dr. William Wong say that all disease is caused by internal fibrosis or inflammation. The organs according to him get loaded with microscopic scar tissue that causes your organs to literally shrink as you age. This is why any organ of a 90 year old is about half the size of an 18 year old.

I would take his ideas a step further and say that all inflammation is caused by stress. Stress is any factor that causes your body to work harder. If you think negative thoughts you can increase your heart rate simply by inducing your hormones. If you eat a plate of pasta you cause your body to work really hard to digest all those carbohydrates, sugar and gluten. This equals digestive stress.

We spend most of our daily lives in our minds. We’re either thinking about the past or worried about the future. We’re never living in the moment. Stress, worry, fear, anxiety and all the rest of it only live in our interpretations of the past or future. There’s very little stress in the present moment. At least that’s the conclusion I come to.

Back in the day, stress hormones were brought on by situations that had immediate resolutions. Let’s say you were chasing something while you were hunting for food. Or maybe you were the one being chased. The stress, fear and panic happened for maybe a few minutes but it was coupled with intense physical activity for a short period of time.

But in today’s world, the stress is more chronic. Let’s say you see your doctor for a cancer checkup on a Wednesday and he says he should have the results by Friday. Friday rolls around and no phone call. Then all weekend you’re trying to make sense of every word the doctor said to you. You’re trying to read into his tone of voice or facial expressions when he was speaking with you. You don’t sleep all weekend. This is how stress ruins us. It’s literally killing us.

Add to this situation the fact that the person isn’t exercising much at all. Stress is supposed to be fight or flight situation that’s brief, intense and has an immediate resolution. Low grade constant stress isn’t natural to our physiology and in my opinion is the root cause of weight gain (because it affects the thyroid thus hormone levels etc), hair loss, low libido, gray hair and diseases of all shapes and sizes.

We have job stress, family stress, relationship stress, money stress and if you think about it, food stress. The question is what are you doing about it? Do you have ways of relaxing and calming the mind? What are your protocols for slowing down your life in this fast paced world we live in? Are you taking time for you? Are you giving yourself time to get that massage or do your prayers and meditation before bed?

There are many ways of eliminating stress. What are some of your favorite ways?