If you look up stress in Wikipedia, drill down to biological/psychological stress, you will find lots of useful stuff about stress, early history and biological effects, etc.
The basics:
General Adaptation Syndrome
Physiologists define stress as how the body reacts to a stressor, real or imagined, a stimulus that causes stress. Acute stressors affect an organism in the short term; chronic stressors over the longer term.
Selye researched the effects of stress.
Alarm is the first stage. When the threat or stressor is identified or realized, the body's stress response is a state of alarm. During this stage, adrenaline will be produced in order to bring about the fight-or-flight response. There is also some activation of the HPA axis, producing cortisol.
Resistance is the second stage. If the stressor persists, it becomes necessary to attempt some means of coping with the stress. Although the body begins to try to adapt to the strains or demands of the environment, the body cannot keep this up indefinitely, so its resources are gradually depleted.
Exhaustion is the third and final stage in the GAS model. At this point, all of the body's resources are eventually depleted and the body is unable to maintain normal function. The initial autonomic nervous system symptoms may reappear (sweating, raised heart rate, etc.). If stage three is extended, long-term damage may result, as the body's immune system becomes exhausted, and bodily functions become impaired, resulting in decompensation.
The result can manifest itself in obvious illnesses such as ulcers, depression, diabetes, trouble with the digestive system, or even cardiovascular problems, along with other mental illnesses.Mike Mentzer used the example of a sun tan, which I now use and like as a great example of this process.
In the suntan example the alarm stage is when you lay in the sun. This stage starts the process by putting stress on the body, it will start to respond to this stimulation which is the second stage Resistance. In the resistance stage your body will try to adapt to the situation it's in, hormones are released, chemicals move about, things start happening on a cellular level to try and deal with the stress we are under. At the exhaustion stage the body has spent all the resources available trying to adapt and if the stress continues they system breaks down, think blisters, if it continues long enough, death will ensue.
This system is our best friend and worst enemy at the same time. Our best friend because without it we wouldn't be able to live unless the environment was constant. People can adapt to amazing situations, freezing cold environments, very high altitudes, very hot, limited food and water, the list goes on. It's out worst enemy because our 21st century lives allow for greater and greater amounts of low level constant stress. The body cannot tell the difference between good stress or bad stress, between emotional stress or physical stress so we put ourselves in extended periods of the exhaustion stage which can lead to major health problems.
In the initial stage of the adaptation process one of the major things that happens is the release of cortisol. You might hear this hanging around a CrossFit gym a lot, but since everyone seems to already know what this hormone is, what it does, why we try to mitigate it, no one is asking these questions. I'm pretty sure not very many people know the answers to these questions so I wanted to lay them out here.
Cortisol is a hormone that comes from the adrenal gland and is released in response to stress (good and bad stress/emotional and physical) or low blood sugar. It aids us in the flight or flight response. It suppresses the immune system and helps break down fat, protein, and carbs for quick energy.
The reason we tend to vilify this important and necessary hormone is because our days are filled with stress, we never give the system enough time to adapt and lower all the fight or flight responses (check out Adrenal Fatigue). Our personal life is stressful, work is stressful, working out is stressful.
In extreme cases hypercortisol levels is called Cushing Syndrome. Not that we have this from a clinical level, but noting how cortisol impacts us is important.
Factors generally increasing cortisol levels
- Intense (high VO2 max) or prolonged physical exercise stimulates cortisol release to increase gluconeogenesis and maintain blood glucose.[74] Proper nutrition[75] and high-level conditioning[76] can help stabilize cortisol release.
- The Val/Val variation of the BDNF gene in men, and the Val/Met variation in women, are associated with increased salivary cortisol in a stressful situation.[77]
- Hypoestrogenism
and melatonin supplementation increase cortisol levels in postmenopausal women.[78]
- Severe trauma or stressful events can elevate cortisol levels in the blood for prolonged periods.[80]
- Anorexia nervosa
may be associated with increased cortisol levels.[82]
- Some formulations of combined oral contraceptive pills increase cortisol levels in young women who perform whole-body-resistance exercise training.[84]
- Commuting
increases cortisol levels relative to the length of the trip, its predictability and the amount of effort involved.[85]
- Stimuli associated with sexual intercourse can increase cortisol levels.[86
OK, so what do I do about it? Here is what Wiki says about reducing cortisol:
Factors generally reducing cortisol levelsThis should come as no surprise to you. Our recommendation for everyone is to first and foremost eat a zone/paleo(ish) diet as often as possible, take fish oil/omega-3's, workout hard and infrequent, rest, recover often (massage, sleep more, ice). I want to add to this Mindfulness.
- Magnesium
supplementation decreases serum cortisol levels after aerobic exercise,[58][59] but not after resistance training.[60]
- Omega 3
fatty acids have a dose-dependent effect [61] in slightly reducing cortisol release influenced by mental stress,[62] suppressing the synthesis of interleukin-1 and -6 and enhancing the synthesis of interleukin-2; the former promotes higher CRH release. Omega 6 fatty acids, on the other hand, have an inverse effect on interleukin synthesis.[citation needed]
- Music therapy
can reduce cortisol levels in certain situations.[63]
- Massage therapy
can reduce cortisol.[64]
- Laughing, and the experience of humour, can lower cortisol levels.[65]
- Crying
can reduce cortisol levels. William H. Frey II, a biochemist at the University of Minnesota, proposed that people feel "better" after crying, due to the elimination of hormones associated with stress, specifically adrenocorticotropic hormone.[66] This, paired with increased mucosal secretion during crying, could lead to a theory that crying is a mechanism developed in humans to dispose of this stress hormone when levels grow too high.
- Soy-derived phosphatidylserine interacts with cortisol; the correct dose, however, is unclear.[67][68]
I'm going to leave you with these for now and talk more in depth about Mindfulness in another post.
For now the take away is this, you need less stress in your life. Less emotional/mental stress, a proper dose of physical stress and you need to manage the effects of stress by eating clean (zone/paleo), practice your recovery stuff from the physical stress, and start trying to reduce the amount of "other" stress in your life.
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