How Stress Actually Affects Your Body — and Practical Ways to Manage It

Stress is a normal part of life - deadlines, relationship friction, finances, new experiences, coworkers and bosses, and even big life changes all trigger it. Short bursts of stress can be useful, and our bodies are very well adapted in dealing with those. It helps rush blood to our vital organs and makes our senses more acute, as a way to run or fight from whatever is threatening us. But short bursts of stress aren’t how we experience stress in the modern day. Unfortunately, stress tends to be more chronic, which is when our bodies start to struggle.

Chronic stress’s effect on the body is numerous, from changing how your body deals with glucose, to causing high blood pressure, to impacting mental health, contributing to poor sleep, dysregulating your immune system, and therefore poor healing and recovery. Stress’ effects are far-reaching.

Stress has these effects because when the body is stressed, it causes the release of cortisol. Cortisol, as a hormone, isn’t bad - we need it. The issue is when the stress is chronic. One of the things cortisol does is mobilize glucose. This means that it will tell your body to release stored glucose to use as fuel. When stress is chronic, your body can have difficulty managing its glucose levels, getting messages of ‘we need energy now’ versus maintaining homeostasis, which can cause insulin resistance to occur and cause inflammation in the body. In the long term, this can cause weight gain, insulin resistance, and digestive problems, effects on mental health, muscle tension, etc.

This is why managing stress is considered foundational for health. It affects your sleep and ability to digest your food - two other foundations of health. Therefore, if you are stressed out, how much of your food are you digesting and absorbing, and how restorative is your sleep? Managing your stress will improve both of these aspects of health and will have ripple effects in your health and well-being.

Tips on handling stress

Breathing

Breathing is a very powerful tool that we have to regulate our nervous system. There are two different techniques I recommend to my patients: Square Breathing (also known as Box Breathing) and having a longer exhale.

Square Breathing - inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, and hold for 4 seconds. Repeat this as many times as you feel to help calm your nervous system down.

Having a long exhale - doing this tells your nervous system that you have time, and therefore, are safe from anything harmful. People who practice yoga tend to inhale for 4 seconds and exhale for 8 seconds, but as long as the exhale is longer, you’re still getting that message to the nervous system.

Prioritize Sleep

Studies consider less than 7 hours of sleep, sleep deprivation. Of course, there’ll be times and phases of life where getting 7 hours of sleep every night is extremely difficult or impossible. At those times, focus on your self-care, and practice Yoga Nidra to help improve the quality of sleep you are able to get.

Sleep is one of the few times your body is able to ‘filter and clean up’ what’s happened in the day. It’s when you consolidate what you’ve learned, but also when your body heals. Not getting enough sleep is considered a physiological stress and will impact your health in many ways. So, prioritize your sleep, make sure that you’re getting at least 7 hours of sleep.

Respect Your Boundaries and Needs

We as humans are social creatures. Finding a group of people you enjoy being with can really help revitalize the spirit and improve your mood. And at the same time, if you’re exhausted, it’s ok to say no and have a night where you’re at home doing things you enjoy (eg. reading, watching TV, eating nourishing food, playing with pets, etc) and have an early night. What is important is that you respect what you and your body need. If you have energy and/or need a change of scenery, then meet up with some friends or explore outside. If you don’t have a lot of energy and/or have used up your social battery, then stay at home and be nice and cozy.

Having some stress is a part of life. The goal is to manage stress better so it doesn’t wreak havoc on your physical and mental health. Pick one of the tips, and incorporate it for a week, and see how you feel. After a week, you can tweak it and see if you want to stack different tools.

If these tools are not enough for the amount of stress you are experiencing, it can be helpful to see a Naturopathic Doctor. They may recommend supplements, acupuncture, or other lifestyle changes. If this sounds like something you need, you can book Dr. Charmagne below.

How Gratefulness Boosts Your Mood and Mental Health

Our lives are generally really busy, juggling work, family, and a never-ending to-do list. With all of these different balls in the air, it’s easy to forget to smell the roses and take time for yourself. However, what if I told you that practicing gratefulness can help to improve your mood, and decrease your stress? What if gratefulness or gratitude was the secret tool you’ve been looking for? Today we are going to dive into the everyday magic of gratitude. This is not just a fluffy concept - there is research to back this up, and my goal is to teach you how gratefulness can transform your mental well-being by the end of this blog.

Individuals who practice gratefulness are more prone to be able to appreciate the smaller things in life. Their ‘threshold’ for being grateful is lower, meaning that they can appreciate simple pleasures stronger than someone who doesn’t practice regularly. This is because the neuropathway in their brain for gratefulness has been traveled so regularly, that the impulse to get to the destination ‘grateful’ is very easy and quick. Watkins, el al defined simple pleasures as “pleasures in life that are readily available to most people.” They also found that grateful people have a sense of abundance, and don’t feel that they’ve been deprived, and tend to be happier.

Scientists at the Institute of HeartMath (McCraty & Childre, 2004) discovered that when you feel grateful, your heart rhythms sync up in harmony. This means that gratefulness rewires your brain for happiness and helps you keep the effects of stress at bay. This was supported by researchers Emmons and McCullough (2003), who found that people who practice gratitude report fewer stress-induced health problems.

Yes, life can be difficult, and it won’t always be sunny, but individuals who practiced gratefulness regularly were able to find silver linings in their negative situations based on Watkins et al. (2006) in "Behavior Research and Therapy." Watkins, el al also found that those who implemented gratefulness regularly started to have more positive emotions like hope and happiness. This hope can help you keep going in a difficult situation until the rain stops, the clouds part and the rainbow appears at the end. This is also how gratefulness can help make you more resilient, and be able to bounce back after difficult times.

Lastly, gratefulness strengthens and supports your social relationships, and makes them stronger. Individuals who practice gratefulness regularly accept that their lives are better with the contribution of different people in their lives - and they are able to acknowledge them. They show their appreciation however it works in that relationship, whether it’s by giving a hand when their friend needs help, telling them how much they love and appreciate them, giving them a small gift because that gift made them think of their friend, etc. It’s like a positive spiral of ‘good emotions,’ which in we can definitely have more of in our society.

So as you have read, gratefulness has a number of different effects on our mental well-being. It’s not necessarily the grand things that make our lives enjoyable. It’s appreciating the simple joys in life - because if you can, you can definitely enjoy the grander things in life. This is due to the strong neuropathway of gratefulness in that person practicing gratitude regularly.

So what are you grateful for today?

~Dr. Charmagne

References:

Watkins PC, el al. (2003). Gratitude and Happiness: Development of a Mesure of Gratitude, and Relationships with Subjective Well-Being. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 31(5), 431-451.

McCraty, R., & Childre, D. (2004). The Grateful Heart: The Psychophysiology of Appreciation. Institute of HeartMath.

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389.

Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., & Maltby, J. (2013). Gratitude predicts psychological well-being above the Big Five facets. Personality and Individual Differences, 54(3), 294-298.

Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421.

Lambert, N. M., Graham, S. M., Fincham, F. D., & Stillman, T. F. (2009). A preliminary study of the relationship between gratitude and perceived social support and mental health. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 28(2), 163-173.

Start Off the Year With the Right Mind Set

The new years is always so exciting, full of hope and possibility - and rightfully so! Go charge towards your goals and resolutions, and practice shifting that 1% every day, and you will find that you are a different person by the end of the year. At the same time, if you do stumble on the way to your goals, don’t worry about it, and don’t beat yourself down. That happens to everyone - bad habits are hard to break. If they were easy to break, no one would have bad habits. So when you do stumble, pick yourself up, and acknowledge what happened. For instance, one of my goals for the year is to wake up at 5 am in the morning for at least 30 days - and it has not been going well. I’m still adjusting, and it’s taking longer to adjust than I thought it would. However, I have been waking up earlier than I normally would in an attempt to get to the 5 am, and I am still able to be productive during that time, so I am not going to beat myself up for not waking up at 5 am. Not any more. Many have mastered the art of beating themselves up, and making themselves feel terrible. All this does is dampen your mood and make you want to quit - so what good does beating yourself up do?

The other thing is perspective. Everything has perspective. How do you see your world? Is it all negative, positive, a combination? Which do you focus on more? Yes there are terrible things in the world that is happening; however, in your day-to-day world, can your perspective be shifted so that your days are full of gratitude and fulfillment? For example seeing everything as an opportunity instead of an obligation can be one way to shift your perspective. When you go to work, saying to yourself that ‘you get the opportunity to go to work’, can start to shift your perspective, and remind you that it is something to be grateful for.

Gratitude is a wonderful way to encourage a shift in your perspective. Writing down 3 things you are grateful for every day - making sure that they are always different - can be a great way to either start or end your day. There are other ways you can practice gratitude, including writing a letter and hand delivering it to them, or thanking someone mentally, prayer, meditation, etc. Find what works for you, and slowly, you may notice that your perspective of the world shifts.

As one of my favourite teachers use to say: “Be kind and gentle with yourself.” You’ve got this.

~ Dr. Charmagne

Self Talk

There has been quite a few people on social media talking about self talk - and this is great! We all talk to ourselves every day, and the way we talk to ourselves can really affect how we feel and behave every day. As much as I don’t like certain commercial products, I can’t deny that some companies are extremely good at making ads that get you to think or feel a certain way. Dove is a great example of this. They posted a video a few years back about negative self talk (take a look over here). The question generally is: You would never talk to another human the way you talk to yourself, so why do you talk to yourself like this?

We are often our worse critic, often expecting so much of ourselves - perfection. The beautiful thing is, we are all human, and perfect isn’t something we are meant to be. Yes, we are meant to push ourselves, and grow into better people, but that doesn’t mean you should tear yourself down on the way there. It can be a rough journey to where you are working towards, and you do not need to be your worst enemy on the way there. The best thing to do is to start practicing positive self talk - because just as you can be your worst enemy, you can also be your greatest ally.

Some ways to improve positive self talk is to become aware of your negative self talk, and work on talking to yourself like you would to your best friend. There may be times that your negative self talk will win, but it takes small incremental steps to improve your self talk. As long as you work on your self talk, day by day it will improve, and eventually, you will truly love yourself, and have a stronger relationship and respect for yourself. You will discover a more empowered and confident you, and when you bring this on your journey, things start to change.

~ Dr. Charmagne

Taking Care of Your Mental Health

I am happiest when I connect with people. When I feel that connection, it feels like I've become closer to the people I talk with - even if we've been friends for 10+ years. You can get this feeling by talking to people online, but it's not the same as being with those people in person. The experience is always richer, and more memorable. Your heart soars.

However, it is hard to connect with people when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you may not even know why. You might feel exhausted, that there's no point in going out, that you would just bring everyone else's mood down. But it isn't about any of that. It is about your mental well-being, and what you need to do to help pick yourself up so that you can enjoy and live your life to the fullest. It is said that life is a present, and it can most definitely be.

Positive Self Coaching

Everyone talks to themselves in one way or the other, we all have that voice in our heads that speaks a certain way. For most of us, that voice puts us down. It tells you that you're not good enough, that you suck, that you aren't worth it, the list goes on. It knows your weak spots and will exploit them. For many, this is the only voice they hear. But it is not your voice, it is not you. Change the way you speak to yourself. Be kind to yourself - like you would to your best friend. It is difficult changing that voice to one of love, when it has been so negative for so long. But it can be done. I know it sounds cheesy, but calling yourself "love" can be one way to start the change. In addition to bringing more love to yourself by calling yourself love, you remind yourself that you should practice self-love. 

Support Groups

It is important for you to know that you are not alone - you don't ever have to be alone. There are people experiencing similar things, and when these people come together and support each other, something magical happens. Along with finding a group of people that can support you, new friendships can be made, along with a sense of purpose. This group can be whoever you want it to be. For me it's my friends and family, for others it is a group going through similar difficulties such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcoholism, etc. The following link to support groups found in Calgary:

• Elements - Calgary Mental Health Centre

• MeetUp

• OBAD

• Support Works

Gratitude Journaling

Many people say that gratefulness is the key to happiness (Huffington Post). Gratitude journaling is an amazing exercise to practice daily, and helps to gently change your attitude to one of gratitude. It allows you to see a different perspective, be more empathetic, create a deeper understanding of yourself, and keep things in perspective. Having this journal can also be useful when your mood is lower as a way to remind you of all the things in your life that brings you happiness. 

Going Outside

There are so many beautiful things to behold outside, whether it's a tender interaction between two people, seeing someone helping another, the fluffy clouds passing by, feeling the wind caress your face, or the beautiful changing colours of the leaves. There are things you can enjoy. Do the things you've always wanted to try. There's no pressure trying to placate another person, and you can do everything at your leisure, there are no time constraints to see another place unless you want to. After a few times, this is very liberating, this kind of independence is beautiful and something to savor. 

Finding Your Purpose

This one is really important. Finding your purpose will give you the energy to get out of bed on the days you really don't want to. It gives you that extra push because there is something you are trying to achieve. Generally, the purpose isn't material-based. It is something bigger than yourself that you can dedicate your life to. For some, it's providing for their family, for others is taking care of their beloved pet, and yet, for others, it's helping or supporting someone get through something going on in their lives. Finding your purpose can be difficult, so one way to start finding your own purpose is by learning more and discovering who you are. Your purpose can be whatever you want it to be, and it makes you feel like there's a reason you are here.

Remember, it is completely normal for you not to be happy every single moment of your life. It is okay to feel "blah," it's ok for you to feel down, content, etc. These emotions are not bad and are often needed in life. Life ebbs and flows, and your mood will change accordingly. Social media has made it easier for people to show the best parts of their lives, the parts they feel alive - but behind the scenes, their moods can quite often, be the opposite of what they are displaying. 

With lots of Love,

~Dr. Charmagne