Our health is greatly impacted by lifestyle factors, including how much stress is effecting us at any given time. Stress, particularly chronic stress, can undermine our healing plan and the changes we are making to improve our health. This was my experience. A few years ago, I was trying to heal my body during a highly stressful time in my life and consequently, it took a lot longer than I anticipated.
Our immune system is affected by the way we think, how we feel, and how we respond to situations we deal with every day. When we feel at peace, relaxed, and happy, our immune system is affected. When we are anxious, worried, sad or upset, our immune system is also affected. Acute stress can cause us to take action and can be productive. It’s chronic stress that can do the most damage to our immune system and consequently result in health problems.
When chronic stress isn’t managed, our immune system is in constant overdrive, and not getting a break can cause it to go haywire on us. This leads to inflammation and our immune system attacking our own tissue. The result is the development and progression of health problems and autoimmune disease such as Lupus, Arthritis, Heart Disease, and various cancers. Stress also decreases white blood cells that fight off infection, so we may find we get sick more often during high stress times.
When people think of stress, they often think of emotional or physical stress, but stress comes in many forms. Stress on the body can also be from environmental toxin exposure, having a medical procedure or surgery, consuming inflammatory foods, traveling, and not getting enough restorative sleep.
If we experience chronic inflammation or have autoimmune disease, managing our stress is crucial. We probably all know when we are stressed out. It’s important to listen to our body and be mindful to what is going on in our life. Evaluating what is currently causing us and our body stress and determining if there are changes that can be made to eliminate or reduce them is helpful to stress management. Discovering if there are foods that are causing stress to our body, reducing our environmental toxin exposure, getting quality restorative sleep, and adopting regular self-care practices such as meditation, reduces our stress and makes our body more resilient.
Sometimes stress is unavoidable and difficult to eliminate such as when our children are sick. Other times, some of the variables that are causing us significant stress are in our control. It’s important to distinguish between the two. Are their changes we can make to our lifestyle or circumstances that can help decrease our stress levels? If not, the only thing we can control is how we react to the stress and how we take care of ourselves during the stressful time.
Stress and lack of restorative sleep can send me into an autoimmune flare, even more so than food choices. As a busy Mom, working in self-care and managing stress to make my body more resilient is an ongoing journey for me. During particularly stressful times in my life, I really try to work on self-care by taking walks (on the beach is my favorite), spending some time alone, taking baths, going to acupuncture, scheduling a girl’s night out with my people, and writing in my journal.
What’s your favorite way to reduce stress?
