The Comprehensive Guide to Stress Management

Tools and Tips for Managing and Healing Chronic Stress

April is Stress Awareness Month, and it’s always good for us to know our stress levels, what stress may be doing to our bodies, and what action steps we can take to be more adaptable and resilient to stress. According to the American Institute of Stress, April was declared Stress Awareness Month starting in 1992.

According to the American Institute of Stress, there are 5 common reactions to stress:

• Shock or disbelief
• Sadness
• Trouble Focusing
• Physical Pain and discomfort
• Addictive behaviors

There are many kinds of stress, including physical, emotional, and financial. We can feel stress with our community after large-scale events. An experience is stressful when it takes us beyond our normal perceived capacity. Most of us consider psychological stress that creates worry and anxiety the most damaging.

Stress isn’t always a bad thing. Humans evolved because of stress. Whenever we perceive something as being stressful, we are being challenged and, in terms of being a good stress exercise when we’re trying to build muscle, that’s a physical stress that leads to a good outcome. If we’re studying or we’re trying to obtain new knowledge, reviewing lots of information that’s new to us is an intellectual stress, but it leads to us having a deeper understanding of whatever that topic is. With stress, it is beneficial if there can be a period of recovery after the stress, so you have whatever the stress load was lifting, running, studying, singing in front of a crowd, whatever that was then there needs to be a period of rest and recovery.

Stress and the HPA axis

The HPA axis is the physiological relationship between the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal gland.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44645924

The HPA axis starts with a gland called the hypothalamus, which is in the brain. The hypothalamus takes signals from the operating parts of the brain that process our cognitive thoughts and perceptions. The hypothalamus integrates and translates this information to biochemical signals that will tune the body’s systems to respond.

The hypothalamus releases CRH, which communicates with the pituitary gland when it senses a high stress level. So the hypothalamus gathers electrical signals from the brain and gets the overarching message that something’s going wrong. 

The pituitary gland begins to produce what’s called ACTH, and the role of ACTH is eventually to make its way to the pituitary glands, which will then produce the hormones cortisol and cortisone that help our body respond to stress. That helps our body respond to stress.

We now have the technology to assess the HPA Axis with a convenient test conducted in your home. Comprehensive hormone testing is included in the Holistic Annual Membership

Chronic stress can change our breathing. During stressful times, we tend to take short, shallow breaths. Not taking a slow, deep breath causes the pulse to go up. The combination of elevated heart rate and fast breathing can lead to anxiety, or worse, medical conditions such as high blood pressure.

When we are stressed we don’t digest our food very well because of that fight or flight mechanism. Our blood flow doesn’t get to our digestive tract, so food gets in the stomach and doesn’t get processed very well. In the intestines, we don’t extract the nutrients that we need. In the colon, the food may pass through too quickly without us extracting all the water we need, which could be diarrhea or not passing very well at all in staying put, which could be constipation. Stress also causes changes in our reproductive system, so if you want to have a baby or get pregnant, that might be harder and, of course, change or loss in sex drive or libido.

Mindfulness and Stress

Mindfulness is a great way to lower stress and improve your resilience. Mindfulness can be a formal meditation. Practicing 20 minutes once or twice a day is effective for lowering stress. 

Download the free ebook 9 Ways to Ground Your Energy to start practicing now.

Essential Oils and Stress

Along with using these mindfulness techniques, you can add essential oil or aromatherapy to help improve your resilience. Aromatherapy works in two ways in terms of helping us manage stress through mechanical inhalation, so whenever we’re near oil and we want to smell it, the deep inhalation encourages us to slow down. When we inhale deeply, it encourages our heart rate to slow down. The chest wall expands, more oxygen comes in, and the action of the diaphragm has the opportunity to talk to the vagus nerve, which sends the signal back to the brain that everything is okay. The second way, of course, is how the essential oils work, which is to the part that vaporizes and enters the air, enters our olfactory nerve and can cause some biochemical changes. I recommend Vibrant Blue Oils.

Vibrant Blue Oils Detox Support Kit

Stress, Nutrition and Supplements

Responding to stress with food is natural. Comfort foods and sweets can seem like a way to calm stress. Choosing the wrong foods could make stress worse. Excessive sugar consumption may be a result of craving sweets from excessive prolonged cortisol production. Consuming excessive sugars during times of stress can lead to elevated insulin, which can cause feelings of anxiety to get worse.

Choose foods that are high in phytonutrients, fiber, and protein during times of stress. By filling your body with nutritious foods, you boost your immunity and improves your resilience to stress.

Prescriptions can play a role when stress has rolled over into anxiety. But for the rest of us we may be experiencing stress. It may not be as severe enough that a prescription would be necessary. Supplementation can be beneficial. Supplementation with adaptogenic herbs can be beneficial, and then supplementation with things that help your brain balance without overly overwhelming it scripts that if you go into your show notes, you’ll see the link where you can have access to view some of the frequent recommendations I make for supplements that can help with the stress response.

Stress can be good for us, but during the month of April, take time to acknowledge, observe, and prepare for stress.