STRESSED? THESE 4 THINGS WILL HELP!

As I'm typing this blog up, it’s such a neat reflection of how much my body’s stress response has changed over time. Not that my response to stressful situations always warrants a gold star, but as I look back over the past few years, I see so many old habits that I've retired and replaced with healthier, LIFE-giving ones. These tips I'm about to share truly help, because they literally change how our body operates - and they’re SIMPLE.

Whether you’re a mom juggling the many spinning plates, a student who’s stressing about where the next few years are going to lead you, a business owner going through the nail biting trials of making it happen, or simply just caught in a tornado of endless things that seem out of your control - take a breather for the next 5-7 minutes. This blog is for YOU.

When it comes to stress management, or honestly health in general, simple is best. If we overcomplicate things, and get further away from how our bodies are designed to operate, it’s not only harder to maintain certain habits, but they’re truly not as effective.

These are the FIVE things that you can incorporate into your life TODAY, to make a tangible difference in how your body responds to stress. Will these tips take away difficult scenarios, relationships, or decisions? Well that would be great 🤪. Rather, these equip your body with tools to bring yourself more into a state of calm, recovery, and ease.

In our nervous system, there are essentially two different systems. The sympathetic - fight, flight, or freeze - and the parasympathetic - rest and digest. Not one system is “better” or “worse” than the other, they simply serve different purposes. In regards to a stress response, the sympathetic portion will typically take over, because our body perceives some sort of threat. In response to said threat, our body will allocate its resources to functions that are focused on keeping us alive and alert. Hence why in stressful situations, functions like digestion, hormone balance, and deep sleep are commonly affected (negatively).

Now what does breathing have to do with this? When we breathe through our noses, this activates our parasympathetic nervous system, bringing our body into a state of calm & ease. This slows our heart rates, and increases functions of our body that serve us much better in regards to long term health and stress management. Even if you find yourself in a stressful situation, this tangible trick can quite literally take your body from a state of stress, to a state of calm in a matter of minutes!

Whether it’s eating a meal, doing the dishes, or folding laundry, the speed in which we do something will either signal to our body that we are safe, or that we need to respond to a threat. Now you may be thinking, well that’s silly, I'm not stressed when I sit down to eat a meal???

Here’s the thing, our body is incredibly smart, and will ALWAYS respond to its environment accordingly. If we’re chewing our food like we’re in a competitive eating contest, leaving little time between each bite, our body notices this. Similarly, if we are constantly racing around, moving at the speed of light, our body will shift into sympathetic mode to operate from a state of efficiency (smart, right?!). This will directly affect our stress hormones, and has the ability to quickly spiral.

Luckily, this is one thing we have relative control of. When it comes to slowing down, most of us don’t even realize that we’re moving at a rushed pace. Take an audit of your day, task by task, while you’re doing things. Now it’s not an incredibly enticing thing to “be in the moment” when you’re doing the dishes, but I challenge you to TRY it the next time you do. See how you feel. When I challenge myself to do this, I actively notice my heart rate slow, my breathing steady, and my mind follows right along with it. Focus on the task in front of you, and the little details of each movement. While this may seem corny or like a ‘waste of time’, this simple trick of slowing and simply being, is what so many of us are lacking. We’re not giving ourselves time to just EXIST in the current moment. No wonder so many of us struggle with enjoying the present!

Make it a goal this week to do ONE thing slower and with more intentionality. THis thing should be something that you find yourself doing consistently: folding laundry, brushing your teeth, making your bed, etc. Reflect at the end of the week and see how you feel while you’re doing it. I bet you’ll be positively surprised!

Whether you’re training for an event or prepping for an intense workday that lies ahead, we have to prepare our bodies in the same way.

Someone who’s prepping for a marathon, likely doesn’t go into their race not being prepared calorically. They know that to maintain their energy and stamina, they NEED nourishment. Even though you may not be running 26.2 miles on Thursday morning, you MAY have a big presentation or meeting that day that requires the SAME amount of mental and physical nourishment. When we choose to skip meals, for whatever the reason may be, we’re putting our body into a state of stress right from the get go. This rarely breeds good long term results, for meetings OR our bodies.

You might be thinking to yourself, “well, i’m really not that hungry??” This already is a sign that your body is in fight or flight mode!!! When our body perceives stress (of any kind), it lowers the volume on our hunger cues, telling our body that it doesn’t want to spend its resources or energy there. A sure fire way to bypass this and give yourself a reset? Start eating EACH meal of the day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). While this may seem like common knowledge, 25% of the population skips breakfast. This sets our body up for absolute turmoil if we’re already predisposed to mental stress. Not only are we lacking the caloric need to physically carry us through the day, but we signal to our bodies to start pumping out even more cortisol (stress hormone) right as the sun comes up!!!

We can ACTIVELY combat this stress response, by telling our body that it’s safe - by eating! This tells our body that it’s safe enough to do so, essentially sending a reverse signal back to our brain. If you’re not a breakfast person, just start small. Prioritize protein, and pair it with a good glass of hydrating electrolyte water. Fueling our bodies in turn fuels our minds, which sets us up to be LESS prone to more mental stress throughout the day.

Look at the forest, instead of focusing on the tree. This is a great example of how focusing on the tiny things pull us away from seeing the big picture. Isn’t this a perfect illustration of what stress can do to our sense of ease in life? We can get SO drawn up in the tiny details of all the little things that frustrate us, or that aren’t going right, that we forget to look further ahead and see the bigger picture. That yes, these little things may matter, but they’re part of a bigger story.

Let’s flip the script to the science side of how we can “see the bigger picture”. It all has to do with our eyes. I can’t remember exactly where I learned this, I can only remember that I practiced it for the first time while sitting in my living room chair looking out of the window. I found my head spinning and stressing, and pulled this little nugget out from the depths of my brain. I focused on the trees far away on the mountain. And while not all of my stress magically melted away, I felt that the longer I did that, the more at ease my body felt.

This is because of something called the “accommodation reflex," which involves relaxing the ciliary muscles in your eye, causing the lens to flatten and allowing for clear distant vision; this process is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system, specifically through the oculomotor nerve (cranial nerve III). So by literally JUST LOOKING at something far away, you’re forcing your body to shift to parasympathetic (rest and digest) mode in an instant. This by all means is not a fix all, but rather an incredibly powerful tangible tool that can help reframe your mind in a stressful moment. Try it out the next time your head is going a mile a minute, and feel how your heart rate slows! Bonus benefits if you breathe through your nose while you do it 😉

Stress is an ever present part of most of our lives, and it’s typically a mix of things that are in and out of our control. The one thing that we can ALWAYS control though? Our response to it. This principle is true in so many other examples as well, and we’ll do well to harbor healthy habits in the long term.

Whatever that stress looks like to you today, know that this too shall pass (it ALWAYS does), and that you now have some tactical tools in your pocket to help bring you a little clarity amidst walking through the challenge.

While these tools certainly don’t eliminate any kind of hardship, they can help us harness our body to work more from a state of ease, allowing us to walk with a little more grace, and with more grace for ourselves along the way. If it’s not good right now, then it’s not the end. Hold on to hope - we’re here for you, rooting for you every step of the way.

When it comes to the navigating health issues that arise, there are so many questions. We hope that our blogs help to answer some of them! Amidst all of the different seasons you’ll walk through as a family, we hope that you find value in these blog posts, that you find tangible help within them, and that they guide you forward in peace.

Keep up the good work, and if this blog post was helpful for you, and you want to learn more, check out our other blog posts, connect with us at The Nest, or follow us on Instagram.

Dr. Jordan + Dr. Pete