Prioritizing stress management for a longer happier life

You’re stressed, that or you care about your quality of life, and/or are thinking about extending your life.

Everybody has heard stress comes from demanding work schedules, financial obligations, and it can cause heart attacks.

And the following  advice of  “you should exercise, and talk a walk, do some breath work.” you’ve heard Ice baths are quite popular right now. maybe have had a massage or heard how good it is to relieve stress. A quick google search would give you countless stress relievers. A lot of them are even free.

So what’s going on is everyone so stressed out?

Aside from well known life stressors that you may or may not be working to fight against there are more stressful things to your body and nat as well widely known to the public even though the research and data can be found with an equally easy search online. Hidden stressors that are literally everywhere: WiFi, blue light from screens, scented candles, and body care products. The make up I see the ladies use is riddled with them. Even though our bodies are resilient we’re simply bombarded with with too many stressors, toxins, and endocrine disrupters to give our bodies a fair chance at fighting other stressors from the toxic, carcinogenic, cancer linked chemicals in the standard American diet. your actually likely so stressed that you don’t even know it, and you have either stressful days or highly stressful days.

stress can take a massive toll on both our physical and mental well-being. With repercussions that start small and barely noticeable and lead to you being chronically stressed with headaches, fatigue, weight gain, irritability, attention deficit, high blood pressure, there is hundreds of pages of peer reviewed studies and clinical trials with both animal and human testing.  I’ll save you some time by saying it actually adds up to quite an offensive attack on our body. If you’ve made it this far you realize if you want your life to be better and longer, you’re going to have to intentionally reduce the amount unwanted stressors you interact with, and focusing on helping your body handle the ones we cannot avoid.

When you are stressed, your body releases hormones, the main one we’re talking about is cortisol that turn up functions that are essential for your immediate survival, such as higher blood pressure and rapid decision. making, while turning down nonessential functions, immune function, digestion, and protein (synthesis. This is helpful if you need to handle a small life stressor like a work deadline or a 5k run, but it is also the reason why chronic stress kills your ability to shed that extra weight.

Cortisol acts by suppressing insulin secretion, while also inhibiting glucose uptake into your cells, and disrupting insulin signaling to muscle tissue.

Read that again- That means that chronic stress directly causes insulin resistance, which then ends up leading you to weight-loss resistance, increased inflammation, dyslipidemia -high blood fat and cholesterol, and hypertension.

I have coached many clients, who were already addressing many of the other factors for weight management but still couldn't eliminate that last ring of abdominal fat. After they learned how to manage stress and reduce cortisol, the extra belly fat topically will vanish with less work than they have been doing in the past, much to their surprise and satisfaction.

Even exercise, when performed in excess, can leave you chronically stressed and with elevated cortisol levels. you may be in this category if you are not recovering properly, you undernourish your body, or you fail to get quality sleep.

One of the best ways to know if you are charging too hard and stressing your body too far is to measure your heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is the variability in the amount of time between each heartbeats and can be used to track your nervous system health / and recovery status.

When the parasympathetic"rest-and-digest" nervous system is activated, it releases acetylcholine resulting in a low heart rate and a state of relaxation. Your HRV will be highest at this point, so a high HRV indicates a low state of stress.

If you are not well-rested, the normal, healthy beat-to-beat variation in your heart rhythm falls. Abnormal variation can indicate a serious stress issue, especiallyif you see consistently low HRV values (red flag is any HRV value below 80, or values that change day to day (80 one day, 90 another day, 78 the next day). Tracking your HRV allows you to see if you are overstress-ing your body, producing excess cortisol, or in danger of becoming resistant to weight loss.

In my experience, low HRV primarily arises from a poor diet, poor breathing, relationship and work stress, overtraining, poor air quality, excessive artificial light exposure, electrical pollution from WiFi and Bluetooth signals, or impure water. When I addressed each of these variables in my own life over years of cleaning up damage, I achieved a  pretty consistent HRV of 90 every day.

To track HRV I suggest in no particular order a whoop band, Apple Watch, or oura ring

Quick additions to your routine to reduce inflammation

1. When I wake up feeling mentally foggy, possibly due to a late night out, excessive alcohol consumption, or disrupted sleep, my immediate go to : take 1,000 mg of curcumin, derived from the turmeric plant. Curcumin's strong anti-inflammatory properties swiftly reduce inflammation and counteract the negative effects of inadequate sleep.

2. The most effective time for complete repair of neurons is during deep sleep stages, typically occurring when one goes to sleep between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m., as the body's temperature decreases from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. Without quality sleep, full recovery and repair cannot be achieved. Considering how significant role of sleep in maintaining a healthy nervous system, ensuring adequate sleep is the most crucial strategy for enhancing brain function and cognition. Even with the integration of various biohacks, nutritional advice, and strategies optimal brain and nervous system performance cannot be attained without proper sleep.

3.. There are numerous ways to stay physically active without engaging in intense weightlifting or running. Active recovery methods such as tai chi, qigong, yoga, heart rate variability training, hot-cold contrast therapy, cold thermogenesis, and heat shock training are far more powerful tools for health and longevity than you believe