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In this episode, I’m sharing the “whats”, “whys” and “hows” - meaning when you understand chronic stress and are aware of where you are at, then you can start making changes to improve.  In today’s world, everyone wants a quick fix and the bad news about chronic stress is that there isn’t a magic pill or a quick solution to reverse this.  But the good news is there are practices where you can shift your habits to improve this.

When we are stressed, the body shifts its resources from maintaining homeostasis, that happy place of well-being and balance, to protecting itself.  Stress is unavoidable (just trying to avoid it would stress you out!)  Normative stress (ie) is a natural part of life:  birth, death, marriage, breakups, job loss - these are all part of the human experience.    As an adaptive response, we develop coping strategies to help us return to our normal baseline.   We may seek support, learning to self-soothe, and trying to get our nervous system to homeostasis (that happy place of well-being and balance)  When we move from stress to normal baseline is allostasis.    This allows us to develop resilience.  

The body’s stress response is a fight or flight mechanism.  This is probably familiar to you.   Fighting and fleeing are two of the body’s instinctual, automatic reactions to stress.    The 3rd is freezing.    I met with my friend Amy last Friday over lunch to talk about this - and she made a great point of saying that these flight, flight and freeze responses are a way that our body keeps us safe.  Normal stress is good - it helps us grow and adapt

But chronic stress - meaning it’s constant and persists wears down and harms every system in our body.  In some cases of chronic stress, our adrenal glands release cortisol and other stress hormones, such as adrenaline, continuously. 

Stress also activates the immune system by getting signals that we’re living in a near constant threat state, it repeatedly sends out chemicals that cause inflammation to our body.    I think of these chemicals like a fire starter increasing our risk of developing autoimmune diseases, chronic pain and other things like heart disease to cancer.  

Inflammation occurs all over the body and may even affect our brain.  The impact of stress and trauma on our immune system and brain that scientists are looking into the mind-body connection called psychoneuroimmunology.   Inflammation of the brain has been identified in various forms from depression and anxiety to outright psychosis.  When you don’t resolve the stress or trauma and chronic stress becomes reality, your body adjusts and stays in this nervous system mode and stress responds further with other conditions.  Meaning you continue to keep developing other conditions like depression, high blood pressure, heart issues, weight gain and more.  

It’s this interesting?!   Are you thinking about when your stress moved to chronic stress and even move, how did it respond? 

Grab the show notes here  ➡️ https://www.cathylvan.com/episode125

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