Emotional Stress

Why is emotional stress is significant?

Because your body cannot defend itself against the damage that emotional stress quietly creates over time. Your body pays a heavy physiological price for every moment that you feel anxious, tense, frustrated, and angry.

That’s not to say that you should never feel these emotions. Anxiety, tension, frustration, and anger all serve important purposes when they first arise. The danger is in experiencing these emotions on a chronic basis.

Emotional stress sets off a series of reactions in your body that involve your sympathetic nervous system, the portion of your nervous system that would increase your chance of surviving were you faced with a sudden and immediate danger or stressful situation.

In such a fight-or-flight situation, your sympathetic nervous system would:

• Speed up and intensify your heart and breathing rates, so that you could have more oxygen and nutrients available to your muscles to run or fight.
• Divert the bulk of your blood supply to your large muscles groups to run or fight.
• Slow or even shut down your digestive system so as to not waste blood, nutrients, and oxygen that could be used to run or fight.
• Stimulate the release of extra glucose into your blood to give you a burst of energy.
• Cause your adrenal glands to release adrenalin into your system to increase cardiac output and increase blood
• Sugar and also release cortisol to also increase blood sugar and energy. Adrenalin also increases our rate of breathing
• In order to allow the body to focus on the fight-or-flight condition there is a temporary shutdown of the digestive system.
• Similarly the immune system takes a break as well so that the body can focus on getting out of the fight-or-flight situation.

Clearly, it is to your advantage to have a healthy sympathetic nervous system, one that is capable of providing all of the functions listed above during physical emergencies, and also maintain the body’s chemical balance (homeostasis).
What you don't want is for your body to experience all of the above on a continuous, low-grade level because of emotional stress. And this is exactly what many of us are suffering from in today's hectic world.

Emotional stress is immensely harmful to your health because your body reacts to it in the same way that it would react if you came upon, say, a fierce dog. Not always to the same degree, of course, but there's no question that your sympathetic nervous system increases its output whenever you feel anxious, tense, frustrated, or angry. In other words, whenever you feel stressed.

Many health conditions are partly caused by emotional stress. Emotional stress always equals increased output by the sympathetic nervous system, which always equals accelerated aging and breakdown of your tissues.

How can we manage emotional stress in your life and prevent them from creating health problems?

1. Spend some quiet time every day in meditation, or a purposeful relaxation session.
   • The voluntary nervous system, which allows our brain to consciously move muscles
   • The involuntary or autonomic nervous system (ANS), which ideally keeps our bodies in balance, harmony and good health. This is called homeostasis.
   • The first part is the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the 'fight and flight' stress response.
     The sympathetic nervous system is the physical basis for the instinct of self-preservation. It is activated whenever there is the possibility of any danger. It controls the 'fight or flight' response to stress and danger.
   • The second part is the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the 'stay and play' relaxation and recover response.
     The parasympathetic nervous system is turned on when we let go and wind down, when we feel safe and secure. It controls the 'stay and play' response to pleasurable and enjoyable activities.

Turn on the relaxation response

Our nervous system is divided into two parts.

The autonomic nervous system is also divided into 2 parts, which balance each other out:

The sympathetic nervous system uses up our energy while the parasympathetic nervous system replenishes our energy.

A healthy person continuously moves between these two energetic modes. However, when we are stressed our sympathetic nervous system can become stuck in the ‘on’ position, and we are unable to stop and restore ourselves.

This results in stress-related illnesses such as insomnia, chronic fatigue, respiratory and digestive disorders, and heart disease. Ongoing stress plays a role in the development of many chronic and degenerative diseases, such as cancer and auto-immune diseases.

Meditation and relaxation sessions can be greatly enhanced by listening to any number of audio CDs, that we have available and have been designed to facilitate optimal relaxation and mental clarity. We work closely with counselors that work with these techniques in conjunction with their practicess.

2. Breathe slowly, through you nose and from the diaphragm

Doing so can actually decrease the tone of your sympathetic nervous system and increase the tone of your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the portion of your nervous system that promotes relaxation and good digestion.

Because adrenalin is a stimulant the breathing rate rises immediately. The increase in breathing rate encourages mouth breathing (mouth open in fright) resulting in HYPOCAPNIA (low CO2). From then on the smooth muscle spasm, reduction of oxygen flow to the cells etc. kicks in.

Whilst this is not an issue in a one-off fight-or-flight situation, such as being menaced by a large dog, it becomes a major issue when one is in constant low-grade fight-or-flight mode, such as postural, environmental, occupational or emotional stress.

This constant stress does not allow the body to recover its chemical balance or homeostasis, as it would if were to do by escaping from the dog.

We have home breathing programs (see Breathe Well) and work with respiratory physiologists to assist in restoring optimal breathing.

3. Move your body

It's a well established fact that regular exercise is one of the best habits you can adopt that will help you avoid depression and stay emotionally balanced. It doesn't matter what kind of exercise you do. What's important is to be active and use your joints and muscles on a regular basis.

We work closely with nutrition and lifestyle counselors who share our views on health.

4. Make sure that you are eating and absorbing the nutrient-dense food that you need to maintain homeostasis

Your nutritional status can make all the difference ( see Guideline’s to good health @ shdc). Eating fresh, nutrient-dense foods is good for your health. But eating fresh, nutrient-dense foods while feeling emotionally balanced and at peace is even better We work closely with nutrition and lifestyle counselors who share our views on health.