10 Signs STRESS Is DESTROYING Your Body

Hello Health Champions today we're going to talk  about the top 10 signs that you have too much  

stress and I guarantee that there is no other  health topic that affects your health as much  

as this but you have to understand the central  mechanism behind stress and then you'll be able to  

transform your life the thing that manages stress  in your body is called the autonomic nervous  

system or the ANS and it processes billions of  bits every second so everything that you don't  

have to think about like beating your heart and  digesting food and making new skin cells and so  

forth It's all handled by the autonomic nervous  system and the ANS has two branches and we're  

going to talk about them a little bit differently  so you really really get what they do and why this  

stuff matters so basically they're two branches  they deal with things that can threaten you on  

the outside and things that can be a threat on  the inside of your body and I know that you've  

probably heard these words before they're called  the sympathetic branch or the fight flight but  

don't worry they're just words we're going to  talk about what they mean and the other part is  

the parasympathetic or the feed breed but what do  these have to do with health and how can they be  

involved with every health condition there is well  this fight flight system what it does is it gets  

you ready for a fight when there's a threat on the  outside something threaten you whether it's a bus  

you have to jump out of the way or a wild animal  or a thug coming after you you have to prepare  

your body so you're not a Sitting Duck so the  fight flight system it increases your heart rate  

it increases your muscle tension and it increases  your blood pressure furthermore it increases es  

your blood sugar so all of these get your body  ready it's all about getting more resources more  

energy out to the muscles so they can run or fight  on the other hand this feed breed system what it  

does is it increases digestion it increases immune  function it increases reproductive function and  

it increases or is responsible for heal healing  and repair and I know that you've probably heard  

some of these phrases before but stay with me  because once you really get the picture then  

you'll be able to explain not just List the 10  things we're going to talk about today but also  

every other thing that can affect your health so  both of these systems both branches they're all  

about keeping you alive so I marked it in red and  green not because one is good and the other is bad  

but because we usually have too much of the fight  flight we have too much of the alarm one so that's  

why I put it in red whereas the green is more of  a peaceful soothing that we want to go after but  

again it's not just how we feel it's how does this  affect your health and again both of these are to  

keep you alive now here's what we need to start  understanding about these two systems and why this  

matters because all of these functions require  resources they require energy and oxygen and so  

forth and all of those resources are carried by  the blood so if we want to do more of one we have  

to send more blood in One Direction at the expense  of another Direction because there's only so much  

blood you only have a finite amount of blood  in the body so if you send more to do something  

you have to kind of B borrow from someplace else  and here's the key to understand about this that  

because of what I just explained this autonomic  nervous system works like a seesaw so whenever  

one thing goes up another one has to go down it  has to be that way now sometimes people say that  

when one turns on the other shuts off and that's  not how you want to think about it you want to  

think about it as a seesaw when one increases the  other decreases so it's not a total shut off but  

it's relative it's more or less so very often  when I talk about health and I describe these  

things and I say well is your digestion important  well of course you have to break down Foods so you  

can digest them and assimilate them and make body  parts and all your vital organs are driven by this  

feed Breed by the par parasympathetic nervous  system your immune function is that important  

of course it is otherwise you would be completely  defenseless against toxins and bacteria pathogens  

diseases is reproductive function important of  course otherwise the entire species would die out  

and if we couldn't heal and repair anything then  things would just continually break down if you  

started bleeding or you hurt something it would  never heal so a lot of people say well this is  

where health is this is where it's all about and  yes that's super super important and yet the fight  

flight is much much more important and it always  takes presidence because this is about defending  

you against that outside threat if something's  attacking you then you have to act right now  

you don't have any time to think about it you  have to react instinctively you have to rely  

on your reflexes and animal instincts and save  your life so the fight flight is about keeping  

you alive in this moment keeping you alive in  the next five seconds or a minute whereas the  

feed breed is about keeping you alive and keeping  you healthy for tomorrow and next year so both are  

critically important but if you don't survive the  next 5 seconds then there is no point in trying  

to dryve functions that will get you healthy next  year so these are in no particular order but the  

number one sign of stress is muscle tension how  many people do you know that have muscle tension  

and this would be especially in the neck area in  the jaw area in the shoulders and in the back and  

when you think about it or when you hear someone  complain about muscle tension isn't this typically  

where it is now why does stress make it turn up  in those areas because if you are in a war zone if  

you're being chased by an animal if there's a lot  of threats around you these are the first places  

that you want to tighten up to protect yourself  you want to pull your shoulders up to protect your  

neck because if you get a blow then it could knock  your head off so you want to make sure everything  

is tight and stable to protect you also if you  bite down and protect your jaw it's less likely  

to get broken or dislocated because if you break  your jaw you can't eat and then you die so these  

are all survival mechanisms and sign number two is  digestive problems so we have to realize that feed  

breed is completely responsible for all digestive  function anything that happens from the time you  

put something in your mouth to where you digest  it and it comes out the other end you're supposed  

to have extracted a bunch of nutrients and all  of that is controlled by the parasympathetic by  

the feed breed so one way you can think about  this is like a faucet and this faucet turns  

on or off the blood flow so when ever you have a  stress response then you're going to increase the  

blood flow to the survival towards the outside  and to the same degree you're going to reduce  

the blood flow the resources to everything that  goes on on the inside all your digestive function  

all your vital organs and there's so many people  maybe you have fallen into this trap of you try  

so hard to eat all the right Foods you make sure  that it's organic and it's pure and it's raised  

the right way but then you're stressed and now  you can't turn on you can't send the right kind  

of resources to your digestive tract so now as  a result you have IBS irritable bowel syndrome  

you might have constipation where the peristalsis  is also completely controlled and driven by this  

parasympathetic the feed breed if you turn off  the blood supply and the re sources to the gut  

now you can get hypochlorhydria meaning you don't  make enough stomach acid without that acid now  

you don't make enough enzymes to extract and break  down the food and of course now that could lead to  

malabsorption so what's the point of eating the  perfect food if you're going to be stressed and  

not be able to extract the nutrients from it and  we also have to realize that we talk about stress  

stress and people think that's just about how you  feel but stress could be real or imagined it's not  

about the thing outside of you it's how you react  to it it's how you perceive it so people are very  

different and we can train ourselves to think in  certain ways and if you tend toward anxiety if you  

tend toward fear if you tend toward worrying  about things then you pretty much always are  

increasing your that Baseline for the sympathetic  for the fight flight is always going to be a  

little bit higher and these things start getting  programmed in utero so it starts before you're  

even aware of it but it doesn't mean that you're  helpless it doesn't mean that you're a victim it  

means you need to understand it so you can start  doing something about it and closely related to  

digestive problems are skin problems because a lot  of stuff that comes out of the skin and inflames  

the skin and poisons the skin is because the gut  isn't working and the same thing with frequent  

illness it's all about immunity and this goes of  course together with the digestive issues that we  

just talked about and we're finding out more and  more how important your biome is the bacterial  

culture in your gut and they are responsible for  a lot of functions in your body that we still are  

just trying to understand the bacteria in your  gut have somewhere like a 100 to 200 times more  

DNA they have the capacity to break things down  that you can't and they have the capacity to make  

nutrients that we can't so just as important as  eating the right things and feeding ourselves  

is eating the right things for your microbiome  sign number five is libido which has to do with  

reproductive function the propagation of the  species which is super important but there's  

a time and a place so one part of this is erectile  dysfunction which is becoming more and more common  

as well as infertility now if we think about  this it makes perfect sense because if you're  

being chased by a wild animal that is not not the  time to have an erection it's not going to be very  

useful in that situation it's not really going to  scare anybody so when we have a fight flight then  

it's automatically going to turn off all sexual  function sign number six is sleep problems and  

this is as you probably know one of the biggest  problems we're facing there's very very few people  

who are getting enough sleep these days and who  are getting the quality of sleep that could really  

make them function at their best and again this  makes perfect sense in terms of fight flight and  

feed breed because if you're being chased by  an animal if you have real or imaginary stress  

like we said the imaginary could be the news it  could be bills it could be a boss it could be a  

hypothetical conversation that you're having with  someone and that causes all these thoughts to just  

go round and round in your head and just won't  shut down that's a form of stress and it's going  

to act the same way as something chasing you  and again if you're being chased by something  

is it better to be awake or to fall asleep well  obviously if you're being chased you want to be  

awake so your body is going to make sure that  you stay awake and there are two hormones that  

do this melatonin is the hormone that puts you  to sleep and cortisol is the hormone that wakes  

you up so what's supposed to happen is at night if  we manage to wind down if we manage to reduce our  

sympathetic activity and relax a little bit then  we bring this sympathetic and parasympathetic into  

balance that allows the pineal gland to release  some melatonin and we fall asleep and then in the  

morning when we're supposed to wake up a little  bit before supposed to bake up your body releases  

cortisol and cortisol effectively shuts off  melatonin but cortisol is also a stress hormone  

that's going to raise blood sugar so when you have  stress real or imagined and you make more cortisol  

then that is going to shut off the melatonin and  now you can't fall asleep sign number seven is a  

reduced concentration inability to focus properly  and this has everything to do with the frontal  

LOE so we talked before about how this autonomic  nervous system is all about allocating resources  

about sending the blood with the resources to the  places that need them the most at that time and  

when we have more of a fight flight we're going  to send resources to the muscles and to the heart  

we can in increase blood pressure and blood flow  and so forth well the same thing same mechanism  

the same principle applies to the brain so this  is a brain and here's a brain stem and now in the  

frontal lobe in the in the front part of the brain  is where we have our most unique human function so  

ability to focus and concentrate and play plan  and get motivated and have abstract thought and  

be creative it is all in the frontal Lo but when  you're being chased by a wild animal you don't  

need all that function that's not the time to  create poetry instead you want to activate the  

brain stem this is the most primitive part this  is where our reflex Behavior our instinctual  

Behavior our animalistic reflexes reside down  here so when you have too much stress when you  

have too much sympathetic activation the body is  going to shift the blood flow from the frontal  

lobe to the brain stem and now you simply don't  have enough blood flow to think clearly you have  

reduced the frontal lob activity at the expense  of the brain stem which is very appropriate when  

you're in a fight-flight situation number eight  is anxiety and there's a similar mechanism to  

irritability and depression and this relates very  much to everything that we just talked about so  

remember when we said that if we don't survive  the next few seconds it doesn't really matter  

how good our gut health is cuz there will be no  tomorrow so the sympathetic the fight flight has  

to react instantaneously it has to react so  quickly it doesn't even reach the conscious  

mind it has to kick in even faster than that and  when it does again it does it at the expense of  

the parasympathetic of the organ of the inside  healing but if there was nothing to reset it  

then we would just flip that switch and then we'd  be stuck in that heightened fight flight response  

forever and of course that's not how it works  so the frontal lobe our executive function is  

the thing that turns that off and the better our  frontal lobe works the stronger it is the better  

it's going to be able to properly and quickly get  us back to balance so there's some very unique  

functions that the frontal lobe does in regulating  and turning off things the frontal L actually does  

much more turning off than it does turning on and  one of the things it turns off is that switch when  

the switch triggers that fight flight the frontal  lobe is what turns that back off also through a  

couple of different mechanisms the frontal lobe  regulates muscle tone so that we we have the  

proper muscle tone everywhere for posture but  also so that we don't have that excess stress  

related muscle tone in our neck jaw and shoulders  and it also turns off uncontrollable thoughts  

uncontrolled so anxiety stressful thoughts panic  attacks those are uncontrolled thoughts they are  

Uninvited thoughts that spiral out of control  that when there's nothing to turn them off then  

they just kind of take a life on their own and  this is the mechanism that controls all of these  

functions that we talked about and now let's talk  about something where we can apply a lot of this  

which is public speaking which is Terror to some  people and other people simply love it so it all  

depends on how you interpret that but for a lot of  people it will result in increased sweating so the  

ninth sign of stress and sympathetic fight-flight  responses are sweating and one reason for that is  

that the sweating is on the skin and if your hands  are super super dry you can't properly grip things  

so if you have a weapon or a stick or a club  you need just a little bit of moisture to get a  

good grip and that's where the body turns on that  sweating response so this would be sweating that  

is not related to heat or EX excise because of  course that's an appropriate way of just disposing  

of of too much heat and what if you notice that  you have arm sweat for example and you notice that  

you have a lot more on one side than the other  well you really don't have one brain you have  

two brains and each side of the brain controls one  side of the body so because we talked about these  

mechanism Ms the well functioning frontal lobe  will turn off these stress responses so you will  

have more turning off of the sweating on the side  where the brain is working better so if you have  

a side where the brain is a little weaker that is  where you're going to have more sweating and you  

can see this on the palms of your hands you can  see it in the armpits especially and sign number  

10 would be increased heart rate and how many  people have you heard that are given a diagnosis  

of tachicardia which means racing heart or  pounding heart heart palpitations or arrhythmias  

or one of the trendy diseases or conditions  is apib atrial fibrillations which is getting  

so so common and it's not only caused by stress  but there is a huge stress component of this so  

for a lot of people public speaking will result  in these things but again it's not the reality  

of what's out there it is how we imagine it it's  how we perceive it we create that stress with our  

perception and therefore we can also change it and  while we're at it on public speaking how about we  

give you a couple of bonuses here number 11 would  be dry mouth and why is that because you remember  

how we talked about the Digestive function the  secretion of hydrochloric acid and enzymes is all  

under parasympathetic control well the secretions  of saliva is also under parasympathetic control so  

when you get stressed you turn off your salivary  glands and you get that cotton mouth and along  

with that of course number 12 would be that you  get tongue tied you get speechless you don't know  

what you say you might even start stuttering and  why would that happen because you get stressed you  

activate your fight flight system and that blood  leaves your frontal lobe where your executive  

function is and now instead of speaking well  you're getting ready to punch somebody so you can  

see from the examples that we've gone through that  they're all related to the same Central mechan M  

and it's not the only mechanism that makes us  healthy or sick because obviously we still need  

to exercise we still need to eat right but it is  probably the one that people understand the least  

and that's the most undervalued and overlooked and  if you understand these 12 then you can see that  

these mechanisms cover thousands and thousands of  conditions I don't think that you can think of a  

single condition that is not related to these  mechanisms we've talked about then what would  

the solution be well what you're really trying to  do of course is mindfulness because stress is an  

interpretation it's a perception and also when  you're being mindful now you're allowing more  

of a relaxation response so this is the first step  in bringing back that balance and the time to try  

to be mindful is not when an animal is chasing  you it's overall it's a little bit it's every  

five minutes every 10 minutes of every day you're  asking yourself where is my focus how am I feeling  

then of course meditation is a practice to go  to a deeper level and get to deeper levels of  

relaxation then movement what does that do well we  said that the frontal lobe is what controls most  

of this and the number one thing that strengthens  the frontal lobe is movement more than 90% of what  

the brain does is to control movement in a field  of gravity so just having your balance moving in a  

field of gravity making complex and fast movements  is what drives and strengthens that frontal low  

more than anything else another super powerful  thing to do is breathing exercises because it's  

the only autonomic function automatic function  that's usually done for you that you have complete  

control over you can decide to breathe faster you  can decide to breathe slower you can't decide to  

speed up your peristalsis the movement through  your digestive tract you can't decide directly  

to increase your heart rate or decrease your  heart rate but you can do it indirectly because  

you can control your breath and when you breathe  in your heart speeds up because it wants to send  

more blood to the lungs when there is more oxygen  there and increasing heart rate is a sympathetic  

it's a fight-flight function breathing out will  slow down the heart rate because there's less  

oxygen so why waste energy sending blood there  when there's not so much to pick up and that's  

a parasympathetic function so most people breathe  too fast and too shallow to allow that system to  

calibrate but if you breathe in for roughly  5 seconds and out for roughly 5 Seconds now  

you're allowing enough time for that system to  calibrate and one more thing that you can do is  

called brain tab which is a device that we use in  the clinic and I'll put a link down below if you  

want to get your own but it's a really cool thing  it's about brain entrainment so it's a form of  

induced meditation for the lazy and once you put  that on you run a session it doesn't matter if you  

fall asleep it still works your anomic nervous  system still processes all that information and  

it's not instead of meditation but it is a very  powerful supplement because you can do it like I  

said you can fall asleep if you do a meditation  it requires that you're very very present and  

very very focused and it will do some things  that are different than the brain tab but if  

you do both then you can get some help along the  way if you enjoyed this video you're going to love  

that one and if you truly want to master Health by  understanding how the body really works make sure  

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