Stress Signs & Just How Much It Hurts You - Dr Ekberg

Maybe you've heard the expression that pain hurts but stress kills it's that a

bit harsh is that a little exaggerated or is there something to that (Can Stress Kill You?) Coming

right up

Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you'd like to truly master

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Most people come in to a chiropractor or they go to the doctor because something

hurts it's the symptom that gets their attention but stress is something that

goes on behind the scenes.It's the stuff that undermines your body's function it

is truly the silent killer So let's talk about what that is And stress is when

your autonomic nervous system reacts to something so your autonomic nervous

system it's the thing behind the scenes that handles everything about your

health that you don't have to think about so you're breathing and you're

blinking your eyes and your digestion and beating your heart and growing

fingernails and regulating pH and blood sugar and hormones all of that stuff

goes on all the time and it's not doesn't happen by itself

it is being managed for you by your autonomic nervous system so when your

autonomic nervous system is in balance you're in homeostasis and you can

quickly return to health but if something is constantly pushing that

system out of balance then you can't really be in homeostasis then there are

challenges to your health so let's talk about how that works so the two branches

are called sympathetic and parasympathetic and stress by definition

is when your sympathetic nervous system is activated

that's simple physiology the inside workings of your body the physiology

stresses when you have a sympathetic response when that part of your

autonomic nervous system reacts to a stressor you have a stress response so

why does it do that because your body is a closed system you have about a gallon

and a half or five liters of blood in your body blood contains all the

resources in your body you have oxygen and amino acids and vitamins and

minerals and fatty acids and so forth and the blood transports this to all the

cells that need it but it's a resource allocator your autonomic nervous system

is a resource allocator so whatever parts need it the most whatever is the

most important in this moment is who's gonna get the most resources so let's

say you're sitting at a picnic and you're having a good time you had a

wonderful meal that weather is great you're relaxed now your parasympathetic

nervous system is a little bit more active because you're involved with

digestion you're in a relaxed state so your body is allowing repair and healing

and immune function and so forth and in that state you are allocating most of

the blood to those processes to digest food and maintain repair but let's say

that you glanced over and you see a grizzly bear come charging to join your

picnic now things are not so relaxed anymore and consequently you have a

stress response and the stress response is there to save your life so your heart

starts beating faster your blood pressure goes up your cortisol goes up

because cortisol raises blood sugars you have more quick energy available during

a stress response so now all the resources are going to

the heart and to the muscles to pump blood out so that you can run and fight

and get out of there and now because your body shifted a lot

of their blood a lot of the resources now there's not so much available for

the digestion because your body says you know dealing with that grizzly bear is

more important than digesting the food I'll worry about that later so in that

scenario it's a very intelligent and very appropriate response but there are

lots and lots of things that create a stress response not just grizzly bears

not just things that require us to run and fight sometimes there's an imagined

danger so anything that gets you tense or frustrated or overwhelmed or angry or

fearful is going to trigger a sympathetic response a stress response

and you're gonna have the same increases in heart rate increases in blood

pressure increases in cortisol because your body is preparing for an imagined

danger if you imagine it it's real to your brain and your brain is going to

prepare for that danger to deal with it whether it's real or not

so most people today have a lot of stress anyone I talked to says they we

have more stress than we've ever had and that means most people are in

sympathetic dominance now because we are a closed system and we are a limited

resource system there's only so much blood only so much resources in the body

anytime the sympathetic goes up the parasympathetic is going to go down and

it's like a seesaw there is no other way it's you're hardwired in your nervous

system to do that it's like you're driving a car you can't speed up and

slow down at the same time you pick one of them and when there is a

stress when there's a danger real or imagined your body is hardwired to fire

off that stress response at the expense of the relaxation response at the

expense of immune function digestion reproductive function repair and healing

so this is why the stress is the silent killer stress is the number one thing

that we should be concerned with so what do we do about it well the short term

solution is breathing peace of mind awareness relaxation exercises

affirmations getting yourself into a state where you can maybe see that

things aren't so bad and there's no reason to be angry and so forth

long term we want to work on this we want to develop an attitude and

lifestyle where we don't let things get to us so much and another thing is there

is no substitute for good health the body is chemical structural and

emotional and all those aspects can trigger stress responses pain can

trigger stress responses chemicals can trigger stress responses poor motion in

the spine can trigger stress responses because signals are incomplete the

picture that reach the brain receives is incomplete so we have to understand that

stress is multifaceted and most stress is the kind that we're not even aware of

that's why it's so important to start understanding these things and working

toward stress relief whether we think we have stress or not if you take one thing

away from this video just remember this you can heal or you can defend yourself

you can heal or you can stress but you can't do both at the same time because

your body is going to pick one over the other anytime the sympathetic increases

the parasympathetic decreases so I hope this was

helpful and maybe eye-opening if you know some people I could benefit from

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