How Stress affects our Body & ways to reduce it

May 29, 2015
Lyndall McAlpine

It doesn’t matter how well you eat and how fit you are, if you are under a lot of stress your body will be suffering. Stress is a major cause of free radicals which lead to many degenerate diseases of today, it weakens your immunity, prematurely ages and affects your gut function and health. Stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin also cause havoc with cravings and attempted weight loss.

Health is so often put low on the priority list but health is often not valued until sickness comes. If you know you are stressed, take the time to  have the conversation with yourself or someone suitable, look at what is causing your stress and plan ways of avoiding this situation,

Simple tips to lowering stressslow down and relax
  • Focused diaphragm (belly) breathing is very effective in the heat of things and to do often through the day (here’s a link to one I like 4-7-8 breathing exercise)
  • Make sure you get enough sound sleep, you’ll cope better with so many things
  • Exercise, vigorous, aerobic and/or gentle such as yoga, Thai Chi  produce endorphins, our feel good neurotransmitters that improve the ability to sleep, which in turn reduces stress.
  • Make the time and effort to do something that you enjoy and you know calms you
  • Listen to your favourite music, music has a unique link to our emotions, so it can be an extremely effective stress management tool
  • Meditation has shown to help make you more resilient to stress. There are so many great meditating tools online, choose one that you like (I am fussy with accents that annoy me but I quite like this 9 min one)

Magnesium – nature’s Chill Pill

On a Nutritional side magnesium is called the “calming mineral”. It can protect you, your mind, and your DNA from the negative effects of acute stress.

Among other things Magnesium helps keep adrenal stress hormones under control and without adequate magnesium, blood vessels constrict and blood pressure increases. It’s also great for relaxing muscles, reducing headaches, cramps.

I have personally found it has helped with aleviating night leg aches (growing pains in the kids), reducing headache pain and getting a sound sleep (Magnesium helps regulate melatonin, a hormone essential for normal sleep cycles).

When you are under stress, your body tends to use up its store of magnesium.  In addition, many medications including diuretics, birth control pills, insulin, antibiotics, and cortisone cause the body to waste magnesium.

You can find magnesium in nuts, seeds, fish, lentils, beans, oats, brown rice, spinach, banana. Here’s a yummy recipe filled with magnesium rich ingredients – Banana oats bake.

With today’s modern diet we are seeing an excess of calcium intake and inadequate magnesium intake. This has changed the original recommended supplementation ratio of 1:2 to now a preferable 1:1. Vitamin D is also best taken with magnesium and calcium for better absorption. This is the mag/cal/vit D supplement I take, it is potent, highly absorbable and gives ratio of 1:1.

If you are feeling stressed and run down, maybe you would like to try my:

The 10 Day Cleanse is a great way to nourish your body, rejuvenate your gut & liver, reset your blood sugar and hormones & kick start your weight loss. With a full meal plan filled with yummy, healthy, gut nourishing foods, lots of tips for healthier, cleaner living (including stress reduction) plus supplements including probiotics to replenish your good bacteria, fibre (feeds your good gut bacteria), high quality anti oxidants and multi minerals & other nutritional supplements to enhance the detox process and support your body

 

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