Fire, like stress hormones, are both important to staying alive and deadly at the same time. Stress hormones can affect your health. Stress sets off a chain of hormones that prepare the body to fight or run. However, if those hormones aren’t burned off physically, then those changes remain. That can create problems in your body. It can cause digestive problems, increase abdominal fat and compromise the immune system.
What are the stress hormones?
Let’s first look at what hormones are. These are messengers. Sex hormones help direct where body fat lands, controls the amount muscle built and starts processes for reproduction. Insulin, another hormone, causes the cells to open and take in glucose. Stress hormones make changes in your body for both running and fighting, like reducing blood flow to digestion and redirecting it to the extremities for running and fighting. The hormones include adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine.
What are the changes those three hormones make.
Cortisol is a stress hormone that causes the body to put more glucose into the bloodstream, triggers the increase of the hormone that repairs tissue, and sends more glucose to the brain. Norepinephrine slows the flow of blood to functions that aren’t essential if you’re in a life-threatening experience, like voiding, while adrenaline increases it to muscles used for flight or fight. Adrenaline also increases the heart rate, raises the blood pressure and creates rapid, shallow breathing. Adrenaline is the substance that allows a 110 pound mother to lift a car off the child, but too much can make changes in the body, which can lead to premature aging, among other things.
How do you eliminate the problems of stress.
Every day, you face a number of stressful situations that fighting or running won’t help. A baby crying or angry boss are just two examples. One way to get rid of stress is by learning to relax and not view everything as stressful. Meditation or deep breathing exercises are two of those techniques. Another way to deal with stress is through exercise. The body doesn’t know what stress is real danger and it also doesn’t realize that exercise isn’t necessarily fighting or fleeing. It burns off the hormones of stress.
- Stress can be responsible for DNA damage, weight gain, headaches, cardiovascular disorders, peptic ulcers and the promotion of tumor growth. It can lead to psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety, miscarriages and premature aging.
- If you have chronic digestive issues, try working out. Some clients find that many digestive issues disappear, and they have fewer illnesses, such as the flu or colds.
- When food was scarce for early man and conditions were harsh, the body combated the problem by storing fat. Studies show that people under stress eat up to 40% more and accumulate fat around the midsection.
- Telomeres protect the cells chromosomes. The longer they are, the better. It allows more replications and longer cell life so cells don’t die. Stress shortens the telomeres, but exercise helps extend them and burns off stress.
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