“When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body reaction to stress.” - Kelly McGonigal
Stress and nutrition are a little bit like the chicken and the egg situation. Not sure which one comes first. However, we do know from science and research that they both contribute to one another and their affects on our body, health and wellness.
Stress, in an of itself, is not bad. In fact, quite the opposite, stress is our body's way of protecting itself and surviving. Stress is "the body’s way of responding to demands from a variety of sources, both physical & psychogenic, & both positive & negative, in order to bring it back to its normal state of balance." It's when the stress becomes chronic that we have run in to trouble.
The quick and dirty of it is that our stress response is also known as the Sympathetic Nervous System, or the "fight or flight" response. This is a real physiological action our body takes under stress, whether it's a nasty email or a major car accident. One of the first things your body does in the sympathetic state is release cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol is naturally anti-inflammatory, but in chronic states it raises our blood sugar, breaks down muscle, suppresses the immune system, decreases serotonin, just to name a few.
Additionally, the body responds by directing the blood, oxygen and muscle functions away from the stomach and intestines towards other life saving areas and functions of the body. Your body is not trying to sabotage you. It's actually so smart. It knows there's no point in digesting food if you might not surviving a situation. So your digestion slows down and over time if this continues to happen your metabolism learns to slow down. So ultimately, even if you ate perfectly (whatever that really means), if you are chronically stressed you aren't getting much benefit from these nutritious foods, you might as well eat cake, cookies, donuts for all meals.
The flip side to the sympathetic is our parasympathetic, also known as the "rest and digest". When we learn to move into our parasympathetic nervous system more often we can lessen the effects of stressors in our life. And like the name suggests, this is when we can best digest our food and absorb and use all those great nutrients, no matter what it is that's on your plate.
While there are numerous things you can do to learn how to reduce your stress and it's response in your body, that's for a blog post another time. For now, as it relates to food, one of the biggest things you can do is practice a bit of mindful eating. This week try taking 2-3 big breaths into your belly and chest before you eat your food and/or every meal. By doing this and other mindful eating practices you can change the way your digest and the nutrient value of your food without even changing what's on your plate!
From a functional nutritionist perspective, we put a lot of blame on stress as an ultimate root cause of health conditions.
And beyond this idea of stress as something that needs to be mitigated or avoided altogether, this TED talk by Kelly McGonigal flips the script and changed how I talk to clients and honestly, on my life!
I watched it in one of my grad school courses. I hope you enjoy it!
What are ou thoughts on stress?! Do you do any one thing that you think makes the biggest different on your stress levels and health?
