How stress hormones effect your mood and overall health
What happens in your body when you get stressed.
A small controller that’s in your brain called hypothalamus sends a signal out to send in the stress hormones, which triggers the fight, flight response.
The central nervous system is in charge of the fight, flight response in your brain. It sends a signal to the adrenal glands to release the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol.
When the stressor has gone, the hypothalamus should send a signal to all the systems to go back to normal. This sometimes fails to happen or the stressor doesn’t stop, then this stress cycle will continue.
Now we do need a small amount of stress and stress hormones but if it continues, is prolonged or we have too much, it can have a negative effect on our health and well-being.
Why do we need these stress hormones or the fight flight response? Because back in the very very distant past when we were like cave men/women, we had to live through our survival instincts a lot more. We would of been faced with danger a lot from wild animals…ect. we had to run for our lives or fight for our lives.
We still have that same survival instinct.
These hormones rev our system up to fight or flight by speeding our heart rate, sending more blood to the areas it’s needed, muscles contract in readiness to fight or flea, we breathe faster to get more oxygen into the blood, our blood pressure raises, the liver produces more glucose for the extra energy, the digestive system is effected too and these are just a few things that happen in our body’s when faced with danger or stress, the whole system is affected.
Now some stressors may seem small or trivial and not exactly dangerous or life threatening at all. But the nervous system doesn’t know the difference between big danger or small stressor, it just responds. It’s your survival response. It’s there to keep you safe, to keep you alive.
So each and every big or small stressor that happens throughout your day, your whole body goes through this cycle everytime.
Usually our body’s can handle big or small stressors now and then, the systems will go straight back to normal when the stressor has gone.
Extreme or prolonged stress can cause all sorts of problems for your health and well-being, especially if your survival response doesn’t go back down to normal, your nervous system can take a battering and cause nervous issues. anxiety and lots more.
Too much stress can cause
• Anxiety
• Nervousness
• Headaches
• Digestive problems
• Sleep problems
• Depression
• Weight gain
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Fatigue
• PMS
• Low libido
• Difficulty concentrating
• Weakened bones and muscles
• Lowered immune system
Natural ways to reduce stress
• Sleep well – we need a good night’s sleep to recover and heal
• Exercise -regularly
• Learn relaxation techniques
• Eat healthy whole and hormone balancing foods
• Essential oils – Lavender, camomile, Jasmine, lemon balm, rose, ylang ylang, frankincense, clay sage, patchouli
• Meditate
• Practice mindfulness
• Have fun
• Laughter
• Maintain healthy relationships- spend time with family and friends
• Take care of pets
• Music – listen to your favourite tunes, dance, play a musical instrument
• Practice gratitude – think about all the things you are grateful for
• Spend time in nature – garden, walk, sit in the sun
• Eat dark chocolate
Littlewildflower tip
* Get yourself a nice cup of camomile tea with honey and calm the feck down * haha…
If you enjoyed my post or found it useful? Let me know in the comments.
Love Marie x