Penny Slimmon Herbalist
Stress is normal. Stress is healthy. It keeps us active, motivated and productive. It’s necessary.
I was once given the analogy of how stress is like a violin and its strings. If there is no tension on the strings, it doesn’t play “in tune”. If there is too much tension on the strings, they “snap”. But with the right amount of tension applied, the violin makes beautiful music.
We are like that violin. Too little tension and we get floppy and lazy and we have little motivation. Too much tension applied to us and we can snap. We need to have just the proper amount so that we produce harmonious music in our lives.
Too much stress isn’t healthy or even normal but it is becoming a way of life in North America. Anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental illness in the United States and Canada. In the US mental illness is affecting 40 million adults (18% of the US population) and is similar per population in Canada. Anxiety costs the US $42 billion a year. (1/3 of its $148 billion total mental health bill). Stress and anxiety disorders in Canada are the most prevalent mental illnesses affecting Canadian adults. 1 in 4 Canadians will have at least one anxiety disorder in their lifetime. In Canada anxiety disorders account for the largest percent (31.8%) of the total cost of mental illness. 70-80% of visits to doctors are stress related.
Anxiety develops from a set of risk factors such as poor nutrition, life events, drug side effects and genetics. These can all affect brain chemistry.
Anxiety: an unpleasant feeling of dread over something unlikely to happen, such as the feeling of imminent death and is not considered to be a normal reaction. (Dr. Hugo Rodier MD. The “Untold Truth” Series)
Let’s see if you are under stress.
So now that you know your score, it is important to know that stress triggers disease. Dr. Konrad Kiel. N.D., past president of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, says that stress causes real physiological responses. Your Adrenal glands respond to stress by excreting adrenaline, a hormone that kick starts your body’s defense mechanisms. It’s sort of like calling your Emergency Response Team into action. The alarms go off!
Adrenaline (also known as Epinephrine) promotes the “Fight or Flight” impulse that causes pounding heart, elevated blood pressure, dilation of your pupils and muscular tension.
This response is necessary to survival. It alerts you to dangers and readies us to deal with it. When we were hunting for our food, or being hunted as food, it was extremely important for survival. Over the centuries our stressors have become subtler but the physical responses have not changed.
Unemployment, troubled teenagers, ailing parents, financial troubles, relationship struggles-these stressors cause anxiety and persistent “Fight and Flight” responses that in the end make our bodies and our immune systems weak and sick.
Physical symptoms of stress include: headaches, fatigue, insomnia, digestive problems, neck and back pain, decrease in appetite or overeating, high blood pressure, pain in joints and muscles and getting sick more often.
Emotional signs of stress and anxiety are anger and irritability, feeling like you are on “your last nerve”, anxiety or panic attacks, pessimism, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate and a loss of productivity. In time, this can lead to exhausted adrenals or burn-out, thyroid and other hormonal problems, lowered immunity, inflammation of the cardiovascular system and a host of other problems that all can leave you vulnerable to devastating disease!
Well, Canadians are amongst the biggest users of anti-depressants according to a study from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), the third highest in 23 developed countries in 2013. OECD noted-The drugs are now being prescribed for “generalized anxiety disorders or social phobia” (previously known as shyness). The Canadian Pediatric Society officially approved the use of Prozac and others in this class of anti-depressants for children. A lot of these classes of drugs work to enhance neurotransmitter activity to make you feel good. (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRI’s).
“Neuroscientists are coming to the realization that although many patients improve with a drug that enhances neurotransmitter activity, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those patients were depressed because of a neurotransmitter deficiency. Such thinking is akin to saying that a skin rash that improves with a steroid cream is due to a steroid deficiency”.
Journal of Family Practice Recertification, October 2000.
But look at these drugs reported side effects of anti-depressants; headaches, high blood pressure, allergies, rashes, tremors, seizures, sexual dysfunction, insomnia or hypersomnia, gastro intestinal bleeding and that all time dreaded weight gain.
Well, that’s just depressing. Thinking about these causes me to have anxiety. Many of these drugs actually increase the problem that they were meant to fix and can become habit forming and cause drug intolerances so that stronger alternatives are requested to suppress symptoms. Some of these drugs are even linked to suicide. Not exactly what you signed up for, right?
You can find real, lasting happiness and wellbeing from proper nutrition and natural herbal supplementation and a few other lifestyle changes. The body needs these tools to create fuel in your body to keep it running smoothly and quietly.
Just like your car needs fuel and not sugar water to run properly, our body needs what was intended for it, not the processed foods that we are feeding it today.
The preservatives and chemicals we eat are gumming up our engines making our car (our body) sputter and spurt and have all sorts of symptoms. Think of these as the “idiot lights” coming on in your car. These symptoms are trying to get your attention so you do something different. If your oil light came on in your car, would you put a piece of duct tape over it and keep driving? If so, you wouldn’t get far before doing more damage to the engine and ultimately ruining your car.
If your body has a symptom, let’s say pain, do you take a pain reliever because it fixes the problem? It will cover up the pain but when it wears off, the pain is still there. No real fix happens. You need to find out what is causing the pain and address the real problem. If you keep putting the duct tape over the pain (taking the pain pill), you can make the problem worse and cause more damage.
The same thing is true of stress and anxiety. Find out what your body is lacking and give your body the tools to get better. Real food is like gas in your car. It’s the proper fuel to make it run. Also, you will need to make some lifestyle changes.
We were not made to sit around all day, even at desks when it is our job. We need to move the garbage out of our bodies daily. When we stress, we make stress chemicals in our Adrenals. These need to be moved out after we use them or they accumulate and cause inflammation in our bodies. Try getting up from your desk every hour and walk around for 5 minutes. Do some deep knee bends, stretch and bend over or just jog on the spot for a bit. Take a 40 minute walk 4 times a week. It not only moves the junk out, it releases those “feel good” hormones in your brain.
Cut the caffeinated drinks down to 1-2 a day maximum and replace them with 4-5 glasses of fresh water daily. I like to drink chlorophyll water as it keeps my body alkaline, adds green to my diet, is a first stage liver detoxifier (very gentle) and helps me to get the calcium that I need.
Get a good night’s sleep. We all have different needs but all of us need a block of minimum 4-5 hours of uninterrupted sleep for our brains to detoxify, rest, and work through the stuff of the day. Sleep is when we recharge, renew and restore so that we wake up with a feeling of serenity or as I call it Zerenity (the peace and calm and energy that I wake up with every day after I get my zzzz’s.
Google “real food diet” or “clean eating” etc. and start giving your body the vitamins and minerals that it is lacking to do the many jobs it needs to do on a daily basis.
It is important to remember that even making small changes in your daily routine will start you on the path to a less stress and anxiety ridden life. Don’t think that you need to do all of this at once. Baby steps will get you there. You didn’t become stressed overnight and you will need to give your body a chance to adapt to the changes and/or supplements you are taking before you will see the changes. Don’t fret. Your body will get better. That’s its job. It knows well how to do it. It just needs the right tools and a little help from you to start the process.
There is no magic formula for stress but making sure that you get adequate B-Vitamins is important. These are your brain and nervous system vitamins that help your central nervous system work well. This group is called the B-Complex vitamins. You may not know what they do when you are getting enough, but you sure feel it when you don’t get enough. You may feel jumpy, irritable, on edge, and sleepless yet not able to fall asleep or stay asleep, and just miserable.
If your adrenals are exhausted or you are feeling burnt out you may feel any of the symptoms from a list of about 30;
There are many factors that may be contributing to your stress and anxiety and this article will hopefully give some insight that may help you so you can start solving the puzzle.
Nature's Sunshine has some supplements that may be relevant to you. You can click the links below to access the online store and see more information about these products there.
Contact Penny if you have any questions about your specific needs.
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
Most of my appointments involve using the SCIO biofeedback device. This shows me where you body is experiencing the most stress, whether it is from toxins, stress, diet, medications or prediagnosed illnesses.
We make a plan, and use supplements and biofeedback to retrain these issues.
