Stress

Hello there! Hope you had a good week and ready to face this one head on? Kudos to you! Or did the week just stress you out, our environment not helping matters and you are not really looking forward to Monday? Whichever the case, this article will encourage and spur you onto a productive end.

Last week, we identified that fat around the middle is more dangerous. The major reason why fat targets the middle is because it is close to the liver where it can quickly be converted back to energy if needed; that area  has four times more fat cells than what you have all over the body and this puts you at higher risk of coronary heart disease because there is  more fat being dumped into your blood stream which gets pumped to your heart faster due to proximity.

To fully understand why we have belly fat or why the fat isn’t shifting despite all our efforts, we need to focus on another culprit popularly known as STRESS! Our bodies were designed to react quickly to danger, and  the brain, as soon as it thinks your life is in danger, releases a hormone that stimulates your adrenal glands (small glands located above the kidneys) to release adrenaline and cortisol – the stress hormones. These provide your body with everything it needs to either deal with the stress or run away from it; the fight-or-flight response. The adrenaline helps you get alert (energy) and the cortisol increases the levels of fat and sugar in the blood stream.

Examples of when this happens can be when you are faced head-on with your neighbours unfriendly Rottweiler and oh boy! You are all alone with no escape route (Gosh! The thought of it! Let’s get rid of that pictureJ); or more importantly when there is a death of a family member, divorce, personal injury, long hours in traffic (tell me about it), unruly driving on your way home from work, being fired from work, debt, pregnancy, trouble with in-laws, trouble with your boss, change in sleep quality, children throwing tantrums, or even sheer joy can activate the body’s stress mechanism; add yours, and the list goes on. Our bodies cannot distinguish between types of stresses and so reacts this way every time. These reactions are supposed to last for short periods of time, but in today’s world, stress is continuous with its impact on the body going on for hours on end. Therefore, not expending this extra energy as the body expects you to, in the form of fat and glucose means it all sits there and is re-deposited as fat. Cortisol can last in the body for a few days and it increases the appetite, making you eat a lot. Have you noticed people in traffic jams munching away at all kinds of things….? There you have it. It is important to note here that we cannot live without going through some degree of stress and we all react to stress in different ways, some people eat a lot while others eat very little. The need to find how your body reacts to stress is important.

How do we then de-stress? By discovering what relaxes you the most like, a massage, cycling, going to the beach and starring at the ocean, yoga, meditation, prayer and so on. The good news is that our bodies are very adaptable and continuous exposure to relaxation techniques once you find yourself getting stressed creates a balance. Till next week, stay safe.