2019 has well and truly launched itself as being a big, productive year for so many people. Many of us spent part or all of January cruising in holiday mode and by mid February kids are back at school, work is in full swing and that relaxing break over the Christmas period feels like a lifetime ago.

As life gets busy again most people are able to manage with carefully formulated schedules, online supermarket shopping, dinner boxes delivered to your door and a cleaner of course! However, it does not take much to get the overwhelm feeling happening when one or two extra things come up. It only takes a few of those overloaded periods to leave you feeling flat, tired, irritable and even sick.

Signs that your stress is negatively impacting you may include:

Trouble falling asleep

Waking up at night (usually between one and four am)

Waking tired

Feeling tired most of the time

Inability to concentration and focus on tasks

Mood changes such as feeling short fused, angry, anxious or depressed

Diffuse hair loss (typically occurring three months after a major stressful event/injury)

Poor digestive function that leads to nutrient deficiencies (think belching, bloating and being gassy)

Recurrent infections

How does the stress response happen?

It’s our adrenal glands that sit above our kidneys (located at your lower back) that are responsible for the stress response. When the body perceives there is danger they get working secreting cortisol as well as adrenaline and noradrenaline. From an evolutionary perspective it was a response we needed when there was a saber toothed tiger chasing us. So when our bodies detect a stressful situation, be that a physical stress such as an injury or psychological stress like work deadlines and busy schedules, our body creates a response to that.

The adrenal glands weigh only 3.5-5gm and are made up of the adrenal cortex and adrenal medulla and it’s the adrenal medulla that releases the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline to help us get through stressful situations. It is cortisol from the adrenal cortex that causes the production of an enzyme that converts noradrenaline to adrenaline. The noradrenaline and adrenaline cause the nervous system to mount a fight or flight response that gets the body to run away from or stop and fight that saber toothed tiger!

Is the energy that gets you through your day what your real energy reserves look like?

It is important to differentiate between our real energy reserves and the fake energy that can drive us to get things done. Some people will run on adrenaline and be uber productive all of the time but this misuse of adrenaline ultimately leaves us exhausted if we draw on it too often. The adrenaline response means we are in fight or flight mode much of the time and that means important bodily processes like digestion and reproductive function shut down. Bottom line is we don’t want to be constantly running on adrenaline because we need to be able to come back into “rest and digest” mode.

Stress and digestion 

There is a constant two way conversation your brain is having with your gut and when we are stressed the nervous system tells the gut to switch off absorption and assimilation of the food we are eating and just focus on survival. If that happens more often than not then over a period of months we see start to see nutrient deficiencies and gut issues due to chronic digestive malabsorption. We are no longer absorbing the nutrients in our beautiful nutrient dense meals we are eating.

Stress and sleep 

Cortisol and melatonin share an inverse relationship. When cortisol levels are high melatonin levels tend to be low. Melatonin is supposed to be elevated at night for sleep induction and low during the day and cortisol should be low at night and start to rise on waking and then continue to be produced at varying levels throughout the day. .When we are stressed our cortisol can be high at night and this can lead to a drop in melatonin. This leads to sleep onset issues and/or wakefulness during the night.

Stress and immunity 

If you find you are stressed and sick on a regular basis that could be because of the effect high levels of stress have on the immune system. High stress causes reduced natural killer cell activity, lower lymphocyte and antibody production and can even cause reactivation of latent viral infections such as cold sores, shingles and glandular fever type illness that is caused by Epstein-Barr virus or Cytomegalovirus.

Useful testing to consider if you are stressed long term

Blood AM cortisol is an accurate test available through your general pathology lab that is a great starting point for tracking where your stress levels currently sit.

Functional pathology labs offer saliva adrenal hormone profiles that are also accurate and test stress hormones over a 24 hour period. Melatonin can also be added to saliva adrenal profiles if sleep is significantly disrupted. Get in touch with Georgie or myself to learn more about how to investigate and treat your stress issues.

By Susan Hunter

Director of Healthful Clinic & Clinical Naturopath