Stress Was Killing Me!
Scenario #1
It's 3:30am. I have just woken up yet again in a complete panic. I peek down at my watch and see that my heart rate is 120 bpm as I lay there in bed trying to calm my breathing. I could get another hour of sleep if I could just calm down. But the thought of having to get up and carry out another 16-hour day is just too much.
Scenario #2
I'm at my yearly checkup with my physician and the nurse takes my blood pressure and it reads 150/88. She says, “Oh that can't be right. You teach exercise, don't you? Did you have any caffeine today?” I reply, “just a little!” when in fact I had consumed over 500mg of caffeine that day. “Let's have you lay down for a few minutes and we'll retest!” she says, only to get a second reading of 145/86.
Scenario #3
It's 7:00pm. I've been training large groups of people for 8 hours, for a combined 16-hour workday. There's 50 people staring at me, waiting for me to instruct them what exercise to do next. They want all of my energy! They want me to push them to give them the best workout they've had in weeks! But as I look at all the eyes staring back at me, the world starts to spin. My legs start shaking, and I fall straight to the floor, only to have the world continue spinning for 10 days.
Sound Familiar?
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? Have any of these situations ever happened to you? If the answer is yes, then your body is trying to tell you something with these physical symptoms. It's trying to tell you that something is wrong! Chronic stress is killing you!
Stress is defined as a person's total response to environmental demands or pressures. The "fight or flight response". Stress looks different for every individual and just like all other things, it's a good thing in small doses. You might, feel like you thrive off of pressure, timelines, deadlines, and team goals push you to stay motivated (I DO!). But in many situations, the stress levels become too much. The stress response begins to take a toll on you mentally and emotionally, but also starts to affect your physical health. The effects of long-term stress are:
- Poor metabolism
- Menstrual cycle irregularities
- Increased stress hormones
- Weakened immune system
- High blood pressure
- Heart disease
- Heart attack
- Stroke
- Ulcers
- Infertility
- Irritable bowel disease
- Erectile dysfunction
- Hair loss
- Mental health conditions
- Other medical conditions and health problems
But the majority of us are so busy running on our “hamster wheel” that we don't even have time to stop and notice what is actually going on. That is why our bodies are programmed to send us signals, such as the panic attacks and vertigo that I was experiencing. Some signals or symptoms of stress that your body might be sending you to demonstrate the effects of stress include:
- Tension headaches
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Acne
- Frequent illness
- Lethargy
- Insomnia
- Depression
- Muscle tension
- Weight gain
- Changes to appetite
When I look back to when I was in a vicious cycle of excessive stress, I had ALL of these symptoms, but I was too busy to even notice or care how crappy I was feeling. I'd take some aspirin, chug another energy drink, and keep on going until my body just couldn't go on anymore. My stress took me to such an unhealthy place that I really had no other option but to move on to something else. Even though you might not be able to change your current situation right now like I did, the good news is that you can make some small changes in your life to make big changes to your stress levels! Here are some steps that I took that you can use to help you started:
- Significantly decrease or even eliminate your caffeine intake! This will SUCK initially, as your body will most likely experience withdrawal symptoms such as irritability and headaches, but you need to give your adrenal glands a break and let them restore. It will be worth it!
- Create a sleep schedule and stick to it! Ideally, we should be getting a minimum of 7 hours of good sleep each night, so if you know you have to be up at 5:00am, you are in your bed at 10:00pm, no questions! Initially, you might struggle to fall asleep, but if you try to keep a consistent schedule of going to sleep and waking up at the same times (even on the weekends!), you will likely begin to rest better, and in turn not feel so tired during the day when you're trying to deal with stressful situations (and then looking for more caffeine! Do you see the pattern here??)
- Set limits! Create time periods for the day that you specifically deal with stressful situations, and times where you DON'T! For example, if you work a job that is 9-5pm in the office, do not check your email at 9:00pm! Do you really need to stress out the rest of the night and not sleep because your “jerk of a boss” emailed you with a million tasks to complete tomorrow?! NO! You can read that email at 9:00am when you get to the office and conquer your day, but there's no need to stress about it the entire night prior.
- Meditate for 10 minutes daily, preferably at the time that you usually feel the most anxious or stressed. For me, it was early in the morning thinking about all of the classes I had to teach and how many consults I had between them. The amount of people I needed to please in a single day was overwhelming, so taking 10 minutes to concentrate on NOTHING but my breathing before I attacked a day like this was crucial (don't forget to turn off your phone and watch notifications!)
- Ask for help! Many of us tend to drown in our stress more than we need to because we don't utilize our resources. Give a task to an employee that you would normally do yourself, ask a good friend to watch your kids, talk to your husband about how overwhelmed you are feeling, and find ways to delegate family tasks. Try to communicate and verbalize the stress instead of letting it weigh you down. You are a total badass whether you do everything yourself or not! No one expects you to conquer the world on a daily basis, so don't pressure yourself to!