Stressed

Fight and Flight or Rest and Digest? What if how we eat has more to do with digestion issues than what we eat? If you are eating on the run, gulping things down, thinking about the million things you need to do while eating, eating while working, not eating then stuffing yourself, scared to eat, hate to eat, etc etc, your millions of motor complexes and hormones, gut neurotransmitters, enzymes and everything that goes with digestion are not going to be able to work efficiently.  We live in an information age, we work very hard but not in the ways our ancestors worked--with their hands and their backs--we work with our minds. The stress we encounter every day puts strain on our system, instead of being threatened once in a while by enemies, predators, or accidents that put a body's sympathetic nervous system on alert and creates a "fight or flight" response that produces cortizone, cortisol, and adrenaline not conducive to digestion, we experience stress multiple times a day in smaller amounts but which creates the same kind of response, which creates havoc on the digestion system. It's like death by a million cuts.

How can we get back to rest and digest in a modern world?  A home cooked meal where we sit down and savor the food is a luxury. It's no wonder everyone is addicted to sugar, it produces the quickest pleasurable response, its our modern way of enjoying eating. When do you eat? Do you sit down? Do you chew your food so your stomach can get ready to produce the proper amounts of acid and bicarbonate, so it can get food to the right pH to trigger the appropriate enzymes? Do you think about what you are eating or what you need to do in the next 5 minutes?  Is the body in a state where it can move things through in order or is it worked up and sporadically firing here and there throughout the digestive track?

I have a hard time with this, as you know I'm by nature impatient and claim to be smart and anxious, so getting myself int he proper Zen mode to eat is tricky.  After a long week of stimulating my mind for work 20 hours, keeping track of kids' schedules and responsibilities, meeting my own schedule demands and responsibilities, trying to find the right balance between stress and rest is tricky. By Friday my mind is pretty worked up and sleep is difficult to maintain and my stomach churns all night long. So I take a day to rest and reset my adrenals, which helps and my stomach feels much better and I sleep like a baby. Oh how I wish we could have rest days every day!  Would I even have digestion issues at all if I could stay calm at all times?  Even the act of writing this post I feel my stomach clenching as I work my mind to create the words to articulate my thoughts. I am going back and forth between this and uploading a video on youtube of my son's gym meet, so I'm double tasking besides. My stomach is growling because I need to eat breakfast, yet I have set my mind to working before I have eaten which will make it harder to rest and digest.

But if I don't stay vigilant, am I being slothful? We need to work to survive, and I live in a world where stress and work are usually yoked together, in my experience they certainly are.  Can I break that yoke and work hard but not stress? Or what if stress isn't necessarily a bad thing?  Is there a way to be stressed and be ok at the same time?  Dr. Kent seems to think so, he said the following:

"Stress is not always negative. It is part of our general adaptation syndrome: the classic stress response, when we feel a threat our body goes into defensive mode.

Every living being has a certain amount of adaptation vitality, energy and designed to respond to stress, non-living things are non-living because they don't have a nervous system with the ability to adapt, living beings can adapt. Complete absence of stress is not compatible with life, saying “I want to eliminate stress in my life” is really a shame because the only time you are going to eliminate stress in your life is the day you die. If you are alive you are adapting to stress and that’s the essence of life and the human experience.

Positive stress is what we seek as human beings--competing at an athletic event, falling in love, excelling in your life’s purpose--those are all stressful, all require adaptation to change, but they bring exhilaration and growth. Why do people jump out of airplanes for a rush? Gong to movies that make them cry? Stand up and sing in front of people? We want to expand the scope of the human experience.

Problems occur when your body and mind misinterpret and opportunity for growth as a threat. The reason we have stress response that causes the heart to beat faster and muscles to tighten, flight or fight, is because of prehistoric days, but today that fearful response (what is seen to the mind and body as a threat) is often inappropriate. You don’t need this response when someone criticizes you, or your overwhelmed with the amount of work you are facing. These situations will not kill you! These aren’t threats, they are opportunities for growth. If your body perceives them as such they will do the appropriate thing to adapt and experience growth.  In order to do that you need a nervous system that is free from interference.

What interference? The nervous system the master system of the body causes you to adapt to all of these challenges, allows you to thrive survive and to grow.  A cell cannot be in growth and defense at the same time. Can’t happen. If that’s true, then a human being can’t be in growth and defense at the same time, a family can’t, a society can’t, and therefore what we seek to do is to get people out of defense and into growth by allowing their bodies to get an accurate perception of what is going on in the world and allow them to adapt. Our bodies haven’t had enough time to catch up with technology. Still have flight fight response, but the body have a lot of things going for it to allow us to adapt i.e. spirituality, therapy, health care, etc. Today we are subjected to forms of physical stress (cars, airplanes, deadlines) potential to overload the system, when that happens its possible that a vertebral subluxation occurs. A blown fuse. One of the bones in the spine can misalign can interfere with function of the nerves, pain in neck and back. More than a spinal problem, a health problem, communication system in body—nervous system—being interfered with.  Pain that triggers hormones design to adapt and you fire them over and over bad things happen, you need to interrupt that pattern. State of mind plays a role in the process."

                      
Christopher Kent, DC, JD STRESS: GOOD AND BAD

There are a myriad of problems that can occur when the system is overloaded, if your genetic weak link is vertebral subluxation then you will have back problems. If you have problems with thyroid, blood sugar regulation, headaches, depression, whatever your weak link is will be negatively affected if you are in defense mode or having negative stress.  Interfere, get out of that pattern, challenge your assumptions, change your state of mind, and above all FEAR NOT!

Fear not, though the enemy deride;

Courage, for the Lord is on our side.

We will heed not what the wicked may say,

But the Lord alone we will obey.

                     Let us All Press On

Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,

For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.

I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,

Upheld by my righteous, upheld by my righteous,

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

                     How Firm a Foundation

I will not doubt, I will not fear;

God's love and strength are always near.

His promised gift helps me to find

An inner strength and peace of mind.

I give the Father willingly

My trust, my prayers, humility.

His Spirit guides; his love assures

That fear departs when faith endures.

                   When Faith Endures