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Stress & Nuts 

We all know about stress. Everyday something happens in your life that seems stressful. You can find an entire day, week or year consumed by stress. Are you driven mad by NUTS?


Beyond being a huge glutton of our mental time, stress is really unhealthy.

Does stress impact how we age too?

Science and studies seem to indicate it does.
“Chronic stress accelerates premature aging by shortening DNA telomeres.
Telomere length is a marker of both biological and cellular aging. Stressful life experiences in childhood and adulthood have previously been linked to accelerated telomere shortening. Shortened telomeres have been associated with chronic diseases and premature death in previous studies by Dr. Owen Wolkowitz and colleagues at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).(1)

Is All Stress Created Equal?

No, there are physical and emotional stressors and they impact you differently. Their are also instances were we self impose stress on ourself.

“Like most psychological theories, it’s gone through a few changes over the years. Experts had long believed that the Zeigarnik effect was the brain’s way of prompting its owner to finish a task, nagging the mind to wrap up what had been started. But recent research has found that the Zeigarnik effect is a little more specific than that.
“(The) unconscious is asking the conscious mind to make a plan,” write Roy Baumeister and John Tierney in Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. “The unconscious mind apparently can’t do this on its own, so it nags the conscious mind to make a plan with specifics like time, place, and opportunity. Once the plan is formed, the unconscious can stop nagging the conscious mind with reminders.”
Sounds great, right? It’s like a built-in to-do-list, no iPhone note required. But here’s the thing: That constant mental nagging can seriously drain you after a while.”(2)

To Recap “stress comes in two basic flavors, physical and emotional — and both can be especially taxing for older people. The impacts of physical stress are clear. As people reach old age, wounds heal more slowly and colds become harder to shake. A 75-year-old heart can be slow to respond to the demands of exercise. And when an 80-year-old walks into a chilly room, it will take an extra-long time for her body temperature to adjust.

Emotional stress is more subtle, but if it’s chronic, the eventual consequences can be as harmful. At any age, stressed-out brains sound an alarm that releases potentially harmful hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Ideally, the brain turns down the alarm when stress hormones get too high.
Stress hormones provide energy and focus in the short term, but too much stress over too many years can throw a person’s system off-balance. Overloads of stress hormones have been linked to many health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, and weakened immune function. For older people already at heightened risk for these illnesses, managing stress is particularly important.

Over time, the brain can slowly lose its skills at regulating hormone levels. As a result, older people who feel worried or anxious tend to produce larger amounts of stress hormones, and the alarm doesn’t shut down as quickly. According to a study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, women are especially susceptible to an overload of stress hormones as they age. The study found that the impact of age on cortisol levels is nearly three times stronger for women than for men.

The flow of stress hormones can be especially hard on older brains in general. According to a report from the University of California at San Francisco, extra cortisol over the years can damage the hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s crucial for storing and retrieving memories. Several studies have found that high cortisol goes hand in hand with poor memory, so we might be able to chalk up certain “senior moments” to stress.”(3)

How Can We Combat Stress?

Some studies indicate that having multiple major life events in a year can create advanced aging. So in a case like mine where a parent passed, sick spouse and selling a home does that mean I will age faster?

I don’t think anyone can tell you for sure as aging is associated with many factors like genetics, environment and balanced lifestyle.

You can offset some of the detrimental effects of stress with the help of friends, family, strong support networks, and strategies for coping with stress.

Reduce your NUTS!!

Yes, humor is great for reducing stress so hopefully your smiling now. Nagging Unfinished Tasks (NUT) are all the unfinished things we perceive or think about that just rent space on our brain and have an impact on our stress level.

“Dr. Oz says they are “often very simple to fix but if you never get around to them, NUTs create a subtle underlying angst that can undermine your health.” Author Jack Canfield calls them “messes and incompletes” and says they “rob us of valuable attention units”.
This variety, these Nagging Unfinished Tasks, are most definitely NOT good for us. They cause not only mental stress, but eventual physical stress. Who needs ‘em?!

Well, unfortunately, I bet we all got ‘em. Those hanger-on projects, tasks, and to-do’s that just seem to never go away. They are those uninteresting, challenging, boring, tedious little things we simply don’t want to do.

So how to handle them and move on to and make room for the things we DO want to do?

Here are some ideas:
Use a simple time management principle: “Do it, Delegate it, Delay it, or Dump it”. The moment you’ve got a task in mind to add to your to-do’s, make a decision on what to do with it… right then and there. Maybe it doesn’t even need to go on the list.(4)

Have stress-reducing techniques on hand. Try meditation, humor or exercise. I love taking a drive and listening to music or going for a great foot massage. Find your comfort zone – a place, person or activity that brings you comfort.

Age well – stress less!!

For more guidance on fitness visit: Lifefit.life

For more information on healthy and balanced lifestyles visit: sottopellelifestyle.com

If you just want to have fun and learn about cool people and topics listen to us on Adventures in Aging on iTunes.

(1)https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201404/emotional-distress-can-speed-cellular-aging
(2) https://advice.shinetext.com/articles/the-zeigarnik-effect-is-your-best-new-motivation-hack/
(3)https://consumer.healthday.com/encyclopedia/aging-1/age-health-news-7/aging-and-stress-645997.html
(4)http://www.debbielousberg.com/soapbox-blog/nuts/

It’s Not the Holidays – it’s My Hormones!

Many people are negatively affected by hormonal imbalances. When you add stress to that imbalance, it can often cause chaos on our bodies, mind, and life. Holidays are known to present stress to people for many reasons.  Stress tolerance and how we react to it varies with each person.  Men and women often deal with stress very differently.  It could be concerns on money and holiday spending, or missing lost loved ones, and just overwhelming demands on your energy and time.  Some people who are already hormonally imbalanced will worsen during the holidays and make this time incredibly difficult for themselves and family.

” ‘Stress’ may be defined as any situation which tends to disturb the equilibrium between a living organism and its environment. In day-to-day life there are many stressful situations such as stress of work pressure, examinations, psychosocial stress and physical stresses due to trauma, surgery and various medical disorders.” (1)

Even if you’re not already hormonally imbalanced, undue stress can trigger an issue or imbalance.

“In response to stress, the level of various hormones changes. Reactions to stress are associated with enhanced secretion of a number of hormones including glucocorticoids, catecholamines, growth hormone and prolactin, the effect of which is to increase mobilization of energy sources and adapt the individual to its new circumstance.”(2)

Our body goes into a flight or fight mode with stress. This is not conducive for festive holiday gatherings.

“In a healthy body, once the stress has passed and Cortisol levels decrease, the hypothalamus signals to the pituitary and adrenals to stop hormone production. But this doesn’t happen when chronic stress is involved.  It becomes a loop of continual release of all the stress hormones. The result is dysfunction in the HPA axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal).  When levels of these hormones, particularly Cortisol, remain elevated in the body, specific symptoms will begin to occur.” (3)

The response in someone who is not healthy or already has hormonal imbalance due to menopause or andropause may result in my many uncomfortable symptoms.

Symptoms of Hormonal Imbalance

If you have been told that your hormone levels are within a normal range, the following signs may be indicative of a potential hormonal war:

  1.     fatigue
  2.     mood instability
  3.     weight gain
  4.     “foggy brain” or memory loss
  5.     adult acne
  6.     hair loss or excessive facial hair growth
  7.     lower sex drive
  8.     extreme PMS

These symptoms can reduce quality of life and increase chances of secondary healthy concerns if you don’t regain hormonal balance. There are solutions, however, and you don’t have to acquiesce to a lower quality of life. If you suspect that you might suffer from a hormonal imbalance, the first step is to consult with a medical professional.” (4)

Sometimes you find yourself second guessing or making excuses for not feeling as you should. The holidays bring on a lot of pleasure but also stress. If you feel as if you’re not yourself, or you have any of these symptoms, contact us today so we can help get your holiday and life back on track for the new year.

https://vimeo.com/371489730

Sources: 

(1)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3079864/
(2) ibid\
(3) https://www.functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/8-signs-stress-causing-hormonal-imbalance/\
(4)https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/201807/is-hormonal-imbalance-making-you-crazy-moody-or-overweight