Let’s Talk about Stress

Stress is something everyone experiences. It comes up naturally in our work life, in relationships, and in various hardships and emergencies. It can be caused by our thoughts, emotional or physical traumas, chemicals and toxic agents, unhealthy habits- and in so many other ways. Stress can be short or long term, and everyone responds to- and is affected by, different stressors in different ways based on various factors. Our nervous system is wired to handle short bursts of stress if resolved quickly- our bodies are primitively wired to respond efficiently, as our survival once depended on it. But unresolved stressors over time add up and some become chronic- eventually leading to a substantial decline in overall health, balance, and vitality. Chronic stressors have a negative impact on all of us, depending on our own resilience, life experiences, baseline health, lifestyle habits, genes- microbial exposures, and so on. Stressors cause our bodies to compensate in order to maintain equilibrium, often causing symptoms. The symptoms we often develop as a result of many chronic stressors are clues that something’s off. Stress can be obvious- many external stressors are. Stress can also be hidden internally (a bacterial gut infection, H.pylori is a great example, but there are countless types of hidden stressors) -these silently cause or contribute to metabolic dysfunction and loss of homeostasis. Over time, chronic stressors can cause catastrophic imbalances that are usually multidimensional- involving many bodily systems. It can become impossible to ever know where, when, and how these imbalances- and eventually diseases actually began.