Happy Monday everyone 🙂 I’ve mixed #MotivationalMonday into my blog post about chronic stress, the importance of knowing about chronic stress, and my thoughts on it. Please give it a read! For me, this is an important message to bring to light as I’ve recently learned more of how my body personally reacts to stress. I am not a doctor, but I have always studied the brain, am a believer that everything starts from there and believe in living a healthy lifestyle – mind, body and soul. 

Allot of us can relate to being stressed. There are different kinds of stress and many effects of it. Learning how to manage stress is very important. Many live their day-to-day lives experiencing chronic stress and don’t know how to change it. Chronic stress is proven to increase the risk of developing certain illnesses. It affects the whole body.

It’s a good idea to pay attention to your stress levels, what negative situations you dwell on, what things you’re complaining about, and if you being stressed is affecting your relationships with the ones you love. Many people who are extremely busy all the time can find it impossible to change – or they believe that it’s good to always be busy. Running like a machine is not necessarily good. You can easily forget to look after yourself. There is a difference between being BUSY and being PRODUCTIVE. Being busy to the point you ignore signs your body is giving you, putting off seeing the doctor, put your health and happiness after everything else or neglect the ones close to you is never a good idea. That’s not being productive.

When you experience stress your body kicks into defense mode. Its response is to go into “fight or flight” mode because it’s trying to survive this stress. Your Amygdala, the part of your brain that’s function is to detect fear, prepare for emergencies, and contributes to emotional processing, sends signals to your Hypothalamus, the part of your brain that’s considered the command center. Your Hypothalamus communicates with the rest of your body via your nervous system. When under stress your nervous system will flood your body with the stress hormone, cortisol. Elevated cortisol levels are proven to result in increasing sugar into the bloodstream, lower your immune system function, increase weight gain, increase risk of heart disease – to just name a few. Another thing to remember is that when you are constantly stressed your whole body can go out of whack. Some say this can mean anything you may be genetically predisposed to can occur much easier as your immune system is down and your body is not functioning at the strongest and healthiest level it normally would. For example: someone who is genetically predisposed to getting kidney stones, ulcers or heart attacks – if living with chronic stress, can increase the risk of developing these health issues if they don’t change their lifestyle.

E! News Entertainment Reporter, Maria Menounos, and professionals she’s seen have openly expressed they believe her recently diagnosed brain tumor was due to chronic stress. Luckily, her brain tumor turned out to be benign and she has successfully recovered from her surgery. But on top of mastering the Hollywood hustle lifestyle, dealing with the bullying in her industry, working on many jobs at once, monitoring her father’s diabetes, making sure her parents are always comfortable and working like a machine, she found out her mother had brain cancer. 8 months later, Maria was diagnosed with her brain tumor. Some will definitely say her brain tumor had nothing to do with her busy lifestyle, but she admits that there were many signs her body was giving her that she ignored because she was simply just “too busy to care for her own health.” This is just one example of a name we know who had chronic stress.

I strongly believe that when a health issue arrises, it’s an opportunity to change something. If you’re at that point then something’s gotta change because obviously the way things were was not working well for you! Even if it’s a serious health issue, making positive changes can only help your situation. 

With any kind of stress the more you are paying focus to negativity, as Motivational Speaker, Chris Lee would say, “the more of your power you are giving away.” I completely believe this and whenever I catch myself now dwelling on something negative it’s one of the main reminders I give myself. 

We don’t want to get so wound up in things or situations in life where we become a human “doing” instead of a human “being.” It’s so important to care for yourself as well. So take some time off if you can. Go to the doctor if your body has been sending you signals to. Stop dwelling on negative things you cannot change, instead find a positive opportunity that could come of it. Eat healthier and go exercise. Small changes like this over time can contribute to healthier habits for your body and mind and help you live a healthier lifestyle. To enjoy life and all that it has to offer, you have to be around! 

“Health is a precious asset that we don’t recognize and appreciate until it has depleted. Don’t wait till then.”

❤

Photo credits: BSGStudio/all-free-download.com, kontrolmag.com, health.com