How is stress related to nutrition - and what should we do about it?

There are two main kinds of activity: sympathetic (i.e., “fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (i.e., “rest and digest”). 

Some amount of stress - and sympathetic activity - is good for us. If there is a threat to our loved one’s well-being, for example, stress can help us spring into action. Stress about our grad school entrance exam is what causes us to study and do well on the test. It helps us stretch to reach our goals, or to prioritize our safety and well being. But too much stress over the long run causes a lot of negative effects.

These days, most of us get plenty of sympathetic activity; and too much of it causes our adrenal glands are pumping high levels of cortisol and adrenaline - which gets in the way of “non-critical” (but still very important) processes like digestion, immune function, liver metabolism/detoxification, and even reproduction. Stress impacts our hormone levels too: when we’re stressed, ghrelin (hunger hormone) rises, leptin (satiety hormone) drops, and metabolism slows.

As a result of these processes, we may experience:

• Digestive issues (including heartburn, bloating, gas, stomach pain)

• GI tract dysfunction (inhibiting your body’s ability to absorb the vitamins and minerals from food)

• Inflammation

• Reduced metabolism

• Reduced blood sugar management & insulin resistance

• Decreased sleep quality

• Negative impacts on mood and energy

• Muscle loss / fat gain (as a result of all the compounding factors above)

So while stress certainly has a mental and emotional impact on us, its impact on us is physical as well - and it’s absolutely related to our nutrition.

To help balance this out, we can reduce our sympathetic activity - occurrences of that “fight or flight” response. While important, that’s admittedly hard for most of us. So another strategy is to increase our parasympathetic activity, engaging in more activities that promote that “rest and digest” state. What that looks like might be different for each of us.

Some activities that may help you promote the parasympathetic state:

• Yoga, pilates, and/or stretching

• Taking a walk

• Meditation/mindfulness

• Breathing exercises

• Unplugging from phones/other devices

• Reading

• Taking a bath

You get the idea.

The actual activity doesn’t matter - just so long as you get yourself into the right state. But notice that “taking a week-long vacation” didn’t make the list. It’s not because vacations aren’t awesome - they are! It’s because true “rest” doesn’t come with an overly programmed vacation one or two times per year (if we’re lucky). Rather, rest is the incorporation of daily recovery time.

Let’s take action: what’s one stress-reducing activity that you can implement TODAY?

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