Stress is what you feel like when life’s demands exceed your ability to meet those demands.
Stress is an epidemic in the US. Did you know the top ten drugs prescribed are for a stress-related disease?
This includes things like diabetes, anxiety, depression, insomnia, heartburn, high blood pressure, and immune suppression.
If you always feel rushed, depressed, fatigued, have low sex drive, can’t concentrate, and have abdominal weight gain, there’s a good chance you have elevated cortisol which over time will literally make you fat and dumb as it increases hunger hormones and leads to brain cell death.
Western medicine was slow to catch on to the fact that mental issues such as stress can impact the body, (though the ancients regularly spoke of this) but is catching up, thankfully.
An emerging field of study exploring the interplay of how what we think (psycho) is linked to the nervous system (neuro) and how this is translated into nerve impulses which in term impacts the hormonal system (endocrine) is called psychoneuroendocrinology.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing more on this and solutions to the problem of chronic stress and its attendant health issues.