Continuing on with the current STRESS theme, today being PART 3 we now
look at the NERVOUS SYSTEM.
it’s part in managing stress & how some
key hormones are simply messages from the nervous system & what it is
sensing & how that can play havic with health & physique goals.
The nervous system is a combination of two systems that work together.
1. The Peripheral Nervous System controls conscious movement.
2. The Central Nervous System which contains the Autonomic
Nervous System basically manages everything that does not require
conscious thought like lymphatic flow, blood pressure & nutrient
aborption to name just a few.
The ANS is further split into two systems.
Either rest & digest or fight & flea.
Basically either high or low stress systems.
The fight or flea system was perfect back in the day when there was
very brief bowts of immediate danger to escape, it still plays a great
role in elevating performance capabilities in the gym.
This system in the modern world becomes a very inefficient system when
there is no physical requirment to overcome the current stressor, as
an example sitting in traffic, financial pressure, emotional worry or
technology problems.
When this SNS is activated which is almost 24/7 these days, stress
hormones are released to elevate heart rate & blood pressure, when
stress hormones are released stored nutrients flood the blood stream
to support what would normally be a increase in physical demand
situation.
Because there is often no physical “flea” aspect to the problem we can
often be left with a lot of negative health outcomes from that if this
is happening too often.
This can create the cortisol & insulin see-saw in blood sugar.
STRESS-Cortisol increases-blood glucose elevates to assit, because of
the lack of physical demand-insulin has to step in to rebalance high
blood sugar often over shooting & because of the high paced modern
world we now live in the cycle will soon start again.
This causes dips in mood, energy, motivation, poor food choices & sugar cravings.
This cycle can often be a chronic, pretty much continual issiue wraped
up in poor sleep, 60+ hour work weeks, caffiene, over exercising, poor
nutritional quality & not enough down time.
Why am I telling you this?
Because this is why STRESS management can often play such a
significant role in either a succesful or not so succesful
transformantion in either health related or physique goals.
STRESS plays a strong indirect role in pretty much everything we do,
feel, think & the way we look.
I am a strong believer that if we manage our stress we manage our life
in more ways than one 🙂
PEACE