You’ve likely encountered the physical effects of stress at some point – sweaty palms, a racing heart, and shallow breathing. These sensations often accompany the overwhelming feeling that stress can bring. Stress is a fundamental part of our biology, tied to the “fight or flight” response that has contributed to our species’ survival. However, in the complex landscape of modern life, this innate response can pose challenges to our long-term well-being.

This article delves into the physiological aspects of stress, its impact on various bodily systems, and offers practical strategies for managing it.

Understanding the Physiology of Stress

Stress can be described as a state of imbalance or disrupted homeostasis within an organism. Essentially, we strive to maintain a stable and harmonious internal environment, but stressful events can throw this equilibrium off-kilter. The body’s stress response is regulated by the sympathetic nervous system. When faced with imminent danger, your body activates a series of physical and hormonal changes that prepare you to react. Some of these changes include:

1. Increased blood pressure and heart rate.
2. A surge in stress hormones like epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol.
3. Redirection of blood flow away from internal organs toward the muscles.
4. Increased muscle tension.
5. Suppression of immunity, digestion, and reproductive functions.

These physiological responses serve a protective function when confronting threats, as they mobilize the body’s resources to meet the demands of a dangerous or stressful situation. Unfortunately, when the source of stress is ongoing daily pressure, these responses can have a detrimental impact on your overall well-being. In such cases, the body’s stress response can end up causing more harm than the stressor itself, affecting various aspects of health.

Chronic Stress and Its Connection to Body Weight

For some individuals, chronic stress can be linked to higher body weight. Several factors contribute to this relationship. While certain stress hormones can reduce appetite, others can heighten it. Cortisol, in particular, tends to spike in the latter stages of the stress response and remains elevated during the recovery phase. This hormone stimulates hunger and a motivation to eat, as a means of replenishing calories lost while responding to a stressor. Chronic stress can also trigger the brain’s reward system, leading to cravings for highly palatable comfort foods, such as fast-digesting carbohydrates and fatty foods, which people may turn to for emotional relief rather than nutritional necessity.

Furthermore, cortisol can prompt increased fat storage, especially around the abdominal area. Visceral fat, the fat cells in the abdomen, is especially responsive to cortisol and tends to store more fat when exposed to it.

Chronic Stress and Digestive Function

Stress significantly inhibits digestion. Blood flow is diverted away from the digestive organs, digestive enzymes responsible for breaking down food decrease, and the muscular contractions of the intestines (peristalsis) are disrupted. This redirection of resources is advantageous when facing an immediate threat, but when stress becomes chronic, it disrupts the digestive system’s efficiency. Additionally, stress can lead to elevated markers of gastrointestinal inflammation and is associated with conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.

Chronic Stress and Mental Health

Prolonged stress can have a negative impact on mood, and high stress levels are linked to increased rates of depression and anxiety. Extended exposure to cortisol and other corticosteroids can contribute to feelings of anxiety and the development of depression. Elevated cortisol levels are often observed in individuals with major depression, and animals with high corticosteroid levels exhibit depressive symptoms such as poor sleep, changes in locomotion, reduced appetite, and low libido. Furthermore, individuals exposed to early-life stress are more likely to experience significant mental health challenges in adulthood.

Chronic Stress and Its Link to Disease

Inflammation is a natural part of the immune response to illness or injury, involving white blood cells, antibodies, and cytokines that defend compromised tissues. Like stress, this is beneficial in the short term. However, persistent inflammation can foster the development of most chronic diseases. Uncontrolled stress can incite or perpetuate systemic inflammation, and research indicates that stress is a common risk factor in 75 to 90% of modern diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, liver disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.

The Positive Aspects of Stress

While stress may appear inherently negative, it can also have positive effects. Stress can enhance cognition, motivation, memory, creativity, vigilance, and perseverance. Moreover, how we perceive a stressor significantly influences its impact on us. Viewing a stressor as a “challenge” rather than a “threat” results in better physical and psychological outcomes. Our attitudes and beliefs about stress, known as stress mindsets, can alter our behavioral and psychological responses to stress, ultimately affecting our long-term outcomes. For instance, a study examining perceived stress and depression in college students found that those with a higher perception of stress were more likely to experience depression.

To objectively assess the effect of mindset on the physiological stress response, researchers conducted an experiment involving a mock interview and measured two stress hormones: cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). As previously mentioned, cortisol is associated with some of the negative effects of chronic stress, while DHEA has positive effects on health. Participants were randomly assigned to watch either a “stress is enhancing” or “stress is debilitating” video before their mock interviews. The “stress is enhancing” group exhibited a significantly greater increase in DHEA levels, which is linked to improved health outcomes in response to stress, compared to the “stress is debilitating” group.

Stress is an inevitable part of life. When left unmanaged, its physiological impact can be detrimental to health. However, your mindset can transform your stress response, allowing it to enhance creativity, motivation, and perseverance, ultimately making you more resilient in the face of future stressors.

Original Article written by Kelsey Graham –  Ace Fitness

Have you decided that it’s time to make a change but aren’t sure how to get started? Or have you already set more goals for yourself than you care to admit-but keep failing to reach them? 

It’s time for a new way of thinking. 

No matter how big or small your goal-whether it’s losing 5 or 50 pounds, walking a mile or running your first marathon-making change requires planning and SMART goal setting. 

Follow these guidelines to setting SMART goals and you will be surprised at what you can do:

1. Specific. Your goal should be clear and easy to understand. 
   • A common goal, “get healthy,” is too general. There are so many ways to get healthy. How do you want to do it? Is it losing weight? Start exercising? Stop smoking? Break it down and it will be easier to manage.
   • Let’s pick weight loss and make a SMART goal out of it together. For example, “I will lose weight.”
2. Measurable. A goal to “lose weight” is not enough. How will you track your progress and how you will know when you have reached your goal? Making your goal measurable means adding a number.
3. Attainable. Before you can add a number, you have to know how high or low you want to go. It’s good to ‘shoot for the stars’, but don’t be too extreme. Likewise, a goal that is too easy is also not very motivating. Only you know your limits. 
   • Let’s take our goal above. What percentage is attainable for you? Research suggests that a 5-10% weight loss is attainable for most overweight people. 
   • A measurable, attainable goal could be, “I will lose 7% of my body weight.” 
4. Relevant. Set goals that are important to where you are in your life right now. Don’t set a goal that someone else is pressuring you to attain-that isn’t very motivating.
   • Examine our goal so far. Does it seem relevant to you? If so, let’s keep going. If you are not concerned about weight loss or this is not a good time in your life to focus on that, choose something that IS motivating to you. 
5. Time-bound. Include an end-point. Knowing that you have a deadline motivates you to get started. 
   • Since healthy weight loss is about 1-2 pounds per week, set your deadline accordingly. For our example we can use 3 months. “I will lose 7% of my body weight in 3 months.”

Now we have a SMART goal! With a goal like this, it’s a good idea to set a few more action-oriented SMART goals so that you have a game plan. Here are a few examples:

• I will walk 5 days every week for 30 minutes each. 
• I will drink water instead of soda every day this week. 
• I will bring my lunch to work instead of eating out 4 days this week. 

Becoming a better version of you starts by being SMART!

See original blog here

When it comes to kids and strength training, parents often want to know at what age their children should start lifting weights.

Urban legends of stunted growth, fractured growth plates and prematurely inflated physiques have made many parents understandably hesitant when it comes to involving prepubescent kids in resistance-training programs.

Tall tales and fear-mongering aside, the best answer to the “How old?” question may surprise you.

While there is currently no scientific evidence to suggest that there is a perfect chronological age to start weight training, “freshman year” (of high school) seems to be the widely accepted safe zone to begin training. This is not unfounded, as it represents a developmental milestone right in the middle of puberty. During this time, muscle, strength and performance gains from resistance training can be optimized.

Peer-reviewed research, however, has yet to report any negative health consequences from resistance training in children as young as 5 years, assuming proper movement and progression is introduced under experienced supervision. It appears an overwhelming majority of youth resistance-training injuries are primarily due to equipment accidents (e.g., weight falling on them and tripping in the weight room) or overzealous coaching that ignores proper program introduction and progression. Furthermore, concerns about abnormal body morphology (getting too big) prior to puberty are unfounded due to the minimal amount of natural anabolic hormone available in a child’s body.

In actuality, it appears that prepubescent children involved in a supervised, progressive resistance-training program experience improved fitness, favorable effects on bone density, improved movement ability and a reduced incidence of athletic injuries.

Before visions of 5-year-olds hoisting heavy barbells above their heads keep you up at night, it’s important to understand that weight training is another word for resistance training. Resistance to movement can come in many forms. Gravity, heavy backpacks, stretch bands, dumbbells and other implements can add resistance to a movement, making it more challenging. When an increased amount of muscular force is required to move (due to resistance), the body gets stronger. When this happens regularly and strategically it’s resistance training.

While most parents would be O.K. with their children carrying a 5-pound backpack as they run off to school, the idea of their children holding a 5-pound dumbbell while performing a squat may set off the “danger” alarm. In both scenarios, the external weight merely represents an increased amount of resistance to movement. Either type of resistance can function to make the muscles associated with a movement stronger.

To reap the benefits and minimize any risk with a resistance training program for kids, consider the following four questions to determine if a child is ready to benefit from resistance training:

1. Can the child perform movements such as squats, lunges, push-ups and pull-ups (horizontal and/or vertical) correctly with his or her own body weight? If not, adding additional load (e.g., speed, resistance) to a dysfunctional movement pattern makes little sense. If the child can perform these movements easily and repeatedly, adding small amounts of resistance keeps the body adapting and getting stronger.

It’s important to consider, however, that many children struggle with strength-to-weight ratio during body-weight exercises. Take the push-up, for example. A child with an elevated body weight in comparison to his or her level of strength may not be able to perform this exercise. Instead, doing a bench press movement with dumbbells allows for strength gains without using body weight. Some weight-training equipment functions to create sub-bodyweight resistance. For children who struggle with bodyweight exercises, these may be a better first choice.

2. Does the child have the intrinsic focus, attention span and desire to learn the proper way to resistance train? Supportive parents and great coaching combined with an uninterested/unfocused child are still a poor match. Safety during resistance training depends on a child’s ability to understand and respond to coaching.

3. Is the environment the child will be training in safe, supportive and positive? It’s important that a training environment for kids caters to a wide range of skills, sizes and general level of awareness. A crowded gym with people, weights, medicine balls or other implements in motion can prove extremely dangerous for young children. Additionally, adult-sized equipment may not be appropriate for small bodies. If the culture of a gym or training area is intimidating or otherwise negative to a child, it could turn him or her away from exercise for a long time.

4. Is the person in charge of the child’s program experienced and knowledgeable about the intricacies of youth physical and cognitive development?

If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, your child will receive little benefit from an organized weight-training program. Rather, his or her risk of injury will be significantly elevated.

In this case, focus on keeping your child active with things he or she enjoys. Kids don’t have to “train” to be fit and healthy. However, if and when they express an interest in lifting weights, a proper resistance-training program is a safe and effective way to improve fitness and performance.

AUTHOR

Brett Klika

acefitness.org