We are more ‘stressed out’ now than ever before in human history. And the reality is it is only getting worse. You can’t run from stress and you can’t hide from it either. And, given the nature of stress, trying to manage it is a recipe for failure.  The American Psychological Association refers to Stress in America as a National Mental Health Crisis.

The cause of the impact of stress lies in how our nervous systems are wired. We evolved during simpler times when there were real and regular threats to our survival. These threats triggered a response in our nervous system to mobilize all resources for a possible fight for survival. Make sure to download my Ultimate Stress Reduction Guide.

Stress ‘Treatment’ Really Isn’t About Treating Stress

How can a Stress Treatment Program be successful if it doesn’t treat stress? My experience is that it can only be successful if it doesn’t try to treat stress. What is a treatment program that addresses stress if it’s not treating stress? It is about transforming how you respond to stress and your experience of stress!

To understand why successfully overcoming stress is not about treating stress you must first understand the basics of stress and how it impacts you. Then we can craft a plan that will transform your experience of stress. 

Stress isn’t something that happens to you. Stress is much more about how your brain and nervous system responds to events, situations, and demands of your life. To understand this we need to take a short detour in human history. The human body is programmed for one thing above all else, and that is survival. It wasn’t that long ago in human history that we regularly encountered threats to our very survival. In these situations our nervous system mobilized all resources to ensure our survival. After all nothing else is going to do you any good if you don’t live another day. These days the threats are few and far between.

The problem is that modern life is filled with stimuli that our nervous system responds to as though it were a threat. Our nervous system mobilizes resources in response to any real or perceived threat. The key is that our nervous system responds to any perceived threat just as though it were a real threat. The challenge is that modern life is filled with stimuli that our nervous system perceives as a potential threat.

From ‘Fight-or-Flight’ to Sick and Tired

Stress signals trigger our Sympathetic ‘fight-or-flight’ Nervous System to take resources away from health functions and redirect them to survival. This results in a number of responses like:

• Increased stress hormone Cortisol
• Increased blood glucose
• Increased muscle tension
• Increased heart rate and blood pressure
• Increased breathing rate
• Decreased sleep
• Decreased digestion
• Decreased recovery and healing

Everything is directed to ensure that you survive to live another day. The problem is that what is good for survival today is not necessarily good for living healthy. Looking at the partial list above it is easy to recognize the origins of many chronic degenerative diseases of modern life like:

• Type 2 Diabetes
• Hypertension
• Heart Disease
• Inflammatory Bowel Disease
• Cognitive Deficits like Dementia
• Anxiety and Depression

My Discoveries About Stress

They say that most advances and realizations are born from challenge and struggle. About 10 years ago I experienced an extremely challenging and stressful period in my life. Despite my healthy lifestyle and habits, my experience of this intense time of stress was debilitating. This led me on an exploration of what stress is, how exactly it impacts our bodies, and most importantly how to change that experience.

I knew from my personal experience and that of thousands of patients over the years that avoiding stress was a failed strategy. I looked to my foundation of chiropractic care first to explore how I might change it to be even more effective. I also looked both to ancient practices that have been used for thousands of years as well as modern research, biohacking and even the special forces of the military.

I started utilizing these strategies in my personal life. I kept only those that were easy to implement and that over time worked consistently. And, over a period of months I experienced a profound shift in how I experience stress. And, I’d like to share this approach with you.

When it Comes to Stress, It’s About Your Nervous System

How you experience stress and the degree to which stress adversely impacts your well being and your health all comes down to your nervous system. The primary portion of your nervous system that processes stress is the Autonomic Nervous System. This system is divided into 2 primary divisions with very different functions.

One division is tasked with survival and is commonly referred to as the ‘Fight-or-Flight’ system. This is the Sympathetic Nervous System. The problem is that the actions of the Sympathetic system support survival but when repeatedly activated it creates an environment that supports pain, tension, illness, and fatigue.

The other half of the Autonomic Nervous System is the Parasympathetic system, primarily the Vagus Nerve. The Vagus Nerve is your foundation for wellness. It supports all the functions that help your body function, repair, and heal. 

A successful stress program must focus primarily on restoring balance to the autonomic nervous system. Chronic stress is a condition of increased sympathetic activity and lowered vagal activity. Let’s explore how to accomplish this….

The 6 Critical Legs to Transforming Stres

If you are experiencing the effects and symptoms of stress it is a given that this is the result of chronic stress over months and likely years. The goal is to retrain your nervous system to respond to stress much differently than it has.

Critical Leg #1: Understanding that Transforming Stress is a Process. Your body is incredibly resilient and it has taken you many years to get to the point where you are now. Changing this is akin to reversing directions of an ocean tanker. First, you have to slow the tanker to a stop. Then, you have to turn it around. Only then can you increase the speed.  In the beginning you will be interrupting the established patterns in your nervous system that are responsible for how you experience stress and the symptoms it produces. Over time you will shift these patterns and replace them with patterns that allow you to navigate the stress of life with greater ease. This is a process and all processes take time. 

Critical Leg #2: Correct tension and interference to the Vagus Nerve and reduce tension to the central nervous system. As I’ve mentioned, stress is experienced through your nervous system. If you are carrying tension that is irritating your nervous system you have a source of stress inside your body that needs to be corrected. The most critical areas of your nervous system where this tension builds up is in the cervical spine and pelvis. These are the areas where the covering of your spinal cord is tethered to the spine. Any imbalance transmits increased tension to the nervous system.  My focus is on releasing this tension to allow the nervous system to function with more ease. 

Critical Leg #3: Stop Consuming Excess Stimulants and Sedatives. Long term stress interferes with rest, sleep, recovery and healing. It’s natural to self-medicate in order to relieve some of the discomfort. Most people suffering from chronic stress will use caffeine to boost their energy early in the day and often resort to alcohol or cannabis as a sedative later in the day. All of these only exacerbate the problem. Caffeine stimulates the already over worked Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis worsening the impact of stress. Sedatives might seem to help you sleep but they rob you of the restorative deep phase of sleep.

Critical Leg #4: Learn how to breathe to promote ease and reduce activation of the Fight-or-Flight system. Most people under stress breathe from their upper chest, shoulders, and neck. Stand in front of your bathroom mirror and take a breath and observe where you see movement. Your chest, shoulders, and the muscles of your neck should not move.  The solution to this is to:

• Close your mouth and breathe slowly in and out through your nose
• Learn to breathe using your diaphragm. We call this diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing. 

By slowing your breathing down you are sending a message of safety to your nervous system.

Critical Leg #5: Learn and practice some conscious breathwork practices. Breathing is a unique function of the body. It continues 24/7 without your conscious involvement. And, it is a function you can easily modify. It turns out that the mechanics of breathing, the rate, and the volume of breath have a profound impact on the autonomic nervous system. Breathwork is a core strategy I use to rewire the Vagus Nerve for greater tone.

Critical Leg #6: One of the biggest interruptions that chronic stress causes is a disruption to the quality and duration of sleep. Sleep is critical to both your mental and physical well-being. Deep sleep activates the Glymphatic System to clean the brain of waste and toxins. Sleep aids as well as alcohol and cannabis interfere with your ability to achieve the deep sleep phase. You must make sleep a priority. Some of the considerations you should make are:

• Have a regular consistent time you go to sleep
• Sleep in a dark room without electronics
• Avoid bright screens and stimulating content for a few hours before sleep
• Stop eating a couple of hours before sleep
• Sleep in a cool environment under 65 F. 

Chronic stress can be daunting. It robs you of your energy and motivation and can leave you suffering from pain, headaches, fatigue, anxiety and much more. The good news is that you can use the very same process that caused these issues in reverse to unwind the impact of chronic stress. 

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