Being a successful leader is extremely rewarding and benefits many aspects of your life. In business you lead your team to success; at home, you manage to keep everyone and everything on track, and in your personal life you surround yourself with like-minded individuals creating a supportive environment for greater success.
However, whether you are the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company, the owner of a small local business, or the CEO of your household, you are not immune to the stressors life can throw at you. Taking the time to recognize and manage your stress levels is essential to your continued success and, most importantly, your health.
How is Stress Different as a Leader?
Although stress exists in each of our lives, stress at the executive level is often compounded by rumination. Rumination is the mental process of thinking over and over about something in the past and/or future and attaching negative emotions to it. This may include negative thoughts such as the fear of losing a client, worries over how to successfully educate your child, concerns over hiring trustworthy employees, financial woes, and many more issues.
As a leader, you are responsible for everything from conflict management to decision-making and people development, giving you plenty of fodder for rumination and stress. However, understanding how stress affects your body and the natural ways to reduce stress will allow you to live a less stressful, healthier life and allow you to continue being the high-performance leader that you are.
How Stress Affects the Body
The first step in managing stress is understanding how it affects the body. Stress comes in many forms from many different sources, and furthermore, it affects each of us differently. It may build over time through a series of small events, or it may hit you like a ton of bricks through a large incident.
Our bodies are extremely efficient at recovering quickly from small doses of stress, but severe, prolonged, or chronic stress can have serious detrimental effects on the body, mind, and overall health.
Symptoms of Chronic Stress
Symptoms may include:
- Muscle Tension
Tension headache, migraine headache, and musculoskeletal pain
- Shortness of Breath
Rapid breathing, hyperventilation, and panic attacks
- Increased Heart Rate and Blood Pressure
These can lead to long-term problems for heart and blood vessels such as hypertension, heart attack, or stroke
- Insomnia
Sleeplessness can further exacerbate rumination thoughts which increase stress levels
- Trouble Focusing or Irrational Thoughts
Both are signs that you may need more balance and calm
- Weight Gain or Loss of Appetite
Stress affects the digestive system, causing changes in gut microbiota and affecting how well intestines absorb nutrients
- Gastrointestinal System Problems
Gas, bloating, pain, heartburn, nausea, and other stomach discomfort
- Fatigue
One of the most commonly overlooked symptoms of chronic stress is fatigue, which may be due to stress hormones, sleeplessness, poor nutrition, and more
The symptoms above are only a portion of those your body may produce when under stress. This is due to your body’s natural fight-or-flight response triggered by the sympathetic nervous system (STS). When faced with a stressful situation the STS signals the adrenal glands to release stress hormones such as adrenalin (epinephrine) and cortisol.
Fight or Flight
In a life-or-death situation, these hormones along with the autonomic nerves increase heart rate, increase respiration rate, dilate blood vessels, and send an increased flow of blood to the muscles allowing you to react accordingly should you need to fight or flee. Once the threat is over the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) kicks in and returns your body to a pre-emergency state.
Chronic Stress
However, when faced with chronic stress, your body remains in a constant fight-or-flight mode causing numerous health concerns due to the continued drain on your body.
Thankfully, there are natural ways to improve your body’s resilience and reduce the impact of stress on the body, and we at Marsden Centre understand the importance of taking a holistic approach to being a high-performance human.
A Natural and Preventive Approach to Stress
It will never be possible to eliminate all stressors from your life, however, by implementing a preventive approach that improves your resilience, you can find yourself calmer, more focused, more relaxed, and in a more positive state of mind and body. The right tools and habits can enable you to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, putting your body into the state in which it is able to heal itself. This will allow you to better handle stressful situations that come your way as your sympathetic nervous system will no longer be stuck in overdrive.
1 – The Right Healthy Foods
The foods we eat directly correspond to how our body and our immune system work and are able to handle stressors. By eating a diet high in nutrients including minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, fibre, and vitamins you can support your immune system, stabilize your moods, and help normalize your blood pressure, all of which are affected by stress.
A Stress-Conscious Diet
To strengthen your overall health and your body’s ability to process stressful events, consider adding the following nutrient-dense foods to your diet:
- Vitamin C-rich foods such as oranges and other citrus fruits have been researched for their ability to help lower the levels of the stress hormone cortisol as well as blood pressure during high-anxiety situations.
- Complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, can increase the production of the feel-good hormone serotonin in your brain.
- Magnesium-rich foods such as spinach, salmon, and fermented soy have been researched for their ability to help reduce headaches and fatigue, improve sleep quality, and relieve premenstrual mood changes.
- Fatty fish such as salmon and tuna, as well as many nuts and seeds, are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. These are known to help bring down high levels of stress hormones and help protect the body against cardiovascular disease, depression, and premenstrual syndrome.
- Superfoods high in antioxidants such as dark chocolate and cocoa have been shown to help improve cognitive function and mood as well as reduce high levels of anxiety, plus a little high-quality dark chocolate can go a long way towards effectively satisfying cravings.
2 – Herbal Medicine
Preparing and sipping a hot cup of tea is often a very relaxing experience, and many teas have anxiety-reducing and calming properties that allow you to enter a relaxed state of body and mind.
Which Herbal Teas are Good for Stress?
Teas are a wonderful way to infuse a little herbal medicine into your life. Add any of the following brews to your day:
- Chamomile – by far the most popular tea for stress reduction, it is supportive of digestion and used often to help ease insomnia.
- Barley Tea – effective at relaxing the body due to tryptophan, an amino acid that is necessary for building the feel-good hormone serotonin and its sleepy successor melatonin. (You may be familiar with this amino acid from the sleepy feeling of wellbeing many experience after a turkey dinner)
- Peppermint – commonly used to help reduce stress-related gastrointestinal issues, Peppermint tea is found to be highly relaxing to the body
- Rhodiola – an herb that stimulates your body’s stress response system to increase stress resistance
- Kava Kava- a tropical evergreen shrub that contains active compounds called kavalactones that have been shown to relieve anxiety, a common reaction to stress
There are many more stress-relieving herbs, teas, and supplements available as teas, or in more powerful formats prescribed to your specific needs. Contact us today to get started developing your personalized stress-relieving herbal plan.
3 – Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a modality originating in Traditional Chinese Medicine which has been used for centuries as a natural, effective, and pain-free way to reduce tension, pain, anxiety, and other side effects of stress. Unlike drug therapy treatments, acupuncture does not have to involve medication, and studies have shown it to have similar stress and anxiety-reducing effects without the risk of medication side effects.
Acupuncture along with a nutritious diet can help you to restore your body’s natural balance and support your energy levels by focusing on energy points within your body. It induces relaxation, calms the mind, and promotes healing within the body.
4 – Meditation
Meditation is a way to train your mind to focus, helping to reduce ruminating thoughts and relieve stress. The practice of meditation has been shown to induce emotional calm and allow for mental clarity. It is a free, medicine free natural practice that you can perform in the comfort of your own home, in a park, or anywhere else that brings you a feeling of peace.
Many of us go through our days feeling tight on time. Meditation can take mere minutes, allowing you to regain focus quickly so that you can get on with successfully managing your day.
How Do I Know Which Stress Reduction Techniques Will Work for Me?
How your body handles stress is as individual as you are, therefore, some modalities will work better for you than others. At Marsden Centre, we take the time to look at your whole body and mind to develop a stress reduction plan that works for your individual needs.
Lab Tests
We do extensive testing that includes some in-house labs to give us the insight to bio-hack your brain, immune system, hormones, mood, heart, and gut health. All of which allows us to build a health plan based on your individual needs.
Tailored Individual Plans
Based on the results of your tests as well as a full assessment of your individual health history and current symptoms, your practitioner will create a program that is just for you. Your program may include a combination of nutrition and exercise guidance, botanical medicine, vitamins, acupuncture, BodyTalk, and/or IV nutrient therapy – all of which are natural, effective ways to manage and treat stress on the body.
If you have questions about how stress is affecting your body, give us a call today. Marsden Centre’s “Overcoming Stress” wellness program may be for you. Your time is valuable so do not waste another moment reeling from the negative effects of stress. We can help you get your resilient, high performing self back, leaving stressed-out days firmly in the past.
The Marsden Centre is open in person and via telehealth. Simply send us an email or book online.
References:
American Psychological Association. Stress effects on the body. November 1, 2018, https:// www. apa.org/topics/stress/body
Psychology Today – Vitamin C: Stress Buster-A study finds in addition to benefits related to the common cold and cancer, vitamin C helps reduce both the physical and psychological effects of stress on people. By PT Staff published April 25, 2003 – last reviewed on June 9,2016
Forrest H Nielsen, LuAnn K Johnson, Huawei Zeng. Magnesium supplementation improves indicators of low magnesium status and inflammatory stress in adults older than 51 years with poor quality sleep * . Magnesium Research. 2010; 23 (4): 158-168. doi: 10.1684 / mrh.2010.0220
David L. Katz, Kim Doughty, and Ather Ali.Antioxidants & Redox Signaling.Nov 2011.2779-2811.http:// doi. org/10.1089/ars.2010.3697
Srivastava JK, Shankar E, Gupta S. Chamomile: A herbal medicine of the past with a bright future. Mol Med Rep. 2010;3(6):895-901. doi:10.3892/mmr.2010.377