How To Understand Stress?
There are three types of stress. When somebody says stress to you, you think, “Oh, I’ve had a really busy week. The kids are playing up. Nothing has gone my way. I’ve got loads on. I’m really busy and stress is high.”
This is an emotional stress but there are two other types of stress that we’re going to talk about further in this blog. One being physical stress and the other being chemical stress. Why don’t we start with the stress that we all know and loathe and would experience on a monthly, if not weekly basis, at some points and how we manage that stress?
The key is not to think about how to reduce the emotional stresses. You’re always going to have emotional stress in your life and the key is to understand how you can react to the stress.
Emotional stress comes in all different formats, whether it’s stress in the workplace, stress in daily life with tasks, with co-workers, with friends and family. There will always be emotional stress in our lives.
A common emotional stress is after a very long week at work, you tend to find that the shoulders tense up. This is causing a physiological response and our emotions can control our physiology. Our thoughts control our physiology. It’s important that we can try and help to manage these emotions in order to control our physical state and the way that our body functions.
Another one would be during times of mourning, if you lost a family member or a friend, your body will go through an emotional response. As you go through a grieving process, this is very common and when you have times of family upset or problems in the workplace, you’re going to experience emotional stress. When somebody upsets you or says something nasty to you, it’s going to cause an emotional response in the body and it’s the way that you handle that that will determine the physiological response.
Second type of stress is physical stress. This is probably the second most common and physical stress is traumas, falls, bumps, posture, the way we sit are all putting physical stress on our body.
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The most common type is sitting as most of us do it for work. If we’re not sitting, we’re doing something physical, we’re moving, we’re lifting. Again, putting a stress on our body and let’s not forget that there are good stresses to have on your body. Going to the gym, a run, cycling is putting a good demand on your body in the correct way.
If your body is healthy and in optimal state and putting those demands on it, as long as they’re reasonable, it’s going to help it to adapt. It’s going to help it to grow fitter, stronger, more productive.
Negative physical stresses can come in the form of car accidents, falls, bumps and can cause compensations throughout the body and cause us to move differently, walk differently and then that’s going to cause pain further down the line.
When your body says, “I can’t compensate anymore,” for stress you’re putting on it and can suddenly break down. For example, the first day you get on holiday, you find your body just relaxes, says, “Hey, I can’t deal with this anymore, with and it often just gives wat. It causes the back to go out and you find, the back has gone into spasm first day of the holiday. Typical.
We are trying to limit the amount of physical stress on the body by knowing how to move our body and things that we can do to keep it as strong as possible.
The third type is chemical stress. This is one of the least common types of stress that we experience, like drinking alcohol, smoking, putting acidic foods in our body. It’s going to cause a chemical response and will cause an inflammatory response over a period.
Inflammation can go into the muscles, into the joints and that can cause problems in the long run. You’ve all seen taking ibuprofen over a long period of time will cause an inflammatory response in the stomach in 90 percent of people. That’s because it is a chemical stress on our body and it erodes the stomach lining which causes the stomach acids to irritate the stomach lining.
It’s important we keep our diets in check and we limit the amount of chemical stress going on in our body.
What can we do to reduce these types of stresses” The first thing is awareness, to be aware that there are a lot of stresses in your life and it’s about how we can, reduce them and then reduce the effect that they have on our body.
With emotional stress, it’s how you respond to that. Physical stress, we do need to sit. We do need to move, however moving in the right way using the right muscles, learning the right techniques to keep your body as strong as possible to when you do sit, it doesn’t cause as much of an impact. When you do lift, it doesn’t cause much of an impact on your body.
Chemical stress is important to understand what things you should be eating or what things you should put in your body. Are you eating a green diet? Are you drinking a lot of water? Are you trying to limit alcohol? Do you follow the 80/20 principle? 80 good, 20 not so good. Everyone has a treat or a vice but it’s important not to have them the whole time.
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