Understanding + Managing Stress
Introduction
When you first find yourself looking for help in this area, asking yourself “do I need more minerals?” and “where do I even begin?”, it can be really overwhelming.
The information here is designed to help you get started on learning more at the level you want to learn at – whether that’s to understand the deeper level of ‘why’ you are where you are, or just the ‘what do I need to do?’.
Before both of those can be answered, it’s worthwhile reading on to get some context.
Understanding and Managing Stress
Understanding and managing our stress levels isn’t always easy at the beginning. When our body is stressed, we lose magnesium. With sustained stress, we lose functionality of bioavailable copper. This important component keeps the flow of energy creation, enzyme activity, iron flow and a variety of other things, happening. The more we have stress in our body, especially over a period of time, the more dysregulated our body becomes. Metabolic stress then becomes another stressor too.
The longer our minerals are out of balance, the body will become more out of balance and have less ability to weather stressful situations. Initially it adjusts as best it can, and we get mild symptoms that often settle quick enough or aren’t that severe, so we don’t notice.
More stress hits us without time for replenishing, and the body again adjusts, but now it has less magnesium, bioavailable copper, and other nutrients available.
Things often settle and we are none the wiser, but then a bigger stress hits, and another symptom or something we can no longer ignore, hits.
The iron connection…
Many of us have heard of oxidative stress, and know it’s bad, but iron being in excess in our body is responsible for a massive amount of damage within our metabolic system. What most people don’t realise is, it is extremely common to have too much iron in our body, but many will show signs of iron deficiency at the same time.
The reason why this happens is because the body wants to protect itself from oxidative stress, so in the absence of bioavailable copper (which helps us move iron safely around the body) it locks the iron away in the tissue to reduce inflammation. In the process, they may get results suggesting “anaemia”.
Now that you understand more about the biochemistry of a stress response in our body, what do we need to do to deal with it?
Step 1: Do the Root Cause Protocol (RCP).
Identify things you have in your life from the ‘stops’ list, and stop them. These will add stress to you!
Steadily start the ‘starts’ list, one thing at a time. One step added consistently is better than 10 inconsistently. Give yourself time and grace to change over time – it’s not a race, but a lifestyle change.
You can watch videos about the RCP here (check the website out too!), and hear me talking about my experience with it and how you can ‘heal your body on a cellular level’ in 180-nutrition podcast here.
Step 2: Nourish your body as best as you can.
We suggest an ancestral diet where possible. Learn what your grandparents and great grandparents (or before!) used to eat and try as many of those foods when they are in season.
Try to sit and relax when you eat, not rush around while doing so! Our bodies divert blood flow away from digestion when we are not at ease during meals – you may eat amazing healthy food, but not absorb nutrients well because your body thinks you are in danger/needing to be ready to run from danger.
Step 3: Identify conscious AND subconscious stresses in our lives.
Get support to learn what alternatives you have and how you can reduce how much your body is in fight-flight.
When we are physically, emotionally or otherwise stressed or even when recovering from any perceived stress, our body is losing magnesium, which is affecting other electrolytes. Whether we are conscious of what happens to our body when we are triggered into a heightened stress state or not… our body is more actively pumping blood around our major organs. Biochemical changes start to really add up when our bodies are in a constant fight-flight-freeze state.
With chronic stress, our bioavailable copper reduces, our ability to move iron effectively from storage to the bone marrow to make new hemoglobin blood cells reduces, our ability to heal and recover is significantly impaired, and our digestion cannot happen effectively.
Keeping a diary will be really beneficial for you to keep an eye on things and see if there are any patterns in certain areas of your life that may be impacting on your health.
In the days/weeks/months immediately before your most dominant symptom occurred, were you experiencing a high stress situation? Or was there chronic stress in the leadup?
Get support to learn what alternatives you have and how you can reduce how much your body is in fight-flight.
When we are physically, emotionally or otherwise stressed or even when recovering from any perceived stress, our body is losing magnesium, which is affecting other electrolytes. Whether we are conscious of what happens to our body when we are triggered into a heightened stress state or not… our body is more actively pumping blood around our major organs. Biochemical changes start to really add up when our bodies are in a constant fight-flight-freeze state.
With chronic stress, our bioavailable copper reduces, our ability to move iron effectively from storage to the bone marrow to make new hemoglobin blood cells reduces, our ability to heal and recover is significantly impaired, and our digestion cannot happen effectively.
Keeping a diary will be really beneficial for you to keep an eye on things and see if there are any patterns in certain areas of your life that may be impacting on your health.
In the days/weeks/months immediately before your most dominant symptom occurred, were you experiencing a high stress situation? Or was there chronic stress in the leadup?
The darker side to stress in our everyday lives and health
So often people start life off with mineral imbalances and nobody realises until a long time down the road. If we start off life without a full supply of minerals (from depleted mothers), when life’s stresses hit we don’t have the reserves needed to deal with it.
We’re not all lucky enough to have learnt coping mechanisms, so when stressful situations come about in life we’re not always able to teach our kids great coping mechanisms either… therein the cycle perpetuates itself.
This presents a situation which is a perfect storm for mental health struggles and many other conditions to set in – both that mentally we don’t know ways to help ourselves, to cope with stress and the overwhelm of situations is very real and debilitating.
It also means we don’t have the mineral reserves to manage it either. These mineral reserves would help take the oxidative stress off the body and give the brain and body a fighting chance to stabilise when given the right support of the mind as well.
This is a great example of how important it is to look at supportive therapies such as EFT/Tapping to help us recognise many things in our behaviour that we may do which has come from our childhood conditioning, and may have us stuck/easily returning to fight-flight.
This way our bodies can utilise what we consume to heal, and not be constantly running from the perceived danger that it is currently experiencing.
What next?
You may feel comfortable researching and learning, starting to do the ‘stops’ and ‘starts yourself, and that’s great! There are more suggestions here for doing this with kids too – many of these may apply to adults too.
Keep reading and learning as much as you feel comfortable with – it will help you in the long run to be your own guide.
That said, if you want a supported journey, you are welcome to book in for a session with Kristan or one of the Supporting Balance team.