Understand Stress - You'll Increase Vitality & Improve Physique

This is a guest post from Dr Kathryn Woodall, DC.  She is an accomplished and forward thinking health care professional and a Circular Strength Training Instructor who shares her insight at A Comfortable Soul.

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“Should I decrease my exercise because I’m stressed or will exercising decrease my stress?  Does it matter what the stress is?”

Stress, hormones, exercise, and diet have been talked about frequently but they are seldom spoken about in manner that gives a complete picture.  Therefore, people are left with questions such as the above.  We understand they are all connected, but how they are connected and what to do to get the results we want is a bit fuzzier.  Since there is a lot of information about how each one works separately, we are mostly going to concentrate on the big picture to give you the opportunity to understand why the answers to the above questions depend upon your current state of health. 

The first thing to understand is that stress, hormones, exercise and diet are interlinked in a dynamic way.  If any one of them is altered the other three will also change.  Instead of thinking of each one responding in a linear manner, it would be more accurate to picture that they are each a ball being juggled.  Have you ever seen a juggler throw one ball way up in the air and then continue juggling with the others? 

How about when they drop a ball but keep juggling in a way that lets them work their way down to pick it back up again without ever stopping?  Our bodies are like that too.  In fact, each of us is a master juggler.  When something goes out of the typical rhythm we have established, we continue to juggle what we have until the out-of-range ball gets close enough for us to juggle with again. 

If we stick to our juggling analogy with diet, stress, hormones, and exercise all as the balls we are using, you can see that it is important how far out of typical range any one ball goes.  Did one go a little high or a little low so that with only minor adjustments you can keep juggling?  Did the one that went high get caught in a tree or did it just go really high and we need to keep juggling the others while it comes back down?  Did the one that dropped land at our feet or did it roll into the deep end of a pool and sink to the bottom?  The higher or lower one ball goes, the more you will want to keep the other balls in a range that is easily changed in order to adapt as the other ball comes back.  If one ball is already excessively high or low, you don’t want to make it even harder on yourself by tossing another one out of range.  If we look back at the beginning question now, you can see that the answer is, “It depends.”

What to do if I think I'm stressed...

We’ll go into more detail soon, but for those who want a quick over-view to know how to compensate when stress is an issue, the following can be used as a guide:

If there is physical stress that is high enough for you to be wondering if you need to compensate for it, you probably do.  Make sure the quality of your diet is high to ensure adequate building blocks, and stop exercise until the physical stress is 3 or less (with zero being no discomfort and 10 being “take me to the hospital” problems).  Your hormones will raise and lower as needed to heal your body.

If you have a high quality diet and the stress you are experiencing is not significantly high (an 8 or greater on a scale of 0-10) and has not been building or around for an extended period of time, your workout and diet probably need little to no tweaking to compensate.  Your hormones will deal with the stress and return to a more balanced level provided the stress does not become chronic.   In other words, if your diet is healthy and the stress is in the 4-7 range for a short time, exercising even at higher intensities is likely to cause positive results and help your hormones return to balanced more quickly.

If your diet is poor and your stress level just went up but is under an 8, you may want to lower the intensity of your exercise to moderate while also raising the quality of your diet.  If your diet is poor there might be physical stress that will complicate the other stress you are experiencing.  It can take a few months of a good quality diet before stress in the 4-7 range doesn’t require a change in exercise.

Typically stress in the perceived range of 1-3 requires no changes. If your diet is of poor quality greater than 15-20% of the time, your exercise and hormones are likely to suffer as a result.  Stress of any sort will have more impact if that is the case.  15-20% gives plenty of room for you to enjoy the occasional dessert, go to dinner with friends, etc., without feeling guilty and adding to your stress levels or feeling like you should exercise an extra amount because of it.

If you’re exercising at high intensity levels every single day, you are not giving your body a chance to rebuild and repair even if you are eating well and keeping the rest of the stress in your life to a minimum.  Do it for long enough and your hormones will no longer be able to compensate so that you will get injured and be sick more frequently.  Add extra stress in and it is a recipe for trouble.

All of the above applies to the vast majority of people who are a little out of sync but not seriously so.  In regards to the juggling analogy, the above guide is NOT for the juggler who has a ball caught in a tree or lost it at the bottom of the deep end of a pool.

Does it matter what the stressor is?  If it is physical stress, then the degree of physical involvement does matter.  A paper cut is not going to be as physically stressful as a broken bone.  The more life-threatening the injury, the more physically stressful it will be.  When it comes to emotional stress, the cause doesn’t matter nearly as much as your perception of and reaction to it does.  For example, one person might be fired from his job and be devastated by it while another person might actually be relieved and happy.  Fortunately, most people are able to adequately judge and rate their perceived level of stress.

Up until this point, this article has been written to give information applicable to the vast majority of the population.  Now we are going to delve deeper for those whose juggling balls are caught in a tree or at the bottom of a pool.  We’ll look at how all of it applies to fat loss, and we will explore a touch of science along the way.

The Adrenals

We can’t talk about stress without exploring the adrenal glands.  One adrenal gland sits just above each kidney and plays a role in tissue health (bone, muscle, skin repair and building – this includes intestinal health), blood sugar stability, energy production, emotional health, sexual health, immunity, fluid balance, thyroid function, inflammation, homeostasis (an example of dysfunction would include becoming dizzy upon standing quickly), memory, circadian rhythm, and overall vitality along with the possibility of a few other things not listed or not yet known. The adrenals are best known for the role they play in the flight/fight/freeze response, but as you can see, their health is significantly important to an individual’s overall health.

The glands go through three phases of function beyond their typical day to day activities.

1. Alarm Phase:

• Cortisol and DHEA are high
• Function is heightened
• This has no negative side effects as long as it is short lived
• Symptoms are consider good by most people because of the “high” associated with this phase, although it may become easier to store extra fat as they get closer to the next phase
• This can be called Cushing’s disease if something causes it to be prolonged and maintained
• Exercise typically doesn’t need to be adjusted for this phase as long as the stress is short lived.

2. Resistance Phase:

• Cortisol is high or normal and DHEA is low
• This is the phase associated with adrenal fatigue
• Function is impaired but some people can put symptoms off to “aging”
• Symptoms will vary depending on the other system(s) most affected and fat is more easily stored and harder to lose.
• Exercise intensity probably needs to be dropped to moderate at this point and the foods in your diet need to be packed with high quality nutrition.
• Lifestyle changes and the removal or reduction of the constant stressor make it possible to fully recover from the resistance phase.
• In our juggling analogy, this would be when one ball has been thrown extremely high into the air.  It will come down, but we need to pay close attention to the other balls.

3. Exhaustion Phase:

• Cortisol and DHEA are both low
• Function becomes more impaired the deeper into exhaustion one is
• Exercise needs to be reduced to low intensity or temporarily stopped completely depending upon the severity of the issue.
• In our juggling analogy, this is when one ball has sunk to the bottom of the deep end of a pool.  Outside help is needed if we are to keep juggling.
• Symptoms have most likely increased enough that visits to a doctor begin -- a metabolic syndrome is often active and the diagnosis is often missed until late into this phase because one or more other systems are malfunctioning enough to have their own diagnosis despite not being the cause of the overall problem. 
• Insulin may begin to elevate and resistance to its effects may develop.  If it gets high enough, it might become an additional juggling ball stuck in a tree that will require help to retrieve.
• In this phase, it is vital to seek help from a health care provider who has adequate knowledge and experience successfully treating people with adrenal issues.
• Because traditional blood tests rarely show the dysfunction until it is almost too late, many people in this phase are told that it is “all in their head” or that they “need to eat less and exercise more” and are sent to see a psychiatrist despite the obvious host of symptoms they present with.
• If severe enough and diagnosed correctly, it will be called Addison’s disease and can be treated. Left untreated in its most extreme aspect, death is likely to ensue via a related failure of one of the other systems.

Causes of the stress leading to phase II and III dysfunction can be many and include but are not limited to: prolonged stress (strain), auto-immune issues, head trauma leading to pituitary dysfunction, chronic infection, chronic inflammation (unknown food allergies/intolerances, consistent exposure to toxins, diets that cause insulin levels to remain elevated, etc.), abuse (physical, emotional, dietary, drug, etc. including exercise addiction), and combinations of the above.  The lifestyle an individual maintains can influence adrenal function and either increase or decrease the symptoms that are presenting as well as the rate of progression through the phases.

Most people cycle in and out of phase I several times over a lifetime without heading into phase II.  Some people will experience phase II either in cycles or for long enough to head into the significantly smaller group who experiences phase III.  Now that you are aware of the three phases, it probably makes more sense why you have sometimes read articles saying that you shouldn’t exercise while stressed while others say you should.  It isn’t the stress that is the deciding factor.  It is the status of your health.

Fat Loss

You’ve probably seen the ads on TV or read the magazine articles talking about “stress hormones” preventing fat loss (they are referring to the adrenal gland and its hormones).  Or you might have heard someone say they have glandular problems causing them to be obese.  You might be wondering if there is any truth to it or if it is just a marketing angle or an excuse?  There can be truth in that statement.  Hypothyroidism, adrenal dysfunction, and pituitary problems can make it easy to gain fat and difficult or impossible to lose while the hormonal imbalance is present.  It is also true, however, that once the hormonal imbalance is resolved (and sometimes as it is resolving) a healthy body composition can be obtained again. 

When hormones are balanced, fat loss requires a caloric deficit that occurs over time from lifestyle changes resulting in increased activity, decreased food consumption, or both.  When hormones are imbalanced, fat loss requires lifestyle changes and sometimes a health care provider’s help to balance the hormones and restore health – and then a caloric deficit that occurs over time. 

If there is a hormonal imbalance, sometimes restoring the balance will naturally increase a person’s metabolism or activity levels enough that they don’t need to restrict calories from their diet.  If you have ever heard someone say that just eating high quality, nutrient dense foods will let your body drop to a healthy weight, that can be true for those whose diet was their largest source of stress (too much sugar, chemicals, and processed food caused an imbalance and maybe even kept them from having enough nutrients to maintain healthy hormonal function).  Nonetheless,  a caloric deficit still occurred even if they think it wasn’t from the change in diet.  Perhaps they were satisfied more quickly because of more nutrients or perhaps the increased nutrients caused them to feel well enough to be active.  Either way, a calorie deficit was created.  But for those who had a hormonal imbalance that caused increased appetite in addition to slowing down metabolism, fat loss will require them to address the habits formed when their appetites were high.

Diet

Contrary to popular belief, a diet is not something you go on to lose weight.  A diet at its most basic is the group of foods you eat.  There are a ton of guidelines out there created by other people with opinions about what you should and shouldn’t eat, but the only diet you will ever be on is yours.  If I had my way, the aim of each person would be to choose a diet with enough variety to give them all of the nutrients they need for physical and mental health while also leaving room for some emotional and social enjoyment.   Some people will eat three times a day, others will eat six, and still others will fast one or more days a week.  Depending upon their exercise, hormone levels, stress, and general health, each of those options can be appropriate.  There is no one right way.  Quality and quantity are going to vary according to your current needs.  Flow with it and keep health as your first priority.

The Big Picture

Life is dynamic - just as with juggling, one part will be up while another is down and still other parts are temporarily sliding along on a level course.  When one area goes too far out of range, adjust in the manner you think is most appropriate.  If it doesn’t work, make a different adjustment.  If after several adjustments things still seem out of kilter, seek an outside opinion from a health care provider.  While all of that could sound glib, it is not meant to.  There are lots of hormones in your body, lots of situations that are potentially stressful as well as stress-relieving, lots of exercises that can be performed at different intensities, and lots of food choices available.  To add to it, each piece interacts with all of the other parts.  Your food affects your hormones which affect your emotions which affect your stress level which affects your activity which affects your food choices…  It would be very easy to get caught up in the small details instead of remembering that the little ups and downs are okay. 

"Good health is not any single choice but is instead the accumulation of all of our choices and behaviors over time."

Success

The salad you eat with lunch today is not going to make or break your health any more than the piece of chocolate you ate two weeks ago is.  The test you forgot to study for and are stressed you might have failed is not going to raise or lower any hormonal level enough to cause long-term imbalance.  The belly laugh you had at the joke your friend told will not create enough happiness to forever obliterate any future stress.  Good health is not any single choice but is instead the accumulation of all of our choices and behaviors over time.   Even if there were a textbook perfect way to deal with stress, exercise, and food, life is not a textbook.  Sometimes life goes according to plan, but at other times it is just outright messy. 

The secret to balance is therefore not perfection —it is learning to recognize and appropriately compensate for imperfection quickly enough that even if we wobble, we don’t fall down.

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Photos from Flickr courtesy of:
by eschipul
by TheTruthAbout...

Comments

[Wil]

A very insightful and well- written post, Dr. Woodall!

[Kira]

What a great topic, didn't see these important issues addressed by any other blogs - thnx!

[Adam Steer]

Kira - Yep, Dr K is one smart Lady! ;-)
Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers,
Adam

[Kathryn Woodall]

Thanks Wil and Kira - I'm glad to know you enjoyed the info. (And thanks for the kind words, Adam!)

Please let me know if there are other topics you would like to hear about.

Take care,
Kathryn

[adrenal gland disorder]

Adrenal gland disorders occur when the adrenal glands don’t work properly. Sometimes, the cause is a problem in another gland that helps to regulate the adrenal gland. In other cases, the adrenal gland itself may have the problem.

[adrenal glands]

My father has a adrenal gland symptoms, I hope it is not it.