Healthy Responses When Under Stress

Today, we explore the effects of stress on our health and discuss both acute and chronic stress. Learn how cortisol, the primary stress hormone, impacts your body and discover practical ways to manage your stress healthily. From personal anecdotes of losing a friend and dealing with farm challenges to the benefits of mindful gardening and connecting with nature, this episode provides valuable insights into reducing stress and improving overall well-being. Tune in for actionable tips and a deeper understanding of how to create healthy responses when under stress.

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Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:42

Welcome back to a Magical Life. I'm your host, magic Barclay, and you are in season two. And today I wanna talk about healthy responses when under stress. Now we all have things go wrong in our lives. I've had a few lately, I. And how we respond to them really does affect our health. So how does stress work? Well, you know, there's lots of people out there talking about this moment. So let's put it in a little snapshot for you. The stress happens, your adrenals have to respond. They release stress hormones, the main one being cortisol. And it's a short term response to get you through the initial stress, and then everything's okay. Fairly basic. Except there are different types of stress. So there is acute stress, which is happening right now. The things happening, you are responding. It'll be over in 10, 20, 30 minutes, maybe two hours, but it's not a long time, and there's chronic stress, which our body is under consistently. Now, when things go wrong, acute stress can. Become chronic stress, and we'll touch on that a little bit later, but what does cortisol, the stress hormone do now? Look, there's other stress hormones as well, but cortisol is the most damaging. So cortisol for an extended time can shrink your brain, so it can lead to things like dementia. cortisol can increase your weight, so. I have a cortisol belly, thick around the middle, reasonably muscly, skinny legs. Everything else is reasonable, but cortisol will put weight around your middle, and unfortunately that's where most of your organs are too. So that stresses your organs. Cortisol can damage your skin. your skin can get quite thin and. Wrinkly and dehydrated, and you can scarf for a lot longer and you can take a lot longer to heal. Cortisol can make your eyes twitch and flutter. Cortisol can make you have brain fog and forget things. Cortisol can do a whole lot of things. Now, I said it's a stress hormone. Cortisol is also actually a sugar, so it can raise your blood sugar levels. It can. Put stress on your thyroid because it is a hormone, and so what it can do is it can cause thyroid issues and imbalance of hormones. Back to it being a sugar. Yes, it raises your blood sugars. What will your body do to respond? It'll give you high blood pressure to try and push the sugars through, get rid of them. Cortisol can also lead to lymphatic swelling because all that waste has to go somewhere and your lymphatic system has to help get rid of it. So there's a whole lot going on in the body when you are under stress. So what are healthy responses? Well, recently I lost a very good friend and I, I'm denied about airing my dirty laundry, to be honest, but my response was not healthy. Now, I was hurt. I was upset. I was blindsided. Common word used these days. What was my response to losing this friend? Well, my response was blaming myself. Maybe I'm less of a person, maybe this, maybe that. Then I realized it wasn't my issue. So then my response was anger. Now, does this all sound familiar? This is actually the stages of grief. So then I was very angry about losing this friend. Well, the blaming myself raised my cortisol. The anger raised my cortisol. Then I kind of went, no, maybe, you know, we're still friends and I'm blowing this outta proportion. Well, those thoughts raised my cortisol. So after a while I came to see it for what it was. I spoke to some friends that I trust. and that was probably the most healthy thing I could do about this issue. And my cortisol started to lower. So this is one example of different ways that your cortisol can spike. What is a healthy response to losing a long time friend? Whether it's through death, whether it's because they leave your life, whether it's because you now roll with different circles. Whatever it is it is to understand. Actually it's to comprehend.'cause understanding means that you're standing with that thing. So no, we're going to comprehend that. Life changes. We have friends for a reason, friends for a season. That is a healthy response. Not making it mean anything to you, for you about you and not raising your cortisol. Now, another thing that went wrong. Recently, I live on a farm and it's been summer here in Australia, and so I need to be watering, right? Makes perfect sense. I grow my own food. I need to be watering. I've got seeds starting for the next season. I need to be watering. Guess what? We ran outta water. Had to get a truck in. It meant a few days that there was no water. And what did I do? I started stressing. So again, my cortisol spiked. What are some things I can do for that? I realized running outta water in the middle of summer in Australia is. Quite okay. I looked at all my seedlings. Yeah, they were a little bit limp and sad. Some of my veggies were a little bit limp and sad, but they weren't dead, so I was blowing this outta proportion that I had run outta water. It was another couple of days till I could water the garden. What did I do? I looked at all the healthy foods that I do grow that can help lower cortisol. Things like mulberries, things like strawberries. I grew sweet potatoes, so I harvested some of that, and I made beautiful sweet potato bake. Now, these foods don't directly lower your cortisol. There are some that do things like dark chocolate, do directly. Lower your cortisol mushroom coffee directly lowers your cortisol. The veggies and the fruits that I'm growing don't do that, but what was I doing to lower my cortisol with them? I was harvesting them by hand, taking time to appreciate what I'd grown. Taking time to appreciate the colors and the smells. If you've ever picked homegrown strawberries, you'll know what I mean. That smell is amazing. Then taking time to walk up to the house and use them in my cooking. Now, what happened next was amazing. I was really involved in my cooking, really involved in what I was making from my own produce, and so I immediately felt a sense of calm and a sense of appreciation and a sense of vibrancy in life and. Using this produce, really appreciating it, almost eating it with my eyes and my smell, and like all my senses were involved, touching it and feeling it. There's something very underrated about enjoying your food. I don't mean enjoying your food as in eating it. Yeah. That tasted nice, great meals done, really enjoying it from the harvest and appreciation of the effort that's gone into it, to the preparation of cooking, to really taking your time step by step, not just following a recipe and you know, going through the steps without thinking, but really being. Invested in every single facet of the meal. Then taking my time with my family to eat the meal and talking about the produce and talking about how we grew it and talking about the colors and you know, discussing what was your favorite part of this meal. It was all part of the de-stress. Process. Now, I really wanted to share this with you because how many times do we see food as just something we are doing to sustain ourselves? Just food. It's never just food, and if you are growing it, it's never just growing it. It's everything that's involved with it. It's the up the downs, the sideways. Like running outta water. It's all of those things, and so my response to running outta water was to work with what I had and to spend that time, that couple of days waiting for the water truck to really enjoy. What I've harvested, what I've grown, what I'm feeding my family, and to really, really be involved with that. So what are healthy responses? When under stress, the first thing is to really see it for what it is. Losing a friend, running outta water, whatever your stress is, see it for what it is. You can't change it. It's something that's happening. You can't change it, so why twist yourself inside and out because of it? Like why would we raise our cortisol because of it? Now, there's a lot we can do day to day to relieve our stress. We live in a high stress society, right? We have jobs that are stressful. We have things in our home that are stressful. The internet drops out, the power goes out. Kids are having a fight. Whatever it is, like there's always some stress. We have stress in our friendship groups. We have stress. Gardening. We have stress on the roads. Road issues are a big thing. You know, there's always stress coming at us, so see it for what it is. Obviously, if your life is in danger, that's a problem, right? But most of our stresses, our life is not in danger. We are consistently under stress in our lives and. It's not like the wooly mammoth is chasing us and we're running for our life, right? Or the saber tooth tiger. I guess we chased the wooly mammoth, didn't we? Maybe we were stressed'cause we couldn't find something to eat back then. It's not that. Now. Most of us have a roof over our heads. Food to eat, water to drink. Family and friends to love and care for and spend time with and be present with. So most of the stresses we face are not life threatening. But here's the clincher back to good old cortisol, it's life threatening. So our response, our usual response to stress is what's threatening our lives. It's not the actual stress itself. Now more healthy responses when under stress. We've all heard meditation is great. Well, I'm not a meditator. You know, if I try and sit still and quiet for more than five minutes, I've got dancing monkeys going on in my brain. Like it just doesn't happen for me. But I will. Go out to my garden and I will touch the different foliage and smell the different scents, and feel the oils coming from the leaves and look at the vibrancy of the colors. I will go out into the bush and spend time with animals out there, you know, even if it's a rainy day. Stay inside and play with my cat. And just be really connected and really, really present. These are all healthy responses when under stress, so you don't have to be a meditator, but if you are, that's perfect. Spend time with the people that you love and the people that you care about with your pets, with a small friendship group that really gets you, that has no hidden agenda. You know, women these days. Guys probably do it too, but I know women do it. We somehow surround ourselves with people that make us feel good about ourselves, but a lot of us do it. Because that person is less than. Do not do that. Be with your equals. Okay? Be a good friend. Be a good person, and be with people because you like them, not because they are less than. We need to also look at our jobs. You know, it's one thing getting paid. Getting paid regularly and getting paid a good wage to feed your family, keep your home, whatever it is that you're doing with your money. But if that job makes you feel like a, sorry, I'm gonna say it like a piece of shit, leave. Do not stay somewhere where you are under constant stress. If they're not your people, they're not your people. Do not change yourself to fit in with those people. That's the other thing that we do, and that starts that stress pathway going, whether we're consciously thinking about it or not. The other thing you can do no matter where in the world that you are, and that is respect, nature. Nature has so many things to provide us, to keep our stress down, but how many of us actually go and spend time out there in the wild? I do. I go out to the bush. I love being with animals. I love crushing a eucalyptus leaf in my hand and smelling the oils. You know, I love looking at the colors and the different foliage textures and really immersing myself in it. Do I have to do it for hours on end? No. If I've only got 10 minutes, that's all I give it. It's enough to have a healthy response when under stress. Now, some people in the world are lucky enough to be near beaches or snow or whatever it is that's around you in nature. Go and enjoy it and enjoying it also means leaving it better than you found it. Now this is another healthy response. When under stress, do something to pay it forward. Okay? So when I'm in the bush, I always have a bag with me, like a rubbish bag and gloves, and I will pick up rubbish when I see it. If you're at the beach, do the same thing. Have a set of tongs and a rubbish bag so that you can pick up rubbish. Wherever you are, leave it better than you found it. Now, this also means if your response to being under stress is to go to a coffee shop and have some you time wipe the table down, get an extra survey or something, and wipe the table down before you leave it. You can do little things. That will in turn help other people. Now, I know this has been a little bit preachy today, but I'm not sorry because it's something that needed to be said. We need to make healthy choices in our life and have healthy responses when under stress, because guess what? If you let that cortisol pathway keep going, it's going to shorten your life dramatically. It's going to affect your life dramatically. And I'm not talking about in the future, I'm talking about now, I'm talking about that pathway that we discussed with cortisol, with excess weight, thin skin, your hair falling out. That's another thing I didn't mention. Your brain shrinking brain fog, high blood pressure. Diabetes, all of these big things that we hear all of the time, they're actually directly linked to cortisol. Now, look, there's so much more that hormone slash sugar can do to us, but what it's meant to do is do things for us, which is keep us alive under acute stress. What it does is it plays a big role in chronic stress. So my challenge out there for you today, whatever day it is that you are listening to this podcast, is to consciously. Create healthy responses when under stress. Now, as always, please like, review, share, subscribe to this podcast. We love hearing from you. Pop on over to Facebook at a Magical Life podcast and ask us questions there. Post under one of the posts there, comment and pose a question to us. We will address it here on season two of the podcast. This podcast is all about helping you create healthy responses, and today it's healthy responses when under stress, a magic Barclay. I look forward to seeing your responses, your questions have a magical day. Okay.