Stress and Your Hormones

There’s a lot of talk about stress in today’s society. I mean, we’ve been through a lot lately, right? There’s been constant climate crises, inflation, social unrest, and oh yeah, what’s that other thing? A global pandemic, that’s it, right? *heavy sarcasm*

With these stressors on the forefront of everyone’s mind, there’s been an almost equal uprising of self-care culture and advice in response. Now, I am so glad people are having this conversation and increasing awareness, BUT… I’m also here to tell you that no amount of facials and bubble baths are going to erase stress from your life. This surely isn’t a surprise. Have you ever gotten a massage (or other self-care activity) where you felt AMAZING during the activity, all your cares just melted away? But then afterward, minute by minute, with each passing vibration of your cell phone, you can just FEEL the stress piling back up on your shoulders? I know, it’s too real.

This is the real challenge: not scheduling a massage (or pedicure, or wax, or whatever), but actually LIVING your life and MANAGING the stress that comes with it. That is why this blog post is kicking off a series of posts dedicated to helping you understand stress and develop realistic, real-time coping mechanisms that won’t feel like just another thing you SHOULD be doing, but for some reason just can’t seem to make happen (because really, who is that helping?).

My goal for this post is to help you understand how stress affects your hormones and health, in order to clarify WHY it’s important to practice stress management on a daily basis.  In subsequent posts, we will discuss ways to implement stress management techniques as well as explore mindfulness (huge buzzword, but does anyone even KNOW what it is?).

Alright, let’s break it down. Many of you have probably heard of fight or flight mode, but did you know that there’s a counterpart to this mode of functioning? It’s actually called your rest and digest mode! In fact, if you struggle with gastrointestinal issues, I would go out on a limb to guess that you may be stuck in fight or flight mode more often than not…a sure sign that you should keep reading this post!  

When your body encounters stress of any kind, its normal response is to resort to fight or flight mode. This is called your sympathetic nervous system. Consider it your body’s version of DEFCON 5. Everything is on high-alert and there’s no ability to do anything other than the necessary functions. Think of it this way: have you ever felt like you can’t focus on more than one thing? How about feeling like something is a WAY bigger deal than it should be? These are signs of fight or flight mode. Needless to say, this is neither ideal nor sustainable. It is trademarked by a swirling tapestry of excess hormone production including cortisol and adrenaline. Fun fact, this makes it harder for you to regulate your blood sugar, which only makes hormone regulation even more difficult!

Here’s another fun fact: over time, as stressors build up in our lives, our body learns to go into this fight or flight mode quicker and quicker. In fact, this can happen so often and for so long that our bodies really never leave fight or flight mode. It becomes our default setting. As you can imagine, this is not good. This mode is not the natural mode for effective metabolism in your body (remember, we want to rest and DIGEST). By metabolism I don’t just mean calorie burning. Metabolism is actually ALL of the chemical processes happening in your body to keep you healthy and happy (hopefully). Processes that control the neurotransmitters in your brain that affect your mood. Processes that control your ability to have a regular period. Processes that control your sleep cycle. And guess how these processes happen? HORMONES, baby! In other words, chronic stress makes it impossible for your hormones to function optimally. Let me repeat that for the people in the back: chronic stress makes it IMPOSSIBLE for your hormones to function optimally!!!

Let’s not sugar-coat it: stress is a bitch wreaking havoc on so many womens’ hormones. What I want you to take away from today’s post is a better sense of which mode you’re living in: fight or flight versus rest and digest. Developing this sense of awareness will become a powerful tool moving forward so that you can begin to self-regulate using some of the strategies we are going to cover in the next few posts. I promise you, this is the most important act of self-care you can practice.