Get StartedDo you ever feel like stress is slowly killing you? You're not alone. In this video, we dive deep into the seven ways stress is affecting your health and, most importantly, how to combat it effectively. In today's high-pressure world, mental health struggles are becoming increasingly pervasive in the workplace. Burnout, anxiety, and depression are at record levels, exacerbated by the post-pandemic shift to remote work and disconnection. But what if we told you that there's a way out? Don't let stress control your life. Take back control and strive for excellence in physical and mental performance. Remember, you have the power to change your perception of stress and transform it into a stepping stone towards success. So, are you ready to take the leap?
Seven ways stress is slowly killing you. And because I don't want you to succumb to stress, I'm also going to share my list of five stress busting supplements. Before we go deep into this topic, make sure you subscribe below if you want to see more videos like this one, and don't forget to ring that bell if you want to be notified when the next one goes live. Okay. Let's go ahead and talk about today's topic. Yeah. So dr. Ryan in 2023 Forbes put this like article out talking about mental health being pervasive in the workplace, right? And talking about rates of burnout anxiety depression are at record levels And there's this whole post pandemic issue with people working from home not feeling connected at work So burnout anxiety depression are gonna need to stress. There's a recent study that was done that looked at How stress can increase your risk of heart attack by 27%, which is about the same as what you'd expect from smoking five cigarettes a day. Other studies have shown that stress leads to an increased risk of stroke, Alzheimer's, dementia, IBS, can lead to reduced fertility and libido, compromised immunities, sleep disturbances, so you don't feel nearly as energized as you do during your work day, and blood sugar imbalances, so you're more predisposed to develop insulin resistance, diabetes. The stress hormones, Corisol and Adrenaline. These hormones rise in conjunction with stress, and they're good if there's an acute threat. Like for example, in the past, uh, I don't know, if there were Vikings invading your village or something. Heart rate increase, um, you know, high blood pressure, slowing your digestion, reducing your libido would be good things, right? So you can escape or get ready to fight. But, it's terrible if the threat is not acute, but rather just perceived. So, things like, oh, the economy that might go down the tubes, or a business deal that might go sideways, or teenage kids that might ruin their future. The key thing is that you really want to ensure that your cortisol levels are appropriate. So here we have a picture of a normal diurnal cortisol curve, and as you can see, you tend to get the peak right around 6am and you get a pretty precipitous drop about 12pm and then it just slowly moves downwards. When you're chronically stressed, you tend to have higher cortisol levels throughout the day. And a lot of people talk about this situation of being tired but wired, so they don't really feel their best. They feel kind of fatigued, but they're too energized to like sleep or rest. If this The stress response continues. It can go from chronic stress to chronic fatigue, where you'll have enough cortisol that will allow you to mount a response early in the morning. But then as the day progresses, your levels start to get really, really low. And this is where you get the, you know, those energy crashes midday. So a lot of patients of mine will complain about how they'll be fine in the morning and then around noon or so they'll just get this terrible crash and their energy levels are shot afterwards. If you continue down this pathway and you have this, you know, chronically elevated stress, your adrenal glands get super overwhelmed and they just provide very low levels of cortisol. And this is where you get a situation that we like to call burnout, where basically your cortisol levels are just low throughout the day. Number one, minimize the stress and then consider ways that you can alleviate the cortisol issues, right? So the first thing, obviously, is attack the issue that's causing the stress, right? Marcus Aurelius had this quote, If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your own estimate of it. In this, you have the power to revoke at any moment. Something that I've oftentimes done is... Instead of worrying about negative situations, worry or think about positive situations, reframe your mind and be like, well, hey, how's the situation? Although it could be perceived as being negative, how could it be a good thing? Now to add on what you're saying, our CIO coach tells us like every week, Dr. Ryan, he's like You need to focus on what is, not what if. What is, not what if. In other words, your life is controlled by kind of what you focus on. And that's why you need to focus on where you want to go and not what you fear. You want to control the inputs that are coming in. Try to reduce the news input. Most news out there, it's really done to create emotional response from people. And most of the time, there's been studies on this, it's usually negative, right? And so that can impact your psyche and make you think the world is actually a lot worse. It really be avoid or place boundaries on toxic people this definition can vary from person to person, right? But generally someone who is consistently negative not interested in your well being not interested in you achieving your goals Obviously while you're cutting out individuals that are not helpful towards you achieving your goals Join a group of people that are. I try to maintain relationships with individuals who are positive, or forward thinking, who see what's possible versus what's not. There are a lot of supplements out there, and again, once you've done the prior two things, you might find that these supplements could be, could be helpful. I am a big fan of DHEA, or Dehydroepiandosterone. It's a Neurosteroid that seems to counter excessive cortisol levels as well as restore cortisol balance. Adrenals, they also can provide a source of cortisol and improve cortisol levels. What I would probably suggest doing is looking at your pattern. If you're someone that is chronically fatigued where your cortisol levels are low in the morning, you may want to use the adrenals and DHEA in the morning versus if you just have chronic fatigue and you just have a drop off in afternoon, you might want to use it at that point. L teany. This is a compound found in green tea. It reduces some of the neurotoxicity, neuroinflammation that's associated with chronic cortisol release, and it can improve your mood, so drinking green tea throughout the day can be useful. Making sure your diet is full of omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3 fatty acids reduce inflammation dramatically. Vitamin flaxseed oil, macadamia nut oil, fish oil. Fish. Finally, there are certain adaptogenic herbs that seem to condition your body favorably to stress and reset cortisol cycles. Rhodiola and ashwagandha are, are two of those that seem to be very popular. So today we covered kind of the seven ways stress is killing you. Talked about supplements. We talked about practices and behaviors and we hope you found this useful.
