Is stress robbing you blind?

280 Living May 2014

LIVE LIFE HAPPY

You Never Know...

A recent event caused me to remember a time I was on a long flight and there was a very fussy baby (to put it mildly) sitting across the isle from me and one row back.  He was somewhere between six and eight months old by my best guess.  Everything started out fine, but about ten minutes into the flight he began whimpering, then crying a little harder.  This kept up for about five minutes or so when he suddenly reared back and let out a yell that sounded like someone was torturing him.  He cried at the top of his lungs no matter how his mother tried to comfort him.  He wouldn’t be distracted, he wouldn’t nurse, all he would do is scream, scream, scream!

I was thinking about saying something to the mother after roughly ten minutes or so of this to see if she would allow me to help her when she said to her baby, “Oh Honey, it won’t be much longer before you will get to see Dr. Rich.  We’ll go right to his office from the airport!”  I turned around and asked her, “Dr.?  Does he have a problem he’s being treated for?”  She answered, “No, he’s usually very happy.  But we’ve been out of town for two weeks and he’s been in a lot of strange places and hasn’t seen his chiropractor for an adjustment since we left.”  I smiled and replied, “I’m a chiropractor, is there something…”  Before I could finish she got up out of her seat, holding her baby out in front of her, arms fully extended and pleaded, “Would you mind?!”

I put him on my lap, assessed him, adjusted him once very gently in his upper neck and once in his mid-back, and he was quiet within twenty seconds.  The people around us were amazed and a few even clapped.  She took him back and he went to sleep for the rest of the flight.  As we landed, the flight attendant thanked everyone for flying Southwest, and then added, “And how about a huge thank you and a round of applause for the wonderful chiropractor who not only helped that little guy asleep there, but who also saved the rest of us from whatever horrors we might commit as the result of listening to over an hour of screaming!”  Everyone clapped and cheered.

You may think the point of this story is to tell you how wonderful chiropractic is at helping babies in distress – it’s not.  You may think it’s about the fact that more and more people are not only accepting but actually praising chiropractic care – it’s not.  No, the one and only point I want you to get goes back to what the flight attendant said, even if she meant it as a joke.  She talked about how I, “not only helped that little guy asleep there, but who also saved the rest of us from whatever horrors we might commit as the result of listening to over an hour of screaming!”

B.J. Palmer once said, “You never know how far reaching something you may think, say, or do today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow.”   Who knows how everyone on that plane’s lives were different because they had a better experience after he went to sleep?  Who knows what may have been said out of frustration to an innocent person by any one of the 163 people on that plane?  And what about the ripple effect of all those people everyone on that plane interacted with after the flight?

You may not realize just how important you and your health are to those around you, but I can tell you that there are 163 people who now know that truth a whole lot better now than they did a week ago.

Stress and Weight Gain

You’ve just lost your job, your daughter came home with pink hair, the debt pile is getting higher and higher and your son needs braces on his teeth. So…do you run to or away from the refrigerator?

It’s a fact, people who are under a lot of stress tend to do one of two things – either they eat more or they eat less. But despite what they do, more often than not, people under stress gain weight!

The body’s response to stress is a release of adrenaline which triggers the “fight or flight” response in your body. You’re highly energized to either fight the immediate danger (stress) or run away from it! Another hormone, known as corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH) is released at the same time, along with cortisol. These elevated levels of adrenaline and CRH decrease your appetite at first, but unfortunately, this response is short–lived.

The purpose of cortisol is to increase your appetite after an immediate danger (stressor) has passed. The trouble is, with chronic stress, your body is in a perpetual state of “fight or flight,” meaning more and more cortisol is being produced, thereby increasing your appetite. And even if you don’t eat more…the mere presence of this hormone slows down your metabolism and tends to cause fat retention, especially around the midsection!
So…what can you do when stressed to combat weight gain?

• Get proper rest – cortisol levels rise when you lose sleep and you may feel hungrier than you would with proper rest!
• Take a walk – even if it’s only for 15–20 minutes several times a week. Exercise releases “good” hormones that make you feel better and reduce stress and it burns calories – so it offers 2-for-1 benefits!
• Eat six smaller meals a day and keep the diet healthy! This helps keep your blood sugar (insulin) and cortisol levels in check.
• Find ways to relax – yoga, meditation, sitting on a beach, reading a good book, watching a movie that makes you laugh – this works like exercise to reduce stress by producing positive brain chemicals!
• Laugh – no matter what – always find reasons to laugh! Watch a funny movie or an old television program; go out with friends you enjoy – laughing also releases the “good” brain chemicals that relieve stress.

Just keep in mind, nothing lasts forever. There’s a saying, “This too shall pass.” The stress will go away eventually, that is for sure.  However, the damage that occurs to our body may not!  Just try to minimize the weighty effects it can have on you while it’s around!

Now get on the move!  It's time to move forward to a healthier lifestyle.  Many of you, if not all, have thought about increasing, or starting to, exercise as a personal goal.  I ask you, where are you with that goal?