I deal with a lot of people who seem very frazzled and overwhelmed or are complaining about certain aspects of their life and they say to me, “oh, it would all be fine if this would just fall into place.”
But, I want to say there are so many more pieces affecting them than just that one thing that they are looking at. For starters, your thoughts can create a stress hormone release in your body and your body won’t realize the difference between an actual stressor in your environment versus you just thinking about that stressor.
So, that’s why it is so important to work on your mindset and your awareness of yourself and your brain because being aware of what your mind is doing is extremely important to shift your thoughts onto more positive things and create a relaxation response.
Another big issue I see is the environment that people actually live in. Did you know that being under florescence lights or even LED lights is terrible for your mitochondria? Your mitochondria are the powerhouses of every single cell in your body so if you are damaging your mitochondria you can bet that you’re damaging every cell in your body and I’m not going to be fully healthy and productive. That’s why it is so important to be cognizant of what’s in your environment such as: the lights, materials used (carpet or flooring can have toxins in them), chemicals used in the house, or being released from other products in the house. I knew someone who was reacting to their brand-new mattress because of all the fire retardant that had been sprayed on the mattress. In addition, one of the biggest biological stressors is mold in your environment. So many people are living in moldy houses and not even realizing it. Mold is an entirely independent topic which we’ll will discuss later but just know that that’s a part of your stress load too.
So, along with the physical materials in your house, there are also electromagnetic frequencies (EMF’s) that are stressful for your body and brain. Think about that Wi-Fi signal going through your house, it’s also going through you. It’s important to think about turning off your Wi-Fi at night and grounding any dirty electricity that may be in your house.
Lastly, we will also discuss emotional and psychological stress. So many athletes would tell me how they were reducing their training load but not recovering as fast. It wasn’t until they told me about relationship or emotional drama that has been occurring in their life recently that I understood how huge of an impact it has on your recovery time.
If you’re living in an emotionally drama filled environment that is wearing down your system every single day, than these may be bigger stressors than even challenging workouts. If there is stress at work or a financial burden than these also pile on to the big picture of added stress in your life. Therefore, it’s very important to understand where you can reduce any of these extraneous stress inducers to reduce your overall load and give your body the best chance at being healthy and thriving! For more tools and information check out the other articles in the blog or schedule your free consultation today!