Stress and Food

These days many of us live under relentless, daily stressful conditions with busy jobs, children to look after, boozy nights out and never enough time to do everything. You may think you are coping fine, bouncing back from every set-back and carrying on with the same frenetic lifestyle, but stress takes its toll on our health and may eventually lead to a complete breakdown.

There are many symptoms which may be experienced if you are under constant stress, some of them are:

an increased appetite

cravings for chocolate, bread, cakes, caffeine or alcohol

a tendency to gain fat around the middle

frequent colds and infections

headaches

digestive problems like bloating and flatulence

shoulder and neck pain

an energy slump in the middle of the afternoon

irregular or absent periods

depression

tiredness but not being able to sleep well

a tendency to a get a second wind in the evening

These symptoms are all due to raised levels of cortisol, one of the hormones produced by your body in response to stress. Millions of years ago we developed a very clever mechanism to deal with danger called the ‘fight-or-flight’ response, which is crucial for the survival of all animals. This allows us to react swiftly to dangerous situations, and once the danger has passed the hormone levels and the body’s responses return to normal. Unfortunately when we are under chronic stress; being late for an appointment, problems with the family, our body reacts in the same way but never gets a chance to return to normal, so cortisol is constantly elevated.

The long-term effects of this can be more worrying with the possibility of developing an array of seemingly unrelated diseases such as heart disease and strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer.

Stress can be tackled in various ways and obviously making changes in your life will be very beneficial, but additionally you can make changes to your diet. High levels of cortisol lead to cravings for sugar and stimulants and increase your appetite; all of this can be addressed with good nutritional programmes designed specifically for YOU, and some extremely useful supplements which will help to lower cortisol levels. So don’t let your stress make you ill, learn how to eat well and take control of your health.

Comments

[Access Hypnotherapy]

I am a practising hypnotherapist and I wanted to share my experience of dealing with people who suffer from stress in the hope that it might be of help to the person reading this.
I liken our resources to deal with stress to a big pot - the type you would boil a ham in. And imagine the pot is hal-full of water - the water symbolises our daily stresses and anxieties. For a lot of people, the pot is half-full most of the time so that when another stress comes along and tops up the level of water in the pot, the pot is still able to cope.
With some people however, the pot is so full already that any extra water poured in will cause the pot to overflow. And so people try to deal with the problem that they think caused the problem - the last bit of water poured into the pot. And so they deal with the immediate consequences - the irritable bowel, or the depession, or the bloating, etc. Howver they don't seem to realise that the big issue is all of the water that's already in the pot.
It never ceases to amaze me how many of the symptoms just fade away when the "root cause" of the stress and anxiety is discovered and dealt with.
Through hypnosis and hypnotherapy, we investigate your memories of when all of this started. We can take you back to your childhood to see what traumas lie at the root of all of this anxiety. In some cases it turns out to be bullying, or parental discord, or childhood abuse, or any number of reasons. The reasons are as unique as the individual.
The key to overcoming stress and anxiety