Health Issue: Stress

When you’re finding it hard to cope with life's challenges and you’re worried you will fail, that’s stress. It can hit any of us at any time. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a short-term frustration like being late for an appointment, or a major life event like a divorce, death, or house move – stress will affect your body.

I’m sure you’ve heard of adrenaline rushes as a response to stress. This is when your body goes into ‘stress mode’ about what it perceives as danger, sending a message to your adrenal glands, which in turn, release stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline.

The adrenaline rush puts you in ‘flight or flight’ mode. Should you stay and fight, or should you run away? Either way, your body prepares itself by raising your blood pressure and blood sugar levels, and shunting blood away from your brain and digestive system to your muscles – ready to fight or run away from a big, wild beast.

Only there isn’t one. At least not on the outside. Most of the time the wild beast lives in our heads. It affects our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. And when there is nowhere for us to release the adrenaline-filled energy required to defend ourselves, we end up with stress symptoms like a rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, anxiety, excessive sweating and heart palpitations.

Stress that’s left unchecked can contribute towards many health problems such as insomnia, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, asthma, depression and anxiety, high blood pressure and weight gain. Every body system, organ, tissue, right down to every cell can be affected by stress.

To deal with stress, we have to first recognise it, then we can work towards managing it better. You can help support yourself by taking plant medicines to top up the essential vitamins and minerals in your diet, which are being used up more quickly than usual, to get you back on track.

If your stress is coupled with grief, herbal medicine and flower essences work well for ‘emotional wounds to the heart’ to strengthen you physically and emotionally, and to help you move on. Try it. It can make a big difference to your recovery and general wellbeing.