Why It's Important to Have a Relationship With Stress

By Sara Harris, Follow Your Flow


Sara Harris from Follow Your Flow guest authors this blog for QENDO, where she talks us through the impact of stress on our health and cycles, and how stress reduction should be an important part of our support plan for living with chronic illness like endometriosis, including her top tips on the subject. Sara has been working & studying in the field of complementary medicine for nearly 2 decades and is currently completing a Masters in Women's Health Medicine. She works in private practice in Complementary Medicine, Massage & Counselling.

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Let’s talk about stress. We tend to think about stress as a major event like a relationship breakdown or some serious deadlines at work, experiences of abuse, when a loved one is unwell or when it seems like you just can’t fit everything in to one day. These are all very real stresses on the body. There are countless more examples and what is stressful to one person may not be exactly the same kind or level of stress for another. 

We know these stresses affect us because we can feel it. We feel anxious, overwhelmed, emotional and even out of control. But what about the seemingly smaller stresses in life that we may have just gotten used to as being somewhat ‘normal’? Perhaps we have a low-grade high-functioning kind of anxiety that we don’t even realise is happening? From my experience (personal and professional) this is the reality for most people. We have simply shifted the goal posts so that our marker for ‘normal’ is in fact far from what is ‘actually’ normal, natural and harmonious for our body. 

From the time we are quite young, we learn to adapt to people, society and the life around us. We move faster when it is required, we learn when to speak and when to not speak according to what others want and expect and we also learn to do nothing and ignore our inner most sense and knowing. We decide that we need to ‘be’ something or think that we are nothing, we look for recognition and validation and we listen to the demands from every angle coming from outside of ourselves rather than listening to what is deeply and eternally held within. 

So even if life is great and there are no major stresses that you can think of, the very fact that you have most likely moved away from the inner most harmony and natural wisdom of your body whilst living from the outside-in rather than the inside-out, is quite a major stress in itself. This may look like a constant pleasing of others, staying up late, ignoring signals that your body gives you, pushing yourself at the expense of your body, a lack of knowing your worth, over-riding what you feel about a particular person or situation, not giving yourself the space to just ‘be’, living in constant drive and motion, being critical of ones-self…and this list can go on and on. 

So that’s stress under a microscope…but still only just scratching the surface!

Now if we bring in the understanding of how stress actually impacts us as menstruators, we can see that the menstrual cycle is one of the very first casualties. Keep in mind that everyone’s body is very different and comparing is of no use. It is simply important to understand and bring more awareness to the levels of stress ‘you’ experience which you will no doubt find is constantly changing. 

Your hormones rely on a very delicately choreographed cycle to keep everything going. This involves communication with the brain (hypothalamus & pituitary glands) and the ovaries. Without these pathways and the chain reaction that occurs, ovulation is turned off and then so is menstruation. 

When we are under stress, stress hormones, such as cortisol are released. And over time, when cortisol is consistently released, the brain can turn off our reproductive hormones. This can be temporary and simply delay ovulation and therefore your period may arrive later than usual, or it can stop your ovulation all together to the point where you have very long cycles or your periods are missing all together. This means we miss out on the super supportive nourishment from our hormones estrogen and progesterone. Did you know that these hormones are not only helping us with reproduction – they are also vital in hundreds of other physiological functions such as protecting against cancers, supporting bone health, nourishing skin and hair, mood stabilisers and supporting with sleep?

Stress can also affect your immune system (like being more susceptible to catching a cold) and it also increases inflammation in the body. Women experiencing period pain have higher levels of prostaglandins, whose job is to contract the smooth muscle of the uterus to allow for the shedding to occur at menstruation. But with high stress and inflammation, these markers in the body can also be higher than what is needed causing more contraction and more pain. So with a condition like Endometriosis, dealing with stress is a super valuable part of your support plan to decrease and minimize inflammation as much as possible. 

I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn how to deal with stress :)

And not just to manage it but to actually have a relationship with it and with your body so you can truly deal with it. 

Here are some ways to start to reduce stress in your life…even the underlying stress you may not have realized was even there! 

Screen detox. You could start my checking your daily ingestion of media, social media and screens in general. Yes, it’s important to be connected and aware of what’s going on around you but when it becomes addictive and purposeless and you lose yourself in the scrolling and the checking out, then it’s time to put a limit on it. This is an unnecessary stress that keeps you stimulated – constantly checking screens has been show to lead to chronically elevated cortisol. 

Move your body. Make sure you are moving your body on a daily basis – without pushing it to the extreme! Our bodies are made to move, yet see if you can do it in a way that nourishes you instead of draining you. The anti-inflammatory benefits of physical activity is well-researched, even just 20 minutes a day!

Connection. Real connection starts with you. Find ways that will support you to be with your body first as your foundation in how you approach your day-to-day living. It’s the difference between having a functional existence and living the joys and richness of life. I always say that ‘stillness’ should be the number 1 ingredient in every woman’s health care plan. The very reason I run a Stillness & Cycles program specifically for women. 

Charting. The simple act of body observation and journaling is sometimes a forgotten art that not only supports us to check in with ourselves and the communication from our body, it supports us to get to know ourselves on a deeper level and to build a relationship with our body that is founded on a loving curiosity rather than one of judgement and condemnation. 

Eat well and eat fresh. Referring back to Bridget Backhouse’s blog for some great tips here to reduce inflammation and support the body. A few of the major culprits are dairy, gluten and sugar – foods that all increase inflammation in the body and therefore have an effect on hormone regulation. To see what foods to include in your diet to help reduce inflammation, go back and check out Bridget’s blog here!

Appreciation. Everything we do, say and think matters…and it is constantly feeding us back. Do we appreciate or self-sabotage? Do we nurture our body or give ourselves a hard time? The quality of how we are in life and with ourselves determines the quality of what we get back. Appreciate the beauty that is in every moment. It is always there, even if we don’t like the result. Appreciation is key to enriching life and have a relationship with your body that is truly supportive. 


With severe period pain, PMS and other symptoms we can experience with our cycles, it is very easy to get stuck in feeling at the mercy of our body and even at the mercy of being a woman or menstruator. But we need to remember that these symptoms are not normal (even though they may be common) and rather than being at odds with it all, there is much value in building a relationship with yourself and your body that values the communication and supports you to adjust and care for yourself on a whole other level. As I’ve experienced first-hand in my own body and seen with many clients, this is a profound shift to make that reduces stress in more ways than we realise. 




References

  1. Cuevas M, Flores I, Thompson K, Ramos-Ortolaza D, Torres-Reveron A, Appleyard C. Stress Exacerbates Endometriosis Manifestations and Inflammatory Parameters in an Animal Model. Reprod Sci. 2012;19(8):851-862. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4046310/. 

  2. Cuevas M, Cruz ML, Ramirez AE, et al. Stress During Development of Experimental Endometriosis Influences Nerve Growth and Disease Progression. Reprod Sci. 2018;25(3):347-357. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29108503. 

  3. Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity | Journal of the Association for Consumer Research: Vol 2, No 2 [Internet]. Journals.uchicago.edu. 2020 [cited 28 June 2020]. Available from: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/691462

  4. Just 20 minutes of exercise enough to reduce inflammation, study finds [Internet]. Medicalnewstoday.com. 2020 [cited 28 June 2020]. Available from: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/315255#As-little-as-20-minutes-of-exercise-reduces-inflammation

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