There’s an epidemic in today’s society caused by increased stress from our jobs. This affects the health and wellness of our general population. Over the past week, I’ve heard a very good piece of advice. When listening to a guest speaker at the Napa Kiwanis group, he said “There is a time in life where you find out that being lazy is just as important as being busy.” As an ambassador of Life Time Fitness, a theme that we work on with our Napa personal training clients is to utilize exercise as a source of medicine and meditation to decrease stress. It’s important to set aside time for yourself. We all live busy and stressful lives in our own arenas. If we don’t allocate time in our schedules to step away from the busy part of life, we risk the harmful effects of becoming overstressed.
While reading another fellow author’s article in the “Ask the Doctor” section of the Napa Register, the author stated that stress from jobs contribute to hypertension and the increased risk of heart disease. When we spend copious amounts of time in stimulating environments, stress hormones concentrations in our blood are increased. In particular, the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Having an increased circulating amount of these stress hormones can cause unhealthy levels of elevated heart rates and dramatic increases in high blood pressure even at low levels of activity. Increased stressful stimuli can also lead to conditions of anxiety and insomnia. Additionally, increased levels of stress from becoming too busy throughout our lives can lead to compromising social factors amongst our friends, family, and peers including symptoms of depression and lack of focus. Individuals who present symptoms of these statistics linked with high-stress jobs have factors that lead to cardiovascular disease and possible stroke scenarios.
There is a correlation between increased blood pressure, or hypertension, and being in a stressful environment. When there is an increase in blood pressure during exercise, the body adapts by improving the structural integrity of the blood vessels by making the blood vessels more firm so they can manage an increased amount of blood pressure. The results are blood vessels that can carry a larger quantity of blood. When the blood vessels are able to carry a larger quantity of blood, that means that blood pressure will go down while resting. Therefore, by looking at the example of utilizing exercise to regulate stress hormones and create beneficial adaptations to the anatomy of our blood vessels, we can see how a regularly scheduled exercise routine will elicit results that will counteract the effects of a stressful job climates. Exercise can be used as a natural “high blood pressure medication” for individuals affected by stressful environments.
In the realm of exercise physiology, stress hormones are used to assist the body in physical performance. For example, when we start to exercise and do a set of push-ups, our heart rate increases. As the heart rate increases, adrenaline is released in throughout the body. Adrenaline is produced to assist the body during exercise or strenuous physical activity by adding a naturally occurring stimulant.
Another hormone that is released during exercise is cortisol. We hear that increased levels of cortisol are a bad thing. It is true that increased levels of cortisol can be linked to interactions in hyper stressful environments. Conversely, cortisol also helps assist us in utilizing fat as a fuel source during prolonged physical activity, such as a brisk jog or bike ride. During sub maximal exercise (exercising at 60% or less of your maximum perceived exertion), cortisol and adrenaline are produced naturally to help the body perform throughout strenuous physical activity. However, when adrenaline and cortisol are produced in an environment that has low activity levels by external stressful situations, these stress hormones can become harmful and induce high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and retain subcutaneous fat.
The silver lining to this is that high levels of stress hormones caused by the stimuli of mentally taxing climates linked to our professions can be cured. One of the best ways to counteract the unhealthy increase of stress hormones and cardiovascular disease risk factors is to exercise regularly. As the body adapts to utilizing stress hormones during acute physical activity, the demand for producing stress hormones in a non-physically active stimulating environment is decreased. Educating the body on how to properly utilize stress hormones during physical activity is the one of the most revolutionary improvements exercise can offer to stressed individuals.
Instead of taking high blood pressure medication, why not reap the benefits of exercise to reduce high blood pressure? Instead of taking antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication, how about using exercise as a tool to replace the pills that are prescribed to battle the detrimental effects of stress and anxiety. As an alternate to depending on alcohol to soothe social anxiety, how about using a regular exercise routine as your natural anti-anxiety medication. Stressful environments in our lives are inevitable. We need to be a part of these highly stimulating professional environments that impose a certain amount of stress to succeed in our careers and interactions with others. It’s important to manage our stress appropriately so that we do not become unhealthy.
I promise you that adhering to exercise at least once a week will help us all as a society manage stress better. We can become stronger, happier and healthier for the days to come by practicing regular exercise as tool to manage our stress. Perhaps we can set the business of life aside and take some time for ourselves in the form of exercise. Remember the phrase at the beginning of this article, “Being lazy is just as important as being busy.”
