This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

TCM and Managing Stress

Managing stress in a stressful world - today's #TCMTuesday blog is about the stress response in the body.

For #TCMTuesday this week, I want to talk about stress.  I know that we have talked about in past posts, and I'm going to talk a little more about it today as it relates to something that affects us all - the stress of managing our every day lives.

Stress and how we handle it is a major health factor.  Both Eastern and Western medicine acknowledges that marginalizing your stressful factors will lead to better health.

Physiologically, the stress response (which evolved from the preservation-of-self instincts of our ancestral animal predecessors) was originally utilized by the body when it was in immediate danger.  If the mind perceived imminent threat, the sympathetic nervous system turns on the "fight or flight" response, which routes blood sugar to the major muscle groups and the brain, heightens vision and hearing, increases heart and breath rates in anticipation of defense tactics, while shutting down digestive, urinary and reproductive processes.  This is accomplished through the mass release of chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol into the blood.

Find out what's happening in Temple Terracewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Today, most of us don't live in a danger versus safe kind of world; we live somewhere in between.  Stress can come at us from anywhere, and often hits us from multiple areas of our lives.  It could be that we are having issues with a personal relationship.  Maybe your job is putting a lot of pressure on you to perform and not giving you the resources to do what they're asking.  Perhaps you are facing financial situations that are less than desireable.  Any stressful situation, whether it is physical or mental/emotional, can trigger the fight or flight response in our bodies. 

Many of us live under a kind of constant pressure, always pushing forward, always riding our horses hard and fast.  In this environment, the body has to adapt to having a certain amount of stress all the time by constantly releasing adrenaline and cortisol, at lower levels than an imminent danger situation, but enough that there is constant low-level sympathetic nervous system response as described above.  Because this stress response evolved in humans to meet the needs of situational danger, not constant stress situations, eventually the body becomes chemically and hormonally "fatigued", and the receptors for these chemicals become desensitized and overwhelmed.  We reach a point of fatigue, and it is becoming known in modern health as "Adrenal Fatigue", which describes a wide range of signs and symptoms, including being a contributing factor in heart disease, digestive disorders, chronic pain, and more.

Find out what's happening in Temple Terracewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

TCM tells us that too much work, too much food, too much sex, too much alcohol, too much exercise - too much of anything, even stress - will lead to a disease state based on imbalance, and it will manifest as different symptoms in different people based on their individual constitution.  A TCM physician will look at your signs and symptoms, including your lifestyle and everything that encompasses your world, and make recommendations to help balance out your life. 

The things you do every day make up a significant part of who you are.  Taking the time to take care of yourself in all aspects of your life means that you will be able to handle what life throws at you with a smile, not with fear. 

Feeling overwhelmed?  I'm here to help, as always.

--Marissa Byrum, AP, DOM, Dipl. Ac., is an associate at Ideal Balance Center for Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine in Temple Terrace, FL.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Temple Terrace