What happens when we are stressed?
Sure seems like there is a lot of stress going around this week. Client after client have been reporting to me about all the stressful events that have been going on in their lives. Thankfully, most of these same clients have been telling me how grateful they are to know self-hypnosis. Using hypnosis, they have been able to keep calm and relaxed and deal effectively with all the challenges life has been presenting.
Feeling stressed makes your body become tense or strained, which significantly reduces your working stamina, patience, concentration and mental capacity. During stress, cortisol is released. Cortisol is an important hormone in the body that is secreted by the adrenal glands. In proper amounts, it helps the body recharge, by offering a quick burst of energy for survival reasons. It enhances disease resistance with increased immunity, fights inflammation and improves memory. Unfortunately, in our current high-stress culture, the body’s stress response is activated so often that it doesn’t have a chance to return to normal, producing what is termed “chronic stress”. This is harmful, since too much cortisol promotes the accumulation of abdominal fat, which is associated with a greater amount of health problems than fat deposited in other areas of the body. Some of the health problems associated with increased stomach fat are heart attacks, strokes, higher levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL). In addition, excess cortisol suppresses immunity, shrinks brain cells and impairs memory. It also inhibits your body’s inflammatory response, thus explaining why stress makes you more vulnerable to getting sick. In a state of stress, the adrenaline causes an increase in blood pressure and constricts vessels to skin and the digestive system, making you feel physically tense, uptight or tired. Although stress isn’t the only reason that cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream, it has been termed “the stress hormone” because it’s also secreted in higher levels during the body’s “flight or fight” response to stress, and is responsible for several stress-related changes in the body.
Hypnotherapy can make all the difference in how you and your body respond to what life sends your way. Hypnosis won’t slow down or stop the stressors – but it sure can change how you respond.
