Stress can darken many areas of your life and negatively affect your physical and mental health. Learn about ways to adapt to the stress in your life, as well as how we treat stress-related symptoms with a functional medicine approach.
We now know that not all stress is bad, like when you play a game or go on a first date with someone. Even intense “fight or flight” stress can help you escape danger. However, chronic negative stress, like seemingly unending work stress, a serious conflict with a friend or family member, a job layoff, or financial problems can have an intensely negative impact on your wellbeing.
Every species has the ability to adapt, and it may benefit us more to think about adapting to stress as opposed to managing it. Dr. Mandeep Walia-Bhatia have helped many patients who are wrestling with stress-related health problems feel better and thrive again.
The functional medicine approach for which Gain Wellness Center is known is based on the fact that our emotional and physical health are intertwined and that any treatment’s success is dependent upon finding the root cause of the problem that’s causing the patient to suffer, not merely offering temporary or isolated solutions.
How does stress manifest itself with our health?
Unfortunately, stress impacts your body and mental health in myriad negative ways and causes:
- Sleep problems such as insomnia
- DIgestive issues, from constipation to heartburn
- Headaches
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Fatigue and depletion
- Tense muscles
- Hormonal imbalance
- Sexual dysfunction
- Fertility problems
- Heart pounding
Additionally, stress can cause pain and contribute to serious conditions like high blood pressure, which puts you at risk for stroke, as high blood sugar, which leads to diabetes. Stress can even weaken your entire immune system, making you vulnerable to a host of illnesses.
How can I adapt to stress better?
Although we provide effective stress treatments, there’s a lot you can do to mitigate it. These tips can help you tame your stress, no matter its source:
- Roll with things more
Part of building physical and mental resilience against stress is losing a certain rigidity that might express itself through perfectionism at work, intrusive thoughts in which you replay a stressful interaction or situation repeatedly, and simply overreacting to problems that are solvable.
Cultivating gratitude and thinking about whether a current stressor will matter at all in five years — or even one — can be helpful.
- Invest in healthy habits
Since stress is known to cause us to do things that are harmful rather than helpful to our health, it’s important to eat well, exercise daily, and avoid common but not-good-for-you habits like smoking, drinking too much alcohol, and misusing recreational or prescription drugs.
Engaging in a mindfulness practice, such as meditation, can also help channel your emotions, so you can be more patient and less quick to react.
Another great thing for your health is connection! This means seeing a therapist if you’re struggling with a particular issue, chatting with other dog owners at the dog park, or having coffee with a good friend. Volunteering for a cause you believe counts, too.
- Don’t be shy about creating boundaries
This goes for both your personal and professional life. Communicating in a clear and healthy way that you can’t make something for the bake sale or take on another last-minute project goes a long way in reducing stress.
- Avoidance can be a positive, too
Think about things you can change to distance yourself from stress. You can change your driving route to make your commute to work better, steer clear of that negative neighbor, or wake up half-hour earlier, so you can get off to work or school without incident.
- Treat yourself
You can lower your stress by practicing good self-care and understanding that getting a massage, soaking in the hot tub, or enjoying a delicious square of dark chocolate aren’t indulgences; they are stress reducers.
- Take a break from screens
Daily, we are inundated with information from social media, ads, and many other sources. It’s often hard to distinguish what’s helpful from what’s harmful quickly, so consider taking a screen break several times a day so that you feel more focused. Use this time to go outside, perform a delayed task, or simply look out the window and daydream for a few minutes!
We can help you with stress, too
Your Gain Wellness Center provider treats stress in many ways. First, they will recommend you get a complete wellness evaluation, during which we assess your cellular health, diet, exercise patterns, hormone levels, and overall stress response.
From there, we pinpoint treatments that will help you that include lifestyle alterations you can make to improve your health, hormone replacement therapy, nutritional counseling, and other steps.
Please call our office at 858-206-9715 to schedule a complimentary consultation, or book one online if you’re suffering from health problems caused by stress. As your partners in supporting and restoring your health, we’re certain you’ll feel like a new person once your stress-related symptoms are treated effectively.
