How the Body Reacts To the Effects of Stress

We need different types of energy for a variety of functions.  It takes energy to complete day-to-day activities, exercise, and for normal metabolic reactions that constantly occur throughout our bodies.  Once our valuable energy stores are depleted, they must be refilled.  Activities that are the most critical to life are refueled first, while other activities are put on hold dependent on energy reserves.  It takes a lot of energy to maintain a “stress” environment within your body.  When this happens you don’t have energy reserves available to maintain activities within your body that allow for normal balance and there is no reserve to combat exposure to infection or disease.  There are many descriptions of how the body reacts to the effects of stress and many disorders identified as a response to chronic stress such as ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux – to name a few.  It is no coincidence that many of these conditions are associated with the gastrointestinal tract.  It is also not a coincidence that some of the most effective stress preventive measures involve how you fuel your body which can maximize the coordinated defense mechanisms that occur within your gut.  Our best defense is a good offense in the form of daily nutritional maintenance.

What Is the Digestive Domino Effect?

Often when an individual is stressed it incites the Digestive Domino Effect (DDE).  The initial action associated with DDE involves basic eating habits which result in nutritional compromise. The manner in which you eat is critical to your health but is commonly disregarded or ignored.  People who are stressed may not take the time to chew their food, but instead gulp rapidly and in that haste usually consume greater quantities of food.  Digestion begins in the oral cavity during chewing where saliva mixes with food to start the digestive process prior to moving to the stomach.  If food isn’t properly macerated in the mouth it takes more energy and time in the stomach to undergo the complete digestive process.  This is one step in the domino effect where you could be banking that energy for other important activities in the body rather than using it for digestive support.

It is also important to remember that different foods digest at different rates based on their composition.  When larger amounts of food are consumed than the stomach is designed to process, the system gets backed up.  The simple clinical presentation for that is bloating, gas, and abdominal discomfort.  This is the second phase of DDE.

The end of the digestion process is elimination.  The overall function of this process is to effectively clear toxins from your body.  When they are not cleared in a normal manner they remain in your body and have the potential for absorption and further negative effects on body systems and can manifest clinically as diarrhea or constipation resulting in the final phase of DDE and is a common clinical sign in people who are stressed.

Other systems in your body respond to stress and indirectly affect the digestive process

When the body is in a state of stress it releases hormones such as cortisol.  When this hormone is circulating at higher than normal levels it is a signal to the body that this is a survival alert and all systems that are not part of acute survival will either be shut down or muted until the life threatening activity is abated.  The digestive process is not part of the emergency response team so digestion and metabolism are altered.  In cases of chronic stress the body continues in this unbalanced state and digestion, absorption of nutrients, and elimination of waste are all adversely affected.

Digestive Support During Episodes of Stress

It would make sense that the best stress preventive health measure should be to maintain and nurture the body’s normal digestive processes and defense mechanisms.  Provide your body with valuable nutrients and eliminate empty calories found in processed foods, fast foods, and alcohol.  Remove products that stimulate the sympathetic nervous system which would create an additive effect to the emergency response created by stress.  These foods include processed sugar, caffeine drinks, energy drinks, and soda.  It takes valuable energy, nutrients, and hormones to process these non-beneficial foods that could be used to fight infectious disease, bacterial infections, and degenerative disorders.  Think about where you want these valuable resources working for you.

We all realize we will never completely remove stress from our busy lives, but we can greatly reduce the effects of stress on our bodies.  The three preventive measures include: properly fueling our bodies, being mindful of our eating practices, and harnessing energy for defense against disease rather than using it to fortify a poorly functioning digestive system.