Use Stress to Your Advantage

Healthy high performance is all about learning how to use stress to your advantage and to minimize its negative effects.

Does it sound odd to suggest that there are advantages to stress? Isn’t it just damaging and to be avoided at all costs? Not quite. Interestingly, stress is a lot like food. Not having any at all is bad for us, and too much can make us sick. We need to control our stress levels, as much as we can, and help our bodies and minds to recover between moments of stress in our lives.

I want to help you understand how the body and mind respond to stress. I’ll also show you how acute short bursts of stress are good for us and how you can use them to improve your performance. I’ll then highlight how chronic stress can cause problems with many aspects of your health.

If we’re going to learn how to control our stress levels and use stress to our advantage, I think it’s critical that we understand how and why our bodies respond to stress. Let’s face it. Even short bursts of stressful situations can be uncomfortable. As a result, we all have a stress response that evolved as a survival strategy.

Our brains can perceive a situation as a threat. We respond to threats in our environment (sabre-tooth tiger or someone competing with us for food) by increasing our ability to perform physically and mentally (run faster or fight better). We activate a cascade of events that involve the brain, the spinal cord and a number of endocrine glands that release hormones. That’s the stress response.

The activation of the nervous system and the powerful effect of hormones improves our brain function and the strength and power of our muscles. The upside is that we are built to improve our performance. The problem is that running and fighting are not acceptable responses when your team leader announces a new project with a tight deadline.

Our eyes and ears send information to the amygdala, the emotion centre in the brain that classifies objects or events as a threat (e.g. deadlines) or not (e.g. a beautiful flower). If the situation is determined to be a threat, the amygdala sends a distress signal to another structure in the brain called the hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus is like a command centre. It activates the autonomic nervous system (ANS) which controls breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, the liver, the digestive tract and the lungs. If the hypothalamus receives a distress signal, then the heart rate and blood pressure go up, breathing increases, the liver dumps sugar into the blood, and the digestive tract shuts down (hence the dry mouth you might experience if you’ve been scared or nervous!).

Perceived threats from the environment create distress signals that activate adrenal glands that sit right over your kidneys. The adrenal glands then dump hormones like epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) and cortisol into your blood. Adrenaline and cortisol increase the activity of various organs like the heart, the lungs and your muscles. Can you remember a time when you’ve been startled, and then a few seconds later your heart starts pounding in your chest? When that happened, you were feeling the effects of adrenaline on your heart muscle.

The benefit of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol is that they increase our capacity to function at a high level, both mentally and physically. This is a good thing in short bursts. But it’s a bad thing if we keep the gas pedal pressed to the floor for long periods. Because if those hormones remain in our systems over time, or they are constantly being dumped into our bloodstream day after day, they can cause problems.

This increased activation is known as the sympathetic response. The opposite parasympathetic response is relaxation and calm, when the heart and breathing slow, the liver stores energy and the digestive tract works to digest food. Think of these two responses like the gas pedal or brake on a car. The sympathetic system gives us bursts of energy so we can deal with the environment, and the parasympathetic system helps us rest and calm down after the danger has passed.

Being aware of the balance between your sympathetic (gas pedal) response and the parasympathetic (brake) response is the key to managing your stress. The activation of the nervous system and the powerful effect of hormones improves our brain function and the strength and power of our muscles. The upside is that we are built to improve our performance. The problem is that running and fighting are not acceptable responses when your team leader announces a new project with a tight deadline.

It’s really hard to live a high-performance life when high stress is a daily reality. Chronic stress damages your body, threatens your mental health, puts strain on relationships and takes the joy out of life. Why is it so bad? Because you have no time to recover from unrelenting stress. Short bursts of stress (called acute) are essential for helping us to perform at a higher level. But elevated stress over long periods of time (called chronic) can make us sick.

According to research conducted at the Harvard Medical School, prolonged stress contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression and addiction. When epinephrine (adrenaline) damages your blood vessels, making them stiff, that elevated blood pressure increases your risk for heart attacks and strokes. And constant increased cortisol levels result in depleted energy and an increase your appetite, which can lead to weight gain and obesity.

So how can we reduce the ongoing flow of damaging stress hormones – and even find peace?

The key is to break up stressful times with periods of rest, recovery and regeneration. The good news is that anyone can learn techniques that can counter the damage of the stress response. Make sure that each day, you take some time to break the stress cycle and activate your parasympathetic system to rest, recover and to regenerate. Doing this not only helps you to perform better in the moment but to recharge your body and brain to stay healthy over the long term.

Here are some proven techniques that can help you recover from chronic stress:

Move your body

rhythmic, repeated motion is particularly soothing to our minds and bodies, such as a long walk, cycling, swimming or running. But any kind of movement will relieve tension, improve circulation and clear your mind.

Get into nature

Head outside to the park, the woods or the garden to lower blood pressure, strengthen your immune system, reduce tension and depression, and boost your mood. It’s stunning how good it is for your health to be in nature. Leave the cell phone and ear buds at home.

Practice yoga or Tai Chi

Like nature therapy, yoga and Tai Chi decrease stress and anxiety, increase energy, and boost your immune system. They also give you more stamina – needed in stressful times – and improve the quality of your sleep.

Have perspective

Don’t be so quick to conclude that you “can’t handle” a stressful situation. This is truly a mind over matter opportunity. Believing that you are strong and resourceful actually makes you stronger and more resourceful. Don’t give into negative self-talk about not having what it takes to manage life.

Change the nature of your response

Research indicates that taking an active, problem-solving approach to life’s challenges relieves stress and can also transform it into something positive. If you withdraw, deny the problem or spend all your time venting, you’ll feel helpless. Instead, be determined to make a change, put effort into it, and plan for better results.

Slow Deep Breathing

But before we start into the health and physiology, I want to give you one powerful tool you can implement right now that I’m sure will make a huge difference in your life. I’d like you to start applying the power of deep breathing each day.

Start small by taking three deep breaths each time you sit down at your desk. Do it each time you sit down: in the morning, after breaks, and after lunch. At the same time, practise the relaxation techniques we talked about a while ago.

• Sit comfortably

• Drop and relax your shoulders and arms

• Also relax your face, legs and core

Follow this simple breathe-deep-and-relax routine many times a day. You should become more patient, calm and relaxed. Deep breathing exercises have been part of yoga practices for thousands of years, but recent research at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital documents the positive impact deep breathing has on your body’s ability to deal with stress.

I hope that these ideas help! Let me know what you think and what works for you!