My Journey With Health And Fitness – The Impact Of Stress

So yesterday I was at the gym and decided that if I really am back to being committed to my health and fitness then it is time to toss away my fears and get to work. It started with doing snatches which is where you bend down with a heavy weight and pull it up along the front of the body and using power from you legs you ‘snatch’ it up in the air until your arm is straight. Despite just having come off more than six weeks of only using 10lb weights I thought screw it and grabbed a 20lb weight. Then it was time to do burpees (too difficult to explain so if you don’t know what they are please google them). Usually I do these using a bench so that I am not going right down to the ground but I reminded myself commitment time and so for the first time I did full on burpees! Actually I did 21 of them. The only thing that had been holding me back was fear of failure, guess that is no longer and issue.

Today was the caregivers’ support group that I help facilitate. It was quite a rough one today as one of the participants is going through a really tough time. It was so obvious that they are more than just anxious, they are under a huge amount of stress. Of course the group immediately tried to support this person in any way they could and we are looking at finding some resources so that they get some more help.

One of the topics that came up as part of the discussion was how stress doesn’t just impact you mind but also your body. I know I did post about this quite a while ago but I think it is worth mentioning again. I can remember before I became educated about stress thinking like many of my co-workers, that if someone went off on ‘stress’ leave they must be faking it or that they were weak. Now to those I kind of comments I say BS!!!! I worked extremely hard to rebrand the notion of ‘stress’ leave to what it actually is, sick leave due to stress related illness. Trust me it was an uphill battle to convince people that stress can be a physical illness and regardless about what you think about someone it is very real. I truly hope with some of the courses I facilitated that I was able to remove some of the stigma around this illness and I know I have continued to work on the perspective of people who still look at this type of sick leave with distain.

Here is the reality, stress manifests itself in many different ways. In one of the courses I used to facilitate we would post a large outline of a body on the wall. We would then give participants coloured stickers and ask them to place them on the body in places they feel impacted when they are under stress. It was quite eye opening for many of them to see that stress is felt all over the body whether that be in tense/sore muscles, headaches, nerve pain or even nausea. Very few people in those courses really talked about stress in terms of mental impact (though that is of course also true) but rather they realized it can absolutely be a physical illness.

6 years ago when I was going through a very difficult time in my life dealing with both my siblings in ICU’s in critical condition, a friend convinced me to go see a doctor to make sure I was ok. The doctor ran a bunch of blood work and even ordered an ECG. While I acknowledge that this was also how I was diagnosed as diabetic what truly frightened me was all sorts of other abnormal results. Fortunately this doctor had known me and my family for years so when we went through the results he calmly explained to me the ones that were likely being impacted my the massive amount of stress that I was under. Apparently he was right since 3 months later everything but my blood glucose was back to normal.

The bottom line is stress will take a serious toll on your body. I realize that my method of obsessive walking may not be for everyone but there are other things you can do to manage your own stress. Really, you can exercise, read a book, listen to music, talk to a friend, hell some people tell me they find cooking lowers their stress. But find something that we allow you mind and body to turn away from your stress even for a short period. The results are so worth it.