(Don’t forget that stress can be triggered by foods, for example, food made with bleached white flour, sugary foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, processed foods, and chemically processed foods that will become body burden while the stomach digesting foods, resulting in toxins which will cause stress that affect your body and different organs.)
However, in this article we will only mention about lifestyles that can equally trigger stress, especially its spreading to the various systems of the body which originates from the nature of the stressful disorder, causing by the adrenal glands secreting cortisol, in order to handle the body in crisis, mainly causing by a fall in blood sugar, consequently, the body system will comprehend that you’re running away from the tiger or you’re dying, therefore the cortisol must be secreted to extract energy from different parts of the body, maintaining heart rate and higher blood pressure.
Of course, if it rarely happens, it won’t matter. But in modern day living, human’s eating lifestyle is mostly likely to be exposed toxin, both from foods and environment. Thus, internal stress occur continuously from every few hours to days, months, and years, resulting in other symptoms associated with chronic stress, such as insomnia, mood disorder, abnormal menstruation, fertility problem, having trouble losing weight, and food addiction. Apart from adjusting diet to relieve stress, and adopting slow living lifestyle – there’s yet another approach, which is to change your thinking that will help change your lifestyle. We have to follow these steps carefully.
Step 1
Separating the good from the bad
Separating the good from the bad is essential for life, especially in the treatment for stress, because understanding matters and people around you is the way to develop mindset or mental determination that enables you to assess the situation and identify between good and bad, and also the positive and negative people in your lives, therefore, your brain will eventually be able to function automatically when it needs to, consequently, life stressors will be reduced immediately.
An easy way for practicing identifying is to take notes every day (probably before bedtime). Try spending half an hour to review your daily life, by dividing a piece of paper into two squares, writing what is right in the first square and what’s wrong in the second square, if possible, you should specify that when you feel bad with that situation, do you have a bounding pulse? And how long does it take to wipe out that abnormal sensation? At the same time, we can also adopt this approach to record our food intake, for example, which meals leave you abnormal sensations. Keep writing diaries and create a summary every week, in order to let yourself know which life events, people, or food that have the most negative impact on you, ranking the five worst (1-5) and the three best (1-3).
Step 2
Categorize events, people and foods that make you feel bad.
When you have followed the 1st step for few months until you begin to have a new mindset, the next step is to identify where those negative events, people, and food are coming from? At home? At work? Or from general environment? So that when you have to step into such places you will be prepared yourself physically and mentally.
Self-preparation is to minimize the effects of certain factors that make you feel bad, for example, if you have to deal with your stubborn kids at home during the holidays, you should eat foods or do activities that make you feel good.
Step 3
Keep doing good things
If going to the temple and listening to the Dharma teachings make you feel good, then spare time to do it often, as well as doing other activities that make you feel refreshed, keep doing them constantly.
When encountering the unavoidable terrible events, apart from following step 2 by minimizing the factors that trigger your negative emotions, you need to deal with problem or get out of a bad situation tenderly. For example, when facing with an argumentative child, you should lower your standards and open up to them, then perhaps it will help you to see your children in a new dimension, for example, he’s very stubborn because he’s growing up and try to make his own decision – or he become more stubborn when he’s in a house with limited space, which in the latter case you might solve the problem by taking him out which will help relax yourself as well.
However, changing your mindset according to the instructions above should be done in conjunction with reducing or refraining from consuming bleached flour, sugary foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, processed foods, chemically processed food and toxins around you.
Reference
Adrenal Fatigue: the 21st Century Stress Syndrome by Dr. James L. Wilson,
Naturopathic Specialists
Compiled by: Winna Rakkarn
Photo credit: Unsplash
