Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

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After read­ing this blog, you eat well 80% of the time (right?), you get a work­out reg­u­larly — but why aren’t you still look­ing and feel­ing better?

Do I have enough money to sur­vive till the end of the month?

Will I pass my exams?

Will he/she return my phone call?

Am I doing some­thing stupid?

Am I gonna be bul­lied at school today?

Am I gonna get fired?

We stress our­selves out all-day, every­day. As soon as one prob­lem is solved, another one arises. We are con­stantly putting out fires. But you know what, stress and stress response by the body is a nat­ural and nec­es­sary phe­nom­e­non.  Yes, nec­es­sary. Stick with me and read on — this stuff’s pretty intriguing.

A gazelle being stalked by a lion, and run­ning for its life depends on its stress response to stay alive. The body’s stress response to this sort of event is per­fect. And some­times, we have to deal with longer-term stresses, like famines. And the body is rea­son­ably adept at this sorta thing as well. But we humans, we have a third addi­tion — stres­sors from psy­cho­log­i­cal and social events. Our body gen­er­ates the same stress response not just in response to events, but in antic­i­pa­tion of them. And when these stres­sors go on for too long, we get sick. And that’s the nub of the prob­lem. It is a vicious cir­cle. Prob­lems (real and imag­ined) –>Stress–>Whining–>More stress–> *aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh*

This post will change the way you think, under­stand, and deal with stress. So chill out, take a deep breath, and read on! Before I start sound­ing more like a Yoga instruc­tor, I’m sure you’re all wondering

Why are YOU talk­ing about stress, bro? I thought you’re wrote about work­outs and food

Stress is an inher­ent part of this fitness/health realm! And I like dig­ging into stuff — that’s how I got into this fit­ness mumbo-jumbo in the first place. My first brush with stress was dis­ori­ent­ing, to say the least. I was in grad school, and lov­ing it. I had got­ten back to read­ing books vora­ciously, I was actu­ally doing school work and enjoy­ing it. But towards the end of my sec­ond semes­ter, I kept get­ting headaches, and was unable to study. After ignor­ing them for a bit, I went to see the doc­tor at the uni­ver­sity. I was told that I was stress­ing out too much about school! And here I thought I was enjoy­ing it. I was pre­scribed some meds which doped me out and I was kinda high all day. I stopped tak­ing those meds, and said I could fix myself. And I did — it did not need any med­ica­tion. I was mak­ing some­thing I enjoyed into a chore, and I just had to reverse it. Not too hard!

And today, I’m known as the mas­ter chiller (euphemism for being a lazy ass, but I’ve learned to be a glass-is-half-full kinda guy) amongst my friends and I can safely say that I’ve learned to han­dle stress pretty effec­tively. Of course, what works for me will not always work for you, but there’s def­i­nitely some­thing you can do about it!

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So what hap­pens when you’re stressed?

Let’s get some def­i­n­i­tions straight. The human body always tries to main­tain home­osta­sis, which is keep the sys­tem in bal­ance. A rel­a­tively newer con­cept is Allosta­sis, with the brain co-ordiating body-wide changes, often includ­ing changes in behav­iour (from Saplosky). Let’s not get caught up though — the con­cept is basi­cally the body keep­ing itself sta­ble. A stres­sor is thus any­thing that can throw the body out of the sta­ble equi­lib­rium. Stress response is the body’s response to restore us back to equilibrium.

 And regard­less of the stres­sor — injured, starv­ing, too hot,too cold, or psy­cho­log­i­cally stressed — you turn on the same stress response

Yep, that’s right, the stress response is the same. The way it works is like so. You are a space­ship, and you are under attack by alien forces. The cap­tain (your brain) orders all power diverted to the shields and the guns, and turn off every­thing else. Think about it — noth­ing mat­ters if your space­ship is destroyed, right? It is about imme­di­ate sur­vival, let’s not worry about any­thing else.

Like­wise, in the human body, long-term and expen­sive stuff — diges­tion, immune sys­tem, growth and tis­sue repair, repro­duc­tion — all are of reduced con­cern. Instead, adren­a­line pumps through and your mus­cles are ready to explode. Your brain is sharp and clear, and your pain response is blunted. The famous “fight-or-flight” sys­tem. If you are fac­ing a life or death sit­u­a­tion, the body’s response has you cov­ered! But rather than these acute phys­i­cal stres­sors, we have psy­cho­log­i­cal stres­sors that are always “on”. Which means your body keeps respond­ing the same way — which is why you get sick so eas­ily when work­ing against the clock on a dead­line, or keep get­ting headaches. You get the idea! Your body’s nat­ural cor­ti­sol (another hor­mone) rhythm is thrown out of whack. And what hap­pens?

• raises our blood sugar
• weak­ens our immune system
• makes our gut leaky
• makes us hun­gry and crave sugar
• reduces our abil­ity to burn fat
• causes hor­monal imbalances
• reduces testos­terone, growth hor­mone, and thyroid-stimulating hor­mone levels
• increases our belly fat and makes your liver fatty
• gets you a six-pack. Am kid­ding! Just mak­ing sure you are still pay­ing attention.
• causes depres­sion, anx­i­ety and mood imbalances
• con­tributes to car­dio­vas­cu­lar disease

In fact, stress is at the root of all mod­ern, chronic dis­eases! Long story short, the stress-response sys­tem tries to ensure short-term sur­vival at the expense of other longer-term func­tions of the body. Which is why stresses should be brief, and not elongated!

Read that list again. Seriously!

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Pre-empting Some Responses

I got no symp­toms, so I doubt I’m really stressed out!

Unfor­tu­nately, stress is more sub­tle with its call­ing cards. Every­one reacts dif­fer­ently. Headaches, loss of sleep, weight gain — that’s just scratch­ing the sur­face. You are on a adrenalin-high for a while but a crash is around the corner.

I’m not really stressed out you know, I do yoga 5 times a week!

Yoga is awe­some, no doubt about it. But it is not a one-stop-cure for stress.

Stress is always bad for you

Not at all. Stress-Response tells the body what to expect, and how to deal with a stress. Else, we might drop dead when we walk into our sur­prise birth­day party.

Ah, stress is all over and there’s really noth­ing you can do about it!

Aw, c’mon!

I drink 2 glasses of whisky every­day. I got stress covered.

A drink is tempt­ing because you are hun­gry and crav­ing sugar, after being stressed. And a low quan­tity of alco­hol has shown effects of blunt­ing the stress-response. But more often than not, alco­hol induces a stress response. So, it is like pil­ing on the coal to stoke the fire! And stress can increase alco­hol con­sump­tion, lead­ing to another vicious cycle. Check out this jour­nal, if you want to read more. Drink coz you enjoy it and not for any­thing else.

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How does stress relate to weight loss?

When we are run­ning for our lives, the body’s diges­tive sys­tem is not really the pri­or­ity. And we aren’t very hun­gry. But we munch on snacks, binge eat — coz of stress. What’s going on? Well, in the stress response, there are two hor­mones in par­tic­u­lar that are secreted. One increases appetite, while another reduces appetite. Tim­ing is cru­cial. One, the inhibitor (CRH) is secreted fast, and cleared fast. The other (glu­co­cor­ti­coid, a class of steroid hor­mones of which cor­ti­sol is one) is secreted slower, and cleared slower. So, once the stress is ‘over’, the body has an abun­dance of the glu­co­cor­ti­coids, which tell us to recover from stress — by stim­u­lat­ing appetite amongst other things.

But because we are stressed all day, and for extended peri­ods of time, we keep doing this stress-response thing. and after a few hours of this, your glu­co­cori­toids are ele­vated all the time. That’s why you keep eat­ing those cook­ies and muffins, and the entire snack table. Added to this is a reduced abil­ity to burn fat (coz the body needs a faster source of energy dur­ing cri­sis) — and weight gain is the result of stress! Note: Am not say­ing stress is the only rea­son for weight gain but it is one of the main fac­tors. Not being stressed and eat­ing 10 muffins a day will make you fat!

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Tips to reduce stress

1. Take a vaca­tion. Numer­ous stud­ies have shown the awe­some effects of tak­ing a vaca­tion. Peo­ple who vaca­tioned had 1/8th the chances of a heart attack diag­no­sis, another study found that peo­ple were able to get one hour more of qual­ity sleep. Increased hap­pi­ness, reduced work stress, improved mood — so many things from a sim­ple vaca­tion. Of course, if your vaca­tion is an action-packed frenzy of rush­ing from one place to the next, it might not reduce stress. My kinda vaca­tion involves a lot of sleep­ing, a lot of eat­ing, a lot of lying around and read­ing, and about a cou­ple of hours of active stuff.
2. Exer­cise. Endor­phins are good for you.
3. Reduce the noise pol­lu­tion around you. I hate noise, and find it impos­si­ble to focus on stuff when it is loud!
4. The anti­dote to chronic stress — plea­sure. So, prac­tice plea­sure!
5. Get a pet!
6. Med­i­tate.
7. Eat Real Food!
8. Drop those veg­gie and seed oils. Replace them with coconut oil, but­ter, ghee! Too much omega-6 (in the veg­gie and seed oils) pro­duces a stress response in your body. We dont want that.
9. Less is more. Do less things, make your life less hec­tic. Enjoy the stuff you are doing more.
10. Take a break from elec­tron­ics peri­od­i­cally. Enter­tain your­self and your fam­ily in a more old-fashioned man­ner — fig­ure it out!
11. Plan your life bet­ter. Pri­or­i­tize what you need to get done this week, this month, and this year. Work towards them. Use it as a barom­e­ter — “Do I want to add <another task>? Does it make sense in terms of what I’ve planned”. This will help you in say­ing no, and to avoid over-committing.
12. Do what you love. Don’t waste your time doing things that you find bor­ing. Obvi­ous, right? But we waste so much of our time try­ing to fit in, or do what is ‘cool’. Scratch all that — do what you wanna be doing.
13. Avoid ass­holes. They make life a pain. I was one, until I grew a brain. Damn, that rhymes!
14. I highly rec­om­mend “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” by Robert Sapol­sky. Read it to under­stand more!

That’s all folks. Now, go on out there and be active in reduc­ing stress in your life. And as a bonus, here’s another tested method to reduce stress — share this arti­cle on Face­book and Twitter ;)