The Relationship between Stress & your Gut
Stress. How stress plays havoc with your gut and how to help fix the relationship between everyday life stress and your gut.
Whether you realise this or not is the undeniable presence stress has on your gut. We acknowledge that stress is very clearly linked to our nervous system.
However what a lot of people don’t realise is that stress also plays absolute havoc with your digestive system causing a whole range of gastrointestinal problems including cramps, bloating and inflammation.
Your gut and brain are in constant communication with each other, there are simple ways to protect your gut from the stress of everyday life:
1) Exercise
I am always in shock when people say they don’t exercise, I honestly do believe that there is a type of exercise for everyone to enjoy. Seriously. Also the age old excuse of ‘I don’t have the time’ – I urge you to please please make the time, the benefits are astronomical.
Take your pick, yoga, running, weights, boxing, tai chi, dance, walking, swimming – I could go on.
They are all excellent stress relievers; introducing them into your life three times a week will automatically reduce your stress even if it’s a 15/20 walk in the morning. Get moving.
There is also the social aspect of exercise, which is just as beneficial as the exercise itself.
2) Saying NO!
We are all guilty of taking on too much, as a culture we have lost the ability to say no and overly use the word yes.
Slow down, one of the best parts of getting older for me is a learnt the ability to say no – when I do say no, nothing bad happens the world keeps turning and a little secret from me to you. You didn’t miss outta on a thing. Take it from someone who for many of years struggled from FMO (fear of missing out).
Give yourself time to recharge and refresh. You’ll thank yourself for it, I promise.
3) Digital Detox
We are all fully aware the effect that phones has on our mental health. We work from them, socialise and then there are social media. Which is a total separate discussion.
But taking time away from your phones, computers so on and so forth is very important. It maybe impossible for some people to take a couple of weeks off the gram, but even if its for an hour a day that you put your phone to one side, go for a walk, paint, talk face to face, remember what you did before the invention of phones. Take some time out, the longer the better. Reconnect with yourself and your surroundings.