6: Transforming Your Perception of Stress for Optimal Health

Michael Kummer: Alright, welcome back to another episode of the Primal Shift podcast. Um, in this episode, we're going to talk about stress and stress is interesting because it's, there is good stress. Not all stress is bad. In fact, Stress has been an important factor in keeping us alive and still does to this point, but there's obviously, you know, chronic stress that's not too good for our health.

And the problem with chronic stress in particular is that it appears to be. almost impossible to escape in our modern life. And so in this episode in particular, I want to talk about, first of all, the types of stress and how they're different. Very briefly about the side effects of being exposed to chronic stress.

And number three, and most importantly, how to either reduce your stress, Best case scenario, or if you cannot reduce or remove the stressor, then how to make, how to change how your body perceives the stress and how to make you more stress resilient so that your body responds in a more, in a healthier way, in a less damaging way, so you can deal with the stressor without suffering The side effects.

And before we get started, as always, please subscribe, follow, share to help support this podcast and to enable other people to find it, to, you know, get it up in the ranking, et cetera, because that's very important to, um, you know, support the success of this podcast and make it hopefully worthwhile, um, for me to, you know, invest the time and No, you, we can cut that.

Cut that, Chelsea. We're not going to say make it worthwhile. Um, so before we get started, uh, as always, please subscribe, follow, share to support this podcast, to help other people find it as well. The higher it goes up in the ranking, the more followers we have, the more likely it is for other people to see, to find it, and to hopefully, you know, get some of the, the information here as well that I share in those episodes.

So, with that out of the way, let's talk about the different types of stress and how they're different. You know, there is acute stress. And that's super important. You know, if you are in a life threatening situation, you want your body to respond in a certain way to get you out of harm's way. You know, that's super important and has been a crucial part of, of human history, of our evolution.

to response to acute stressors, you know, by, you know, making sure your sympathetic nervous system kicks in, gets you into fight or flight mode. So you can either escape or fight. You know, if, if you're, if a saber tooth tiger attacks and you know, you cannot outrun that, you know, dude, you know, you have to fight, you have to do anything it takes to improve your chances of survival.

So acute stress, very important for our survival. If you, you know, Get close to a street and you, you know, hear a car coming, you know, and sometimes, you know, I'm not sure if you've ever experienced it, but sometimes, you know, like in my thoughts and I walk up to a street and suddenly I'm like, you know, Oh, I'm glad, you know, I didn't do this.

And this initial stress response is really important to help us make hopefully the right decision to get out of harm's way. So super important, acute stress. You don't want to suppress that. You don't want to disable your body's stress response. That would be incredibly counterproductive and. Um, not good for your health.

Chronic stress, on the other hand, is a relatively modern phenomenon. You know, being under stress all the time, um, is not something that humans have ever experienced, uh, before, you know, we've adopted modern lives. You know, financial issues, Problems at your job. Um, you know, raising kids while having a full time job, you know, all of, you know, having a thousand things on your plate, you know, a lot of activities, be it, you know, child activities or your own.

None of those things have ever been part of, of our society until relatively recently 6. 2. 6 million years of human evolution, our modern stressors are a relatively new phenomenon and they have a a dramatic impact, negative impact on our health because our system is not meant to be in fight or flight mode.

All the time, you know, we are meant to be in simple in parasympathetic mode, meaning in resting and digesting and recovering mode more time than not. And so what are some of the side effects of being in fight or flight mode all the time? Well, one major thing that is often overlooked is nutrient depletion.

So in other words, if you're under stress, your body has higher demands. on certain minerals and vitamins. And if you don't replenish those micronutrients through diet, then your chronic stress can actually have downstream effects on your health that are caused, not necessarily caused, but then that are, um, a symptom of your nutrient deficiencies, you know, be it then, you know, bad dental health or.

Poor bone density or, you know, metabolic issues, you know, thyroid issues, you know, all of those things can go back to stress because stress depletes nutrients or has high causes a higher demand on certain nutrients that you might not be getting from food. Digestive issues is another thing. I had. Uh, uh, in the past for three decades, almost irritable bowel syndrome.

And while food, the wrong types of food that I consumed were the major culprit. I think stress also plays a role if, you know, there is a reason why, you know, you can feel it in your, in your gut, your gut health is impacted if you're under stress all the time. And so, and again, if your gut isn't healthy, it has downstream effects on the rest of your body.

So everything is connected and a lot of it can go. back to stress as a contributing factor, or in some cases, maybe the root cause. You know, there are some people who do everything right nutritionally, you know, try to sleep well, et cetera, but they are under so much stress. that they are still not in short, they still don't enjoy optimal health.

And the reason for that is because they are suffer from chronic stress, cardiovascular disease risk. Obviously, if you're constantly under stress, your heart has to work, your heart has to work harder. You know, they are in also from a nutrient, then deficiency perspective and gut health perspective, and all of that then feeds back into your metabolic health.

And you are under increased risk of, you know, suffering from a cardiovascular problem. If your metabolism isn't working properly and negatively influenced by the chronic stress, you're under, um, sleep problems. You know, if you're under stress, especially in the second half of the day, you might have issues or trouble falling asleep quickly.

And you know, I have. had this, you know, with racing thoughts and my head spinning before going to bed. Um, and that obviously then leads to a later sleep onset. And that, you know, negatively impacts your circadian rhythm, your regular sleep routine, and again, downstream effects. Then to the next morning, you might be overeating the wrong types of food because you're sleep deprived.

You might be angrier with your kids. You might be less resilient to other stressors that occur during the day or that impact during the day. So it's like a, it's like a vicious circle at the end of the day that can, you know, start with stress and then, you know, cause poor sleep and then cause even more stress and lower stress resilience.

So those are some of the side effects, most of which I'm sure you were familiar with. Maybe the nutrient deficiencies, um, is something new that you didn't know before. So the question is now, how can you reduce your stress? and make you more resilient to stress at the same time. Because I think the most efficient way of dealing with stress is to a remove some of those stressors from your life period and to make you more resilient to dealing with the remaining stressors at the same time.

I think if you can attack both of those from the same, at the same time, it's most effective and you'll feel the positive impact much, much quicker. Then if you continue exposing yourself to chronic stressors all the time, while only trying to deal with them in a more effective manner, if you get my drift in it, that makes sense.

So, there are different I guess buckets or different strategies on how you can deal with that. Number one is, you know, temporarily reducing your stress. And there are a few things you can do in this, but it's important to understand that many of those things in that category are effective in the moment.

They help you temporarily. There are no permanent fix for stress reduction. or improving your stress resilience. But nevertheless, if you're in a high stress situation, those are the things you can employ right away to reduce the stress in a moment. And one is, you know, meditation, mindfulness, breathing exercises, you know, personally, I, to be honest, I have not, Double as much with meditation as I maybe should have, I also think that a lot of people who are meditating aren't really, um, and some of them, you know, it's, we got to talk about this more in an upcoming episode, I suppose, but.

You know, with meditation, the point really is to change your brain activity, to change the type of your, your brainwave patterns. And very often meditation, if you're not, uh, proficient with it, it doesn't really change your brainwaves in the manner that is most effective. But nevertheless, generally speaking, meditation can be highly effective at de stressing, at getting you out of a.

stressful mindset and helping you cope with the situation in the moment. Breathing exercises incredibly impactful. I use them all the time. One of the most effective, um, scenario or one of the scenarios where I noticed, uh, an incredibly effectiveness of breathing exercises when jumping into a cold plunge, you know, that initial shock response, that stressor of getting into cold water.

I've noticed with breathing exercises, I can perfectly control and mitigate and get out of that fight or flight response. Breathing is incredibly important. We do it all the time. We don't even notice it, but many of us. breathe incorrectly through our mouths and way too fast, you know, having, um, the wrong balance of oxygen and CO2 in our bodies.

And you can control and change that and directly impact and influence your nervous system with breathing. In particular, you can get out of a fight or flight response by just doing a few simple breathing exercises. And I'm going to link resources down in the description on the show notes so you can check that out, including an app that I've been using called Othership that is really effective because it has a library of guided breathing exercises that you can use to get the hang of it and, you know, get into that whole thing.

Journaling or brain dumping. That's another thing. It sounds so simple and I am not a You know, a big journal, I don't like writing stuff with my hand because I have terrible handwriting. I cramp up. I've not been using my, my, my hands to write anything. I'm typically more of a, you know, keyboard kind of guy, but nevertheless, what I do most nights is I write down what's in my head.

And very often for me, those are things that I have to do or have to think about or have to consider in the future, be it the next day, the next week or whatever, it doesn't really matter. Bye. Offloading that information from my brain onto a piece of paper or my digital reminders list is a de stressor for me because it immediately tells my brain I don't have to hang on to that information.

It's stored somewhere safe and it'll pop up at a certain time so I can pick. it right up and process that information, that task or that to do. By simply brain dumping, um, removing the thoughts from my head and put it on paper or in, you know, in digital form, it's, uh, it has, has a dramatic effect, positive effect on how quickly I can fall asleep and the quality of my sleep by doing that before bedtime.

Um, so I highly recommend that if you have racing thoughts at night, write down what you're thinking, write down what's in your head and you'll sleep better and fall asleep quicker, I promise you. Walking is another thing that's not only good, we talked about it from an exercise perspective in a previous episode, but also from a de stressing perspective by walking.

I can be in my head. I can think about, I can organize my thoughts. I can, you know, physically release tension, but also cognitively, I can release tension. It's a great way to temporarily relieve stress. Physical touch is another thing. You know, if you've, if you're in, in a bad mindset or bad state of mind and you know, you're stressed or whatever, you know, ask your partner to hug you.

I know it sounds silly, it sounds funny, but it really helps. Physical touch directly influences your nervous system. And more specifically, it can get you out of that fight or flight mode and back into a parasympathetic mode because physical touch is a sign for your body. that you're safe, that it's okay.

And that's often enough to get you out of a stressful situation, of a stressful mindset, and to help you calm down and recover for the moment at least. Reconnecting with nature is another thing that I think is very underrated. If you're, if I'm stressed and I go into nature, you know, I take off my shoes, I take off my shirt, I go to the backyard, I interact with our animals, I sit down just for a few minutes, I hold one of the bunnies, I hold one of the chicks or the goslings or, you know, just play with the dog, you know, whatever it might be, or go and walk in the woods.

Just being in an environment that Humans have been for millions of years that have, where humans have thrived for millions of years, getting away from, you know, our, you know, artificial type of environments with artificial light and, and climate controlled rooms and, and homes, et cetera, just getting out into nature.

Being with nature, being in an environment that is so natural to us has had a dramatic impact on on how I can manage stress and how I can de stress temporarily. So that was number one, temporary stress reduction. Number two, second bucket is hormetic stressors. And so introducing stress to Fight stress might sound counterintuitive, but it actually works.

So hormetic stressors are things that temper, that are acute stressors at the end of the day that help you make you more resilient and help you cope with stressors. Going down the line, better and more efficiently. And so what that specifically means is for me is cold exposure, heat exposure, and exercise.

So let's start with cold exposure. And I have several YouTube videos and blog posts to talk about, you know, all of those things in more detail. So I encourage you to check that out. And we'll probably talk about those in a future episode as well. But if you jump into cold water, or turn on and step into the cold shower, your body immediately goes into fight or flight mode.

But if you leverage that acute stressor and use breathing exercises to help you get out of the flight, fight or flight mode, to get back into a more parasympathetic mode, into a rest and digest mode. then you teach your body how to respond in stressful situations. And it doesn't then matter if the stressful situation is due to an acute stressor or a chronic stressor, you teach your body how to respond to it by breathing.

by, you know, doing whatever it takes physiology, by doing whatever it takes from a physiology. Okay, Charles, you have to cut this. Um, you teach your body, um, whatever, what it takes from a physiology. Can I say that fucking word? Physiological perspective from a physiological perspective. So by exposing yourself to that stressor and dealing with it by breathing, by doing whatever it takes, you teach your body how to properly respond.

and mitigate that stress. Specifically, breathing, as I've mentioned before, with cold plunging has had a dramatic impact on not only de stressing at the moment, but also applying that knowledge, that muscle memory, if you will, and do it again in a future stressful situation. And the same goes with, with heat exposure, like sauna bathing, with exercise, those are all stressors that make it very easy to a degree to learn how to deal with that and then apply that knowledge automatically in the future when you're exposed to chronic stress.

So I really like hormetic stressors. The key here is not to overdo it. If you already at the edge and on your limit. Maybe it's not the right time to add additional stressors on top in that particular moment, but once you are, if you're in a good state of mind, maybe when you're not under chronic stress and not at the, on the edge already, use and leverage those hormetic stressors to whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.

improve how you automatically then respond to stress by breathing, by, you know, being mindful, by just recognizing that you're under stress and dealing with it. And that has had a dramatic impact on how I can handle stress. The next one is more has to do with improving your stress resilience on making you, your body more capable.

of dealing with a stressor without letting it negatively impact your health. And one of the things I mentioned already, touch, and there is a nuance to touch, um, or a methodology called tactile stimulation. And those are basically gentle vibration patterns that kind of mimic a hug to a degree, but that ultimately influence your nervous system to get back to get out of the sympathetic mode and back into parasympathetic mode.

And so I have several devices at my disposal that we all use in our family that use tactile stimulation. to downregulate our sympathetic nervous system. And so some of the ones just to mention, if you use Apollo Neuroscience, that's one of my favorite devices. We have also touch points and there is Sense8.

There are different devices. I've reviewed them on my blog, so I'm going to link them down below in the show notes, but those devices gently vibrate in a way that that influence your, our nervous system that get you out of the fight or flight response. And by doing that consistently, by using those devices consistently, you teach your body how to respond to stress, how to get out of that sympathetic mode.

So you improve your stress resilience. And there are a lot of studies that have shown that by using tactile stimulation several times a week, up to three hours or so a day, because it's usually a passive device. You just clip it onto your clothing or wear it as a, you know, around your wrist or whatever, and you go about your day.

And just by having that, that sensation of touch, that gentle vibration, you become more resilient to stress. And that means you can then handle stress better, even when you're not wearing those devices, even though they also work in the moment, of course, to immediately get you out of that fight or flight mode.

The second one, there is another one that I'm, a device that I'm currently testing. Um, it's called brain tap and it, it, it helps you re rewire some of those connections in your brain to make you also more risk. It's like, if you will, it's like a kind of meditation, but in a way that teaches your brain to response differently, even when you're not meditating.

So it kind of, it's, it's like a workout and exercise for your brain that changes physically the structures and the connections in your brain to make you. more resilient to stress, even when you're not using the device and stay tuned. I'm going to have a review on the blog and on the YouTube in the next couple of months.

So I'm going to talk more about that. The other thing to improve your stress resilience is with diet. You know, if you are stressed, then you are more likely to make poor dietary choices because your If you're in fight or flight mode, you know, from an evolutionary perspective, that often meant, okay, we have to eat because we need energy to either fight or to flee the situation, so we need to, you know, cram as much calories or as much energy into our body as we possibly can.

You know, modern stressors, chronic stressors, don't require us to eat, to consume more energy. You know, we, we have always a full fridge, for most of us at least, so there is no need to eat, eat, eat. But we still do it because that's our natural physiological, physiological response, right? And so Be mindful when you're stressed to not give in to those cravings because you don't need it, but at the same time, you know, it's also maybe a sign that your body needs more nutrients, not necessarily energy, but micronutrients to help deal with the stress.

And so you want to make sure you consume high foods that are very high in nutrients. And those are in particular organ meats. And I've said that many times before, even on this podcast, but one of the best ways to make sure your body has all the nutrients it needs to deal with stress to better cope with stress is to consume organ meats.

And If you're not into organ meats, at least not fresh organ meats, free stride beef organ supplements like the ones we sell at MK Supplements are an excellent way to make sure you have all the nutrients your body needs to deal with stress. Obviously, you know, just consuming beef organ, my beef organ capsules is not gonna, you know, fix all your stress issues, obviously, but everything else being equal, it gives your body a better fighting chance.

Um, and by fighting, you know, sometimes that means literally, you know, that fight or flight response, but obviously that's not the only thing you want to do, but it's one piece of the puzzle that you should not neglect. Um, and then from a long term perspective, you know, those, a lot of those things is, you know, is cutting your stress or dealing with it temporarily, making you more resilient, which is kind of a long term strategy as well.

But then ultimately your goal also has to be to remove some of those stressors from your life to the extent possible. If you absolutely hate your job, maybe it's time to, you know, change the strategy and look for something else that you find more joyful and that is less stressful. Doing less is one of the most impactful ways to reduce stress.

We all do too much. That includes me. That includes my wife. And we talk about this all the time to see, okay, what is it really that we have to do? How does that compare and overlap with what we want to do? And what are the things that we can cut? And sometimes cutting might sound painful and is painful and difficult, especially if you've gotten into a routine where you do certain things, be it in our kids activities or whatever, but sometimes it's important to make hard choices and to cut stuff.

And I always think about whenever I have a hard decision to make, I'm like, if I was diagnosed with a life potentially life ending disease, or if, if something terrible would happen, you know, stuff that really makes you re evaluate everything that you're doing. And I sometimes play this scenario out in my head and say, okay, if I had, if, if X, Y, Z would happen, would I still be doing this or that?

And if the answer is no, then it's a thing I can cut, you know, and that I'm willing to cut and bulldoze over it. And for us, you know, just to give you an example, you know, we had our older one signed up for gymnastics and she really loved gymnastics, but it was at a time in the evening, typically that would cut into her bedtime.

It would then become more competitive and more often and stressful for her at the end of the day. And we're like, okay, as much as you like doing gymnastics, the combination of going to bed late. of being stressed, of being in inside under artificial light for hours per week and the stress of having to drive you and, you know, doing maybe things that you don't like and being super competitive about something that, you know, likely chance that you're not going to become a professional gymnast.

And I actually, I wouldn't want her to, but all of those factors combined led us to the very hard decision that we're going to stop doing gymnastics. You know, and there are many other examples where I'm like, if your kid's activities, you know, stress you out, make your entire life miserable because you going from A to B all the time and you know, all the weekends are blocked, et cetera.

Maybe it's time to cut that stuff. You know, if your own activities get in the way, like, you know, for me personally, it was very often, you know, working out, doing CrossFit was like, you know, that's set. I'm going to do CrossFit five times a week. and everything else has to kind of realign around it. And at some point I realized that it's stressing me out.

Working, my workout schedule was stressing me out and I'm working out to improve my health. It was doing that physically, but it had a negative impact mentally because I was stressed. And so I made the hard call and say, you know what, if I only can work out twice a week, Then that's okay. You know, I'm still, you know, as fit, as healthy as I ever was.

And I would argue I'm healthier than I was before and not any less fit because I'm less stressed because of that. And so cutting stuff and really re evaluating your goals. What is it that you want to get out of, you know, whatever you're doing? If it's happiness, joy, longevity, optimal health, then cut the stuff.

That does not line up with those goals as hard as it might be. And with that, we're going to wrap it up. I hope you liked this episode. I hope you got some helpful tips and pointers, um, out of it that you can implement today to reduce your stress, make you more resilient, check out the show notes. There is additional information, resources, links to blog posts and YouTube videos that I highly recommend you check out as well.

Don't forget to subscribe and follow and share. I appreciate it. And I'll see you in the next episode.