I come from a generation of over- striving, over-driving, and over- achieving women, and my beautiful mother was one of those women. So I grew up with the idea that if I was not productive or on task most of the time, something was wrong with me. To be constantly in motion, stillness was scary. Can you relate to that?
Pushing yourself beyond your resources in an attempt to have it all – high-powered career, family, mother, wife, carer, daughter, and socialite – can be a recipe for burnout. Ask any woman, and those honest enough to tell you have pressed the “reset” but- ton on their busy life…or their body has pressed it for them with thyroid, adrenal, immune, joint, or other health issues, often with an inflammatory, hormonal basis.
Excessively busy and stressed lifestyles drive up the Yang element in your life. The more you rush from one task to another, especially under a time deadline, the more you stimulate stress hormones, adrenaline, and cortisol which are very Yang in nature.
Cortisol is secreted by your adrenal glands in times of stress, causing shallow breathing, digestive disturbance, unstable blood sugar, and blood fats. Calcium is shunted from bones into the bloodstream, and kidneys work overtime retaining sodium and excreting potassium leading to water retention. Magnesium is used up as mus- cles are held in tension, and consistent deep sleep is harder to find when you are tired but wired.
This is the classic stress response necessary for your survival. Cortisol changes your mood and gives you mental clarity and focus to make quick decisions for fight or flight, but what happens if neither of those occurs? You are left with hormones raging through your body, often with no need to fight for your survival or run.
Over time cortisol levels can rise to unnaturally high levels in response to ongoing stress and then drop to very low levels as the adrenal glands become exhausted. Then it’s harder to get out of bed in the morning. You might get sick more often and take longer to recover. Memory and concentration drops and you feel tired all the time. You might have salt, sugar, and carb cravings and gain weight around your waist. You find digesting some foods more difficult than before with a flare-up of allergies and more inflammation and redness whether in joints or skin.
In Eastern medicine, the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline are considered Yang and necessary for feeling focused, engaged, and ready for action. Stress hormones are heating and drying and work in opposition to your sex hormones estrogen and progesterone which are Yin, cooling, softening, and nourishing. Naturally they balance each other out, but the problem lies in our modern lifestyles that stimulate excess stress hormones.
Your yin sex hormones act as a buffer to dampen down the excess Yang or stress hormones. One big sacrifice is about to take place. The body’s intelligence puts the needs of survival over the need to have balanced menstrual cycles, soft skin, and a healthy sex drive in menopause. Sex hormones are sacrificed for the production of stress hormones.
Progesterone is used to make cortisol but not the other way around so your sex hormones become the sponsor of your stressful lifestyle.
This can work in the short term, but if stress becomes a way of life as it is for many women, things start to go pear shaped around meno- pause. Adrenal glands and ovaries, both directly or indirectly, produce both sex and stress hor- mones, and when these become exhausted they can affect the rest of the endocrine organs like the thyroid and pancreas, setting the stage for ill health.r
To start addressing stress in your life, begin with awareness. Take a moment to ask yourself where is your fuel tank located in your body? Is it your heart, your chest, your abdomen? Then ask yourself, “How full is it?” Is it cracked and leaking out vital energy? If your fuel tank is less than three-quarters full, then it’s time for some self-care strategies. Don’t wait until it is half-empty.