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How many times this week have I heard, "How on earth did it get to be April already??" and with that, the sense of panic that the year is only moments away from TV commercials plugging Michael Buble's Christmas album (again)?
Many of us feel it's heads-down, stress-up.
And stress is the problem here, because whether it's physical, mental or emotional, stress causes a physiological response in the body and that response leads to inflammation.
If it's a physical stress, the body needs to immobilise the area by instigating swelling. It sends increased blood and nutrients to the area to nourish the cells for healing causing redness and heat. It sends multiple signals to the brain saying "this really hurts" so we don't go doing handstands when we should be staying still (luckily I've never been able to do handstands anyway...). It may even send your temperature shooting so it can kill pathogens. This all constitutes our inflammatory response.
But our bodies don't only become inflamed when we sprain an ankle.
Inflammation can come from running ourselves to the ground. And it doesn't have to be from the seriousness of work stress either. We can do equal damage having fun. Entertaining on Thursday night, work drinks Friday night, heading off for a weekend away Saturday morning (drinking again by Saturday afternoon?) When we run ourselves down from poor diet and too much alcohol/drugs/cigarettes (and work stress), our toxic load increases, our stress hormones spike to try and cope, but after habitual candle-burning, rapidly deplete, directly impacting our hormone production and clearance. You might notice your PMS levels rise, prostaglandin levels increase and your periods become more painful or your emotions go a little haywire. Once again, your body is in damage control via an inflammatory response.
Or maybe you're so focused on a healthier lifestyle you're exercising at an intense level, not allowing your body enough time to recover from stress and injury.
Pretty much every time we're pushing our system to an extreme one way or another, inflammation ensues. Fine, in fact, necessary, in the short-term to increase the healing response, but if we push for too long, the body remains in a highly inflammatory state which becomes detrimental to wellness.
And of course, heading into winter, we need to keep our immune system running optimally. We can do this by managing our stress levels, nourishing our spirit and taking care to decrease inflammation within our bodies by being more mindful of what we're putting into it.
Want to know what to put in it? I'm so glad you asked. Just click here to download your free anti-inflammatory plan! So simple :-)
Happy mid-April! (How on earth did it get to be April already??)
Kate
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