Sneaky Stress: How It Silently Hijacks Your Health

Is stress silently sabotaging your health without you even knowing it? Discover the surprising ways sneaky stress infiltrates our daily lives and takes a toll on our well-being. This episode of "It Starts at Vagus" with your host Emily uncovers the hidden stressors that we often overlook, from the seemingly innocuous noise pollution and poor sleeping habits to the insidious effects of toxic relationships and social media overstimulation. Join Emily as she unravels how these factors contribute to the stealthy accumulation of stress and what you can do about it.

We'll guide you through the subtle yet profound impact of chronic, low-grade stress on your health, illustrating how small habits, like a nightly doom-scrolling routine, can spiral into persistent fatigue and physical ailments. Learn actionable tips to identify these stress triggers and practical strategies to manage them, all centered around the powerful connection between your vagus nerve and holistic health. Empower yourself to recognize sneaky stress before it undermines your wellness and peace of mind, restoring balance to your life with informed choices and newfound awareness.

Transcript

Emily: 0:00

Welcome to It Starts at Vagus, the podcast where holistic health meets modern living. I'm Emily, your guide to unlocking the power of the vagus nerve, which is your body's ultimate key to calm, connection and overall well-being. Together, we'll explore simple ways to nourish your mind and body with natural remedies, actionable tips and empowering stories. Whether you're here to reduce stress, restore balance or take charge of your health, you're in the right place, because wellness doesn't just happen. It starts at Vagus. Let's dive in.

Emily: 0:37

Do you ever feel exhausted but can't figure out why? Or struggle with these random aches, brain fog or poor sleep without really an obvious cause? You might be dealing with that sneaky stress, that stress that just sneaks into our life without us really realizing it, because it's so small and it's just a little bit that we don't even really pay attention to it. But research shows that up to 75% of doctor visits are linked to stress-related conditions and many people don't even realize that they're overstressed. That chronic stress, that chronic stress that creates the sleepless nights, the gut issues, the can't think. I just don't feel like myself. Those kind of conditions are where they go to their doctors and they're like what do I do? And the whole time you've got the answer right within you. You just have to implement it so well. Welcome to It Starts at Vagus, the podcast where we dive into fascinating ways to support your nervous system that helps shape your health. I'm Emily, and today we're going to uncover how stress sneaks into your body without really noticing and what you can do to stop it before it takes a toll on your body. So what is sneaky stress? That stress just isn't in your head. It's not just that mental load, it's in your body too, which is why people go to the doctor for it, because they just don't know what to do. And most people associate stress with major life events and losing your job, getting a big deadline at work or having even family problems. All those are really big and you can point to it and say this is my stressor.

Emily: 2:38

But sneaky stress is a little different, little different. It's that low grade, consistent, chronic stress that builds up over time from things like noise pollution, which we talked about in brain health part one. We talked about how that constant background noise from, you know, tvs or screens, or always having music, or even traffic All that creates noise pollution and it causes stress in our mind. Another one would be poor sleeping habits. Even those little disruptions can spike your cortisol and that's going to affect how you handle sickness, how your immunity takes care of, how those you know viruses and bacteria and so on and so forth, how they show up, because if your body's like, oh, I got too much stress, that immunity is going to go down because it can't handle it all the time for that chronic stage, chronic stress, even well, and even connecting to the sleep, both of those things can even affect your blood sugar imbalances. So you go from too high and then you, you know, crash down and then you're thinking, oh, I need some caffeine and throw that some sugar in it, and then you get that caffeine boost and crash with the, the glucose spike. So it just goes up and down, up and down and it just creates that roller coaster of that stress that impacts your body.

Emily: 4:23

Another example of that chronic stress would be toxic relationships or even overstimulation from social media that doom scrolling you're always focusing on the news and things that we should change and things that kind of just weigh us down instead of lifting us up. So I knew a person who was experiencing constant headaches and just tired all the time, that like that chronic fatigue. But she claimed she had no big stressors, nothing that she could say. This big thing is a problem. And she did realize that her stress was coming from that doom.

Emily: 5:09

Scrolling on social media before bed Because, let's face it, that's an easy time to do. Just you're like I'm gonna rest, I'm going to just sleep, or lay down before I go to sleep and scroll to see what everybody else is doing, see what else I can see. But instead of uplifting things, we find those doomsday. But instead of uplifting things, we find those doomsday. Or politics or things that just it's just the wrong way. And if we're going to scroll, start looking for things that really make you happy. Again, my back is just always. My default is comedy, because it makes me laugh and it uplifts everything else. Because it makes me laugh and it uplifts everything else.

Emily: 6:00

But those hidden ways that stress hides in your body. It really creates havoc on your brain and physical parts of you. You can just feel that stress hiding in there and when you ignore this sneaky stress, it slowly deregulates your nervous system and that vagus nerve. Hidden signs of stress would be fatigue that doesn't go away, no matter how much you sleep, it's just always there. You just feel like blech. Or your increased sugar and caffeine cravings, the digestive issues, because, remember, the vagus nerve has that direct link to your gut. So if you've got bloating and gut discomfort, really slow metabolism, that's just a way of saying hey, you're stressed out. It's just a way of saying hey, you're stressed out. And that's where that somatic exercises usually start being talked about, because it's a way to bring that stress down. So your body says, okay, we feel comfortable using up our energy.

Emily: 7:07

Other examples could include mood swings, anxiety and anxiety. That again, maybe you can't quite pinpoint what is causing that anxiety or even irritability. You just feel like on edge and like the little things just like on you. Those things are just those little stresses that just keep adding up, adding up throughout the day. And one that I have been at fault in the past is feeling wired but tired at night and then sluggish in the morning. And listen, I used to have terrible sleeping habits and sometimes I still struggle with them. But I know that I need that nighttime routine, I know I need to watch something happy. I know I need to do these things to trigger my, my body, to say hey, you really, you really are tired and it is time for bed, so that I actually do go to bed, do fall asleep, so I can feel rested in the morning. And that one was a hard struggle for me for a while because I didn't want to go to bed. I was like a three-year-old and I just didn't want to. I wanted to pout and I wanted to stay up late. But once I found my groove it felt a lot better and I could feel my body feeling rested.

Emily: 8:36

So that chronic stress keeps your body in that low level fight or flight state and that in turn, weakens your vagus nerve's ability to calm and recover because it's saying I'm not sure. I think we still might have to guard ourself right now. So it stays aware instead of relaxing and calming down. How do we identify and reduce this sneaky stress? Well, there are simple steps to catch and calm that stress before it overwhelms you and takes over. The first one is to pay attention to your body. Really, what does that mean? It means allowing bells to go off in your head and saying, oh, you're clenching your jaw a lot or you're really easily overwhelmed. All these little things, like these things are so little. Why are you overstressing about this? And if it's just a little thing that kind of pushes you over, that can be a really good key, saying I have too much of that sneaky stress. And if you need to just make a little journal or a little log saying how you felt that day and to see if you can find any patterns where those bells could go off and you just overlook them, you didn't hear them, they weren't loud enough for you yet, but eventually you become more sensitive and can hear them saying Ooh, we got to address that before it gets too big.

Emily: 10:17

Second step is to reset your nervous system. So this is where the vagus nerve comes in and we engage the vagus nerve with the humming, the deep breath. If you're really struggling, you can do a cold water splash on your face or just on your hands. Again, we don't have to do the whole body, but just to give a different sensation to your nervous system, to say, oh, let's pay attention to this and it'll help tone that vagus nerve. And then you can take mini reset breaks throughout the day. You could step outside, which is a favorite of mine. I love going outside sitting on my porch, rocking in my rocking chair. That is my favorite. Another popular one is to stretch or just do a few moments of breathing in and out. Those things help settle down your nervous system so you're able to focus, feel calmer, help tone that vagus nerve so that your gut doesn't feel so wrenched and that brain fog just lifts. Gut doesn't feel so wrenched and that brain fog it just lifts. So by reducing this daily overload, which is kind of step three of this, you can do the reduced screen time, especially at night, and cut back on that caffeine to avoid those cortisol spikes, that caffeine to avoid those cortisol spikes.

Emily: 11:58

My favorite one is creating kind of like a buffer time between activities. So instead of going rushing from like this to this, to this, to this, to this, I often really enjoy when I can have you know some, you know it might be 15 minutes of you know some, you know it might be 15 minutes, it might be a half hour between transitions. Because I really found out that the clock, particularly the clock, gives me a little more anxiety because I have to be here at this time and this time and this time and this time, versus when I don't have to pay as close attention to the clock. It really smooths out my day and that is one one way how that buffer time helps me. So I'm, if I am running a little bit behind, I don't add that extra stress, I don't make it too much. There's again the balance, it too much, there's again the balance. But having just a little buffer time throughout your day will make that stress go down.

Emily: 13:02

Let's see morning routine, mid-afternoon routine, if you need more structure, the evening routines. We've kind of talked about that before in other podcasts. So just know that that sneaky stress isn't something we want to just push through. It is a silent force that affects your mood, your health and your energy. But you know the good news that once you start noticing you can shift it and you can do those vagus resets with the humming, the singing. If you really need to do a solid reset, vagus nerve exercise, we have that in the link below.

Emily: 13:46

If you want to watch a video on how you can do kind of like a hard reset and by hard I mean it just it's kind of like a your soft off button on your phone versus a hard reset on your phone this is just a hard reset for your body. It just takes a little longer. It's not hard, it doesn't hurt, it's just more focused than humming or singing, but it is in the show notes on the bottom. So when you allow your bells to go off and say, ooh, that's a stressor in my life, we can cope with it, adjust it, but we cannot ignore it because it won't go away. It'll just internalize in us. So remember to breathe and do something today that makes you happy. Thanks for listening to it. Starts at Vagus. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you're ready to take the next step toward calm, grab my free Vagus nerve reset video in the show notes. It's quick and easy way to start feeling better today and until next time, remember wellness starts at Vagus.