What would you do if all of a sudden there were a savage lion in front of you poised to attack? Well, in the days of our palaeolithic ancestors, you may have faced this form of stress and to ensure you remained alive; you would have two options commonly known as the Flight or Fight response (run away from it or stay and fight).
In either case, adrenalin would be secreted to increase blood flow to your brain, heart, lungs and muscles so that you could run fast or fight. Cortisol would also be activated to release sugar into your blood so that your muscles would have instant energy. During this time, your body suppresses digestive and reproductive function as they are not vital for you “here-and-now’ survival. Once the pending attack is over, these chemical messengers return to normal, and balance is restored within your body.
Today, although we don’t face hungry lions, we do face other forms of stress. We have different, but constant stressors like rushing to finish a presentation or to get to a meeting, printer jams, tube lines down or being worried about health issues and the F-word (fertility).
Unfortunately, our body is unable to determine the difference between a savage animal and life stress. In our every-day lives, we are always stressed and so used to it that we don’t even know what “normal” feels like anymore; nor do we recognise how much it is affecting our health.
This stress response may have been an excellent adaptation for our ancestors but, unfortunately, the effects of chronic stress can impact our health significantly.
On-going stress can alter the delicate hormone balance within our body affecting our fertility in many ways. Stress affects the cardiovascular system and heart; it slows down digestion, depletes energy levels, upsets blood sugar levels and hormonal balance, and may disrupt sleep and mental and emotional health. Getting stress well managed is paramount to fertility success. At Birds & Bees, we have some fantastic options to help you manage stress and its effect on your body. As each person reacts to stress differently, we individualise our approach by using combinations of well researched nutritional and herbal medicines, along with lifestyle modification such as breathwork, kundalini yoga, meditation and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT is an incredible therapy that has exploded in popularity over the past 10 years. It blends acupuncture and thought field therapy together to help change negative thought patterns. It has been successful in treating war veterans’ PTSD, it is a key tool that I use in clinic when trying to help my patients reduce the stress fertility challenges places on them.