Understanding Stress and its Effects on Health

Life’s stressors are a normal part of human existence. In fact, your body’s stress response system is a critical survival mechanism that allows you to respond in the event of a threat. And while we can never entirely eliminate stressors in our lives, we can improve the way we respond to stress.

On this episode of The Model Health Show, you’re going to learn powerful strategies on how to improve your body’s natural stress responses. This compilation episode features three world leading experts on the topics of stress, adrenal health, and rewiring your brain. You’ll hear how habits like sleep, exercise, and nutrition can increase your resilience, and specific practices you can implement to optimally respond to stress.

Building your resilience to stressful circumstances is an impactful life skill we can all implement. This episode is bringing you powerful insights on how to decompress, heal, and become a healthier, happier version of yourself. So click play, listen in, and enjoy the show!

In this episode you’ll discover:

• What hormetic stressors are.
• The connection between stress, metabolic rate, and weight loss.
• What safety signals are.
• How our DNA responds to modern stressors.
• Why sleep is a powerful tool for adrenal function.
• Which nutrients are critical for restoring adrenal health.
• How aligning with the circadian rhythm can heal your body.
• The physical effects of stress on the body.
• What adrenaline and epinephrine are.
• The #1 practice to change the way you handle stress.
• What the benefits of morning sunlight are.
• Three habits you can implement to anchor your stress response system.
• The biggest factor that dictates whether stress is good or bad for us.
• Practical ways to raise your threshold for stress.
• How mindfulness can improve your immunity, mental health, and stress resilience.
• What it means to be the lion.
• The power your words have over your body.
• How mindfulness can help improve the stress response from trauma.

Items mentioned in this episode include:

• PiqueLife.com/shawn -- Get exclusive savings on bundles & subscriptions!
• Ettitude.com/model -- Use the coupon code model15 for 15% off organic bedding!
• Beekeepersnaturals.com/model -- Save 15% on raw honey & other natural remedies!
• Improve Your Adrenals & Thyroid with Dr. Izabella Wentz – Episode 679
• Have More Energy & Sleep Better with Dr. Andrew Huberman – Episode 523
• The Stress Prescription with Dr. Elissa Epel – Episode 647
• Adrenal Transformation Protocol by Dr. Izabella Wentz
• The Stress Prescription by Dr. Elissa Epel
• The Telomere Effect by Drs. Elizabeth Blackburn & Elissa Epel

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Thanks To Our Sponsors!

This episode is brought to you by Pique. if there was one beverage that is most correlated with reducing stress, it's tea. Now, the only tea that I knew about growing up was sweet tea. Alright, my grandmother would make sweet tea or I would go to different restaurants and order the sweet tea, matter of fact, when Lipton Brisk hit the scene, so this is sweet tea that was in bottles that you could buy from the vending machine, it was so full of sugar that it had this frosted appearance, it was like frosted tea, so I'm not talking about that abomination of tea. I'm talking about the storied traditional teas that have been utilized for thousands of years to support human health. Now, one of the most well-known and well-researched teas that help to manage and reduce stress is green tea, green tea contains a unique amino acid called L-theanine, this is one of the rare nutrients that's able to cross the blood-brain barrier with relative ease and impact the activity of a neurotransmitter called GABA, which helps to reduce anxiety and makes us to feel more centered and relaxed. Now, some teas like green tea might have a small amount of caffeine, but because of L-theanine, not only does it not have that stimulating effect, it actually helps to reduce and calm the nervous system, it's really a cool combination that's found naturally in green tea. Another way that L-theanine works to improve our focus specifically, which lack of focus can lead to more stress as well, if we're not able to focus on the things that we need to get done and just get overwhelmed, but a peer-reviewed study published in the journal, Brain Topography, found that L-theanine intake increases the frequency of our alpha brain waves indicating reduced stress, enhanced focus and even increases creativity. Now, this is the most important distinction about this conversation when talking about green tea, not all green tea is created equal, not in the slightest, quality matters immensely here more than ever, because not a lot of folks realize that even some organic teas are contaminated with heavy metals and microplastics, we wanna make sure that we're getting teas from the best source possible, and the green tea that I drink is a Matcha green tea, that's actually shaded 35% longer for extra L-theanine. It's the first quadruple toxin screened Matcha, and there's no preservatives, sugar, artificial flavors, none of that stuff, just the highest quality Matcha green tea in the world from Pique Life. Go to piquelife.com/shawn, that's piquelife.com/shawn. And you're gonna get access to some of their incredible bonuses for their different bundles, like free shipping, and also an exclusive 90-day risk-free guarantee, if you don't love their Matcha green tea or any of the products from Pique Life, you can send them back for a full refund. So they're really standing behind their tea quality, they go above and beyond, and highly recommend checking them out. It's piquelife.com/shawn, that's piquelife.com/shawn.

This episode is brought to you by Ettitude. As Dr. Wentz was closing with the importance of managing our sleep quality in order to help our bodies to manage stress effectively, it can be one of the biggest hangups causing excessive stress and an inability to adapt from stress if we're not sleeping well. It is a top tier concern, and we're gonna talk more about that with our next expert, which is going to blow your mind. Now, with that being said, what is one of the common things that's causing disruption with our sleep quality? Well, a growing body of data has shown that people with confirmed chronic sleep issues like insomniacs and other people in general population, but these folks tend to have a significantly warmer core body temperature at night when their body temperature is supposed to be going down. To help combat this issue, in this study, this was published in the journal, Brain, the scientists had participants wear thermo suits to lower their skin temperature less than one degree Celsius. This was so little that it didn't necessarily affect their core body temperature, but just the skin temperature. And they measured their impact objectively on their sleep quality. The study results found that participants didn't wake up as much during the night, and they actually spent more time in stages three and four deep sleep. And effectively, these folks were now having their sleep equivalent to people who didn't have notable sleep issues just by reducing the temperature a little bit on their skin surface. Now, what you wanna be aware of is not overheating your body with your bedding, and that's one of the common culprits. And in a new study, test subjects were randomly placed into one of two groups. One sleeping on conventional sheets, just the run of the mill stuff. And another group was sleeping on organic bamboo lyocell sheets from Ettitude. After compiling the data, the researchers found that, and they were actually objectively tracking their sleep quality, there was a 1.5% improvement in sleep efficiency for folks that were sleeping on the Ettitude sheets, which equated to an additional 7.2 more minutes of restorative sleep per night. Now, that might not sound like a lot, but you add that up, that's 43 extra hours of sleep per year doing the same thing they would've been doing, but their sleep efficiency, sleep quality was improved by sleeping on these sheets. And subjectively, after sleeping on these sheets, participants found that their mental alertness during the next day improved by upwards of 25% and 94% of people preferred sleeping on Ettitude Organic Bamboo lyocell Sheets. These are the sheets that I've been sleeping on for years and I can't tell you how much I love them. Check them out at ettitude.com/model. That's ettitude.com/model. Use the code MODEL15 at checkout, and you're gonna get 15% off of these incredible sheets. They're antimicrobial, self deodorizing, they're breathable, moisture wicking, and they also support thermo regulation. All right, so these sheets are something truly special. Head over there, check 'em out, ettitude.com/model.