Fight-or-flight response

And it kicks in the chemical cascades from the brain, from the nervous system, from the nervous system response of that parasympathetic nervous system response, it kicks in those chemical cascades so that the body goes into parasympathetic.

And that's how we take somebody who's in fight or flight, who's in that sympathetic nervous system response, which we're meant to be in for a short period of time, every now and again to deal with a particular issue, into that parasympathetic, that rest and digest, that maintenance mode.

So from survival mode to maintenance mode.

And when your body is in survival mode, it has a different set of priorities than when it's in rest and digest or maintenance mode.

And I also wanted to touch on what you said earlier about how disease process kind of initiates.

Like in grad school, I had to take pathology and we learned about how at the root of every disease is inflammation.

And so chronic stress, chronic living in that sympathetic state of fight or flight, freeze and fawn of where you feel like you're hypervigilant, you're having to protect yourself constantly versus there's a bear.

Oh no, let me protect myself.

we have to choose when and how and what.

And that's an important thing to say because anger and the fight response, as you and I both know, Mon, is a very important primal instinctive response.

And I mean, I think it's just been given such a bad rap.

You know, all around thinking and how we're supposed to be in the world.

And all this fire and this life force energy, but arms and legs, you know, and hoofs are just flying everywhere and it's not... making any traction or, you know, utilizing anything versus you think of the stallion and when the stallion, you know, the mature, wise stallion gets up on its hind legs and rears and, you know, you've got the black muscular system rippling and it's sized in its body and it can really roar, yeah, and show its strength.

Yeah.

And so that's how I see, you know, working with the fight response is like, how can we be that stallion, you know? I mean, my experience of the fight energy growing up, I don't know about you, Mum, but for me it was coupled with fear and overwhelm and terror.

Yeah.

This is GMJ Audio from the Georgian Medical Journal News.

How Hydration Shapes Your Body's Stress Response, New Evidence from Liverpool Researchers.

Editorially reviewed by Prof. Georgie Pikakadze, MD, MPH, PhD.

GMJ Newsdesk.

Moderate evidence.

Researchers at Liverpool John Moores University have found that habitual fluid intake directly influences cortisol reactivity, the hormonal stress response, suggesting that dehydration may amplify the body's physiological reaction to psychological stress.

The finding, published in the peer-reviewed literature, challenges the assumption that hydration affects only physical performance and cognition, pointing instead to deeper links with long-term health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and depression.

Key takeaways.

Do you feel like you're stuck in fight or flight no matter what you do? Have you sat through years of counseling, tried dozens of breathing exercises or vagus nerve stimulation exercises, but you still feel like your body is reacting to life as if none of these efforts had ever been taken place? Or have you spent money and time buying nervous system regulating tools, apps, or programs for that maybe worked for a minute or you felt hopeful about, but then it feels like you just slide back right to where you started? If you said yes to any of these questions, then this episode is for you.

In today's episode, I'm interviewing Stephen and Michaelah Sargent, head trainers for Focus in Cincinnati, so you can finally understand why your nervous system keeps overriding every tool you've ever tried and what it actually takes to to get your body to believe and feel like it truly is safe.

This summer, I went through Focus with my husband, with Steven and Michaela as our trainers, and it was life-changing.

I have been working on my mental health since I was in sixth grade when I was put into counseling, and I pretty much haven't stopped ever since.

And Focus is definitely in my top three most life-changing workouts personal wellness experiences that I've ever done.

That's why today I invited Stephen and Michaela onto the podcast to break down why so many of you still feel stuck in fight or flight even after you've done all the right things and what nervous system regulation is dysregulation actually requires to resolve it not just manage it what focus is how long it's been going on and how they got started in it what a corrective emotional experience is and why focus is use of this therapy therapeutic approach is often so much more powerful and transformational than talk therapy that you can do on your own and how real nervous system regulation happens and how focus taps into that even when nothing else has been working.

If you're tired of white knuckling your way through stress, you feel like stress may be driving your health issues, but you haven't been able to escape it, or you feel stuck anywhere else in your life and you don't want to keep going at it alone anymore, then this episode is for you.

Hey friend, welcome to the BetterBelly podcast.

Perfect.

Rest and digest, fight or flight, understanding the nervous system.

And I think a piece of this too is like, what does the nervous system mean when you say it and how it plays into your work? Because It's fundamentally dictating everything and potentially even like I don't love this word, but almost even to blame for like anxiety and metabolic health issues and stress and sleep and workouts and fatigue and pain and a lot of the things that people are experiencing.

Right, right.

And then there's also a positive response to exercising her eyes.

When we have smaller peripheral vision, usually that does lead to chronically tight shoulders, probably some head tension, as well as anxiety.

When our peripheral vision closes in, all you can think about is what does that mimic, right? Sometimes when we're in that fight or flight state, our peripheral vision will have to go more into this, like, I need to focus on the threat ahead of me.

So interesting.

Think about your experience of eating.

Are you enjoying the food God has provided? Are you criticizing yourself while you eat? Or are you already worrying about what the scale will say tomorrow? This mental stress triggers a fight or flight response, raising stress hormones that disrupt digestion and blood sugar.

When we eat with a merry heart, resting in God's provision and peace, you activate what science calls the rest and digest state, which provides a signature of safety that allows your body to process food properly.

I'm going to say something bold here.

Because that is what your sympathetic nervous system would have you do.

In the most classical sense, the fight response does tend to be physical.

But in human beings with our big old brains and anyone in a narcissistic relationship knows, words can actually often hurt more than fists.

So we may mount those words up when we are hurt in one of these relationships.

You end up with a racing heart, pupils wide, really physiologically aroused, and it takes a toll on you.

And let's face it, you've got to always remember it.

The narcissist is always a better fighter since they don't have the empathy, they get off on the fight, and the stuff that makes a fight psychologically exhausting, they love that stuff and they will use your fight response against you.

Once you get frothed up and you're yelling and you're shouting and you might get physically agitated, Then they start to gaslight you and they calmly say, hey, whoa, someone's a little bit crazy here.

don't spoil it folks but at this rate i maybe that means we're only not even a tenth of the way through the book like i said this this journey that i'm doing the book might take us till christmas but and so there's no rush for me you know there's no rush for me so here we go um yeah it's chapter six let's do it

chapter six fight or flight oh classic I don't remember exactly what triggered it, but one day I decided to come clean.

I went to work at the delicatessen.

I walked down to the basement to put on my white shirt and my red apron, and I changed my name tag.

We're going with a new company.

I nodded, dropped the broom, and headed upstairs where I found a huge man leaning against the counter.

Oh, fight or flight.

This chapter's called, he's going to have to tell this big hunk of a, hulk of a guy, you're fired.

What's pretty, what's pretty common? What are the common buckets that you see that a, that a lot of your clients have?

The most common, the way I would describe it, is it's people are just in fight or flight.

They're stuck in the doing.

They're stuck in the force.

It shows up, and you're like, "Oh, yeah, that's pretty common."

Actually, yeah, you did ask that before.

But I think the thing is, it's like a static, you know? When your body, when your nervous system is in fight or flight, and you're constantly in the doing, and you're in the force, you're, there's a static.

The radio signal is, like, all over the place.