Why Stress Is Making You Fat (And Rest Is the Fix) | CWM EP 508

Um, uh, so s- I guess the first thing is our stress response evolutionarily, the way we understand it currently, is that it was evolved and designed for short, sharp threats, like running away from the bear or the lion or the other tribe that's got swords and knives and whatever else that are gonna kill us, or being able to elevate that stress response for a good reason, which is that we're hunting, um, or that we're protecting or whatever it might be.

But it was meant to be short and sharp, like we're talking seconds to minutes.

You know? Like somebody jumps out and says, "Boo." You have a massive fear response or stress response, you know, adrenaline, cortisol, and a bunch of other things fire off in your body, and then you're like, "Oh my God.

It's over." [laughs] Right? Um, and then in theory, we should do something to actually metabolize and utilize those hormones, but often we don't.

Um, but the problem is with the modern life is that these systems, these stress systems were never meant to operate for hours to days to weeks to years.

You know, I said seconds to minutes.

That's kind of where things should've been at stress-wise, um, in regards to the way that our system was designed to handle it, not twenty-four/seven.

Um, and the reality is that modern life with all of its inputs, uh, results in constant low-grade stress, um, that kind of is just like drip, drip, drip, dripping away all of the time.

I mean, you might be blatantly aware of what those things are, but they're not in your face, knife, die, kill scenarios which cause like a massive s- response.

But they're this, "I might die one day if this problem continues," right? Is kind of a way to conceptualize it.

And so it's just kind of coming in as this low-grade threat signal.

And remember, your system, your biology, sure, your brain can intellectualize and understand the difference as I explain it, but your body, it can't tell the difference between real stress, perceived stress, memories or stories in your head.

All it does is respond to the information from your-- that you're thinking about in the body, so it still pumps out adrenaline and cortisol, even if it's an email from your boss or your kid stepped on your toe or one kid bit the other kid [laughs] or money's tight.

You know, none of that is life-threatening, but your body perceives it as part of the survival response, which is to put in cortisol and adrenaline and a bunch of other things into action because that then moves you into action.

And, and, and I guess, um, an analogy that's really useful to use in this scenario that might help the con- the concept come together is this idea of the smoke alarm.

So imagine in your house, the smoke alarm is going off all of the time, like 100% of the time, and it's connected to the fire brigade.

Uh, and so the, the, the fire brigade rock up, put out the fire, they get everything out, all of the hoses, all of the equipment, the ladders, and they walk into the building, and every single time it's just toast that is burning.

There's no fire, no one's in trouble, everyone's alive, but the alarm never stops.

And so the fire brigade in this s- situation are effectively your stress response and your immune system and all of the systems that get put into action when stress is happening, only to discover there's actually nothing to really defend or protect us from.Other than the way that we're conceptualizing and perceiving reality in our own head, okay? Aside from situations that are genuinely terrifying, most of the stress is in our head.

And I'm not saying you're making it up, I'm saying the way that we process it produces a stress response.