Stress is entirely triggered by our mind when we're faced in
a situation that could mean possible pain. In the cave man age stress was very
useful at keeping us from harm and alerting us to danger, it helped us survive
through very intense conditions. In today's society, stress is often a very
annoying habit which has major effects on our health and keeps us from
achieving the things we really want in life. Firstly, what happens in your body when you're
“stressed”?
When we're stressed, our adrenalin hormone levels instantly
increase. This gives our nervous system a huge bolt, our level of alertness and
muscle tension instantly increases.
Our heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and blood sugar
levels increase drastically. Our brain waves increase for a higher level of alertness and
sensory acuity.
Right off the bat you can probably already see how stress
can prevent us from experiencing quality sleep, or even falling asleep! One
huge drawback of stress is a constant high level of brain waves that keep our
minds racing all the time. As you will learn in a later section, this can be
very detrimental to your sleep system and can cause insomnia.
The other reason why stress prevents us from sleeping deeply
is because of all the heightened “stress” hormones. These hormones make our
sleep lighter and less restful. In the cave man ages this would actually be
very beneficial, in times of stress you would be able to awaken quickly and be
ready for battle with predators who are likely out to kill you. However, this
isn't the daily situation for us today.
Stress creates a similar sleep pattern as those of mothers
with babies, who also have a higher wakefulness system, allowing them to wake
up during the night to the slightest stir of their kids. However, this isn't always linked to
stress.
If we were to go into methods of reducing stress in this
post, it would obviously become a very big post - so we won't explore that
much. However, there are a few simple relaxation methods you can employ on a
daily basis that will have a huge effect on these hormone levels.
It's been proven that practicing daily relaxation can have a
very beneficial effect on the levels of your stress hormones, consequently improving
your sleep and your health. We'll explore mental relaxation in other post.
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