Trimming the Allostatic Load: A Key to Successful Weight Loss
Stress is ever present. We wake up stressed and go to bed stressed. Our days are wrought with everyday stresses as mundane as transportation strikes and traffic jams making us late for work, to more extreme nightly arguments in domestic households. I’ve known people to say they’re so stressed with their spouses they don’t like to be alone with them. I’ve known people who spend months on end off sick due to workplace stress.
And then there’s been this emphasis of late on stress being a “normal part of life”, a kind of constant companion to human existence. And yes, while some stress is a natural response to life's challenges, and some people feel energised by short bursts of adrenaline, the level and intensity of stress we’re all experiencing these days is so sustained, so intense, it needs a new name.
Wait, it’s got one - it’s called allostatic load.
In this article, we’ll examine the concept of allostatic load, how it impacts your health, and how you can get your life back.
Before we get right into it, I want to talk about how it’s slightly misleading this new emphasis people are placing on the normality of stress. Today, we live in a world of toxic overload, premature death, chronic disease, famine, poverty and spiritual rejection. And everyone, at some point in their lives, will experience multiple instances of extreme, sustained stress from avoidable hardships. And that isn’t a normal part of life.
It reminds me of some parents (usually the parents of bullies) who are quick to say bullying is a “normal part of childhood.” Knowing full well, no one is talking about kids calling each other four-eyes, but rather the epidemic of relentless harassment and cyberbullying that often turns sexual - as well as physical assaults that are happening weekly to children as young as 5 years old. And this persists until high school graduation when most are legally adults - sounds a bit like a prison sentence. It’s thought that 75% of school shootings in the USA are linked to bullying and harassment - that’s a huge amount of avoidable deaths, injuries and trauma. And there have been multiple cases of children being sexually assaulted as part of bullying and intimidation tactics at schools in the United States, with examples of one child being 5 years old, and another 6 year old boy being raped. So no, contemporary bullying is not a normal part of childhood, and current stress levels are not a normal part of life.
According to Dr Thomas H. Holmes’ stress test, death of a spouse, divorce / separation, injury or illness, death of a relative, career change, and a change in financial situation; predisposes 90% of people to a serious illness. And we currently live in a time when all of these things happen far too frequently, coupled with a huge amount of general uncertainty … rampant isolation, increased disease, sickness and death, and a great deal of personal financial worry, accompanied with dire projections for the overall economy.
It was not intended for humans to live under the stress we are now experiencing regularly.
We know chronic stress will take a toll on our bodies. And that’s how this term allostatic load has entered the day-to-day vernacular. It’s the phenomenon of chronic stress and its cumulative effect on the wear and tear of the body as described in psychology and medicine.
Often we think in small bursts of time, e.g., 2020 was stressful but now it’s over. And we assume our bodies bounce back. Although humans do have a high capacity to recover and rebuild, stress treats our bodies a bit like a rubber band - if you keep stretching it, it loses it’s ability to spring back into shape. That ability to spring back is our mental resilience and physical health, and if we roll from one stressful situation to another, without acknowledging our stressors and working at ways we can avoid them, that rubber band will eventually break. This of course can manifest as mental, but also physical, in conditions such as Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease…
When the body is exposed to stressors over a prolonged period, it initiates various physiological responses, including the release of stress hormones - cortisol and adrenaline. These responses are just to get you through, and are intended for only short bursts or pops to help stabilise the chemical functions that drive life.
Long term, high cortisol and adrenaline in the body suppresses the immune system and predisposes the body to all sorts of undesirable health issues.
In the western world, the signs of this allostatic load are prevalent in so many conditions, including
High blood pressure
Weight gain
Disrupted sleep
Appetite dysregulation (low appetite or excessively high appetite)
Gastrointestinal problems (commonly digestion issues, constipation and / or diarrhoea)
Autoimmune disease
Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Type 2 Diabetes and other chronic conditions
Skin diseases (eczema, psoriasis, hidradenitis suppurativa…)
Respiratory illness
Heart rate variability
Decreased muscle tone and bone density
Brain fog and cognitive decline
Depression, anxiety and other chronic mental health issues
Non-specific joint and muscle pain
Premature aging
Premature death
Though high cortisol levels can be measured in private tests with naturopaths or complementary physicians, the need for such tests really just give a picture of how stressed you are, and how close you are to contracting the illnesses above. Usually, you know where your stress levels lie, and your body has already begun showing the signs. The way you treat your body when you’re stressed also suffers, as you begin to pay less attention to what you eat, the amount of activity you do, and how optimistic you feel about getting out of the stressful situation.
Managing Stress
Often, there is little you can do to immediately eliminate stress. We live a life tied to lifestyles that leave little room for relaxation and doing the things your body requires to thrive. Yet, it isn’t an option to avoid facing your stressors and gently combating them. It begins with a re-examination of your outlook on your self in terms of care and your healthy or unhealthy interaction with your overall environment. It takes a firm commitment to getting and building the kind of support needed to strengthen your resilience, which is essential to reducing your allostatic load.
Resilience is understanding that you can always control your own outlook, your body, your health. It's the ability to adapt, learn, and persevere. Staying focused and positive doesn't mean ignoring difficulties; to the contrary, it means believing in your ability to overcome them.
By maintaining a resilient attitude, the understanding that you can and will overcome, no matter what, you'll become better equipped to handle whatever the world throws your way.
And you will be able to better affect the necessary changes in your life to reduce the effects of stress on your body. Here are some important steps in assuring a long and healthy life:
Regular movement: Your body needs movement, it craves it. And movement makes your body feel like things are alright, that things are still “moving” forward, therefore reducing stress. The physiological mechanism by which this happens is the fact that moderate to rigorous movement stimulates the production of endorphins, which help relieve pain, helps put your body back in “rest and digest” and improves your mood by increasing production of dopamine (the feel good neurotransmitter).
Mindfulness and Relaxation: Practices like meditation, deep breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation can help reduce stress hormones and improve your overall sense of wellbeing. Meditate on a scripture, quote or spiritual proverb that inspires you - connect your body with spirit, which helps to transcend negativity.
Nourishing Diet: Food should energise you, not make you feel sluggish and depressed. Colourful fruits and vegetables; proteins from meats and / or vegetables, chickpeas, nuts and seeds; healthy fats and natural non-processed sources of carbohydrates are all nourishing for the body. Eliminate ultra-processed foods, alcohol and caffeine as you work to lower your stress levels.
Adequate Sleep: You need at least 7 - 9 hours of sleep each night. Sleep is where you reset, it’s where your body heals itself. Without sleep your body continues to stretch that rubber band, leading to cognitive issues and chronic illness.
Support: You need likeminded people, positive people in your life. Keep the people who feed your spirit close, and seek out people who are supportive and understanding.
Understanding allostatic load and its impact on your body is crucial. Current stress levels are not normal. Good stress isn’t even something you would perceive overly - so if you feel stressed, it’s too much stress. We often succumb to fad diets and potentially harmful medications and supplements, engage in unhealthy behaviours like alcohol, obsessive relationships, sexual pursuits and drugs, thinking there isn’t another way, that stress is inevitable. But it isn’t.
