Day 20 - Halfway there!

Day 20! You are halfway to your goal of 40 days! It's time to reflect on how your first 20 days went. What positive changes have you made? What results have you seen? Where can improvements be made? What challenges did you face in the first 20 days? What challenges lie ahead? 

How will you be successful in the last 20 days? 

If you haven't committed yet, now is the time. It's time to jump ALL IN, not just get your feet wet. If you need help reach out to your leaders, we are here for you! If you don't know who you need to contact for what, send me an email and I will direct you: drdaveschwartz@gmail.com

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Blog Entry 3 Stress

Hello Reader

Christopher Lord here and again I am here to continue my series on stress and the human body, specifically how stress negatively impacts body and mind.

In the first entry, I introduced you the pioneer of modern stress research, Dr. Hans Selye. In the second entry, I described one of his greatest contributions- the discovery of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (aka HPA Axis) which is the network of glands in our bodies that release the hormones in response to stress, the so-called “stress hormones” (adrenalin, noradrenaline and cortisol) which help us in the short term but do not help us long term, in fact they are associated with harm.

So, let me re-state: the “stress response” is not necessarily a bad thing. There are situations when it is a useful and adaptive measure. Let’s take a modern-day example of how the stress response might be a good thing: exercise! Exercise (even low-impact activity) activates the stress response, to help us.   It goes like this: we begin to move more briskly, our bodies and brains detect something is up, the hypothalamus (in our brain) releases a chemical message (called CRH for short) which then tells a nearby part of our brain (the pituitary) to release a chemical message (this one is called ACTH for short) which travels outside the brain through our blood stream to the adrenal glands on top of our kidneys, telling the adrenal glands to release their chemical messengers: adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, aka the stress hormones. What do they do? What are they for?

Adrenaline and noradrenaline go by other names: epinephrine and norepinephrine, which you may have heard of before. These substances are potentially helpful to us because when they are released into the blood stream by the adrenal glands (where the name “adrenaline” comes from) they travel all over the body and do helpful things like increasing our heart rates (so more blood can be brought to vital organs and muscles, bringing sugar and oxygen for cells to use for fuel and also taking away waste products). These compounds also help open up our airways to get more air in our lungs and bloodstream for the same reasons.  Additionally, adrenaline and noradrenaline (aka epinephrine and norepinephrine) cause certain blood vessels to open up (for examples the ones providing the heart) while at the same time causing other blood vessels to get smaller (taking blood away from the organs they supply, temporarily of course, because for instance there is a greater need for blood in the heart, brain and lungs then say the stomach, small and large intestines during a stressful episode). Also, and very importantly, these “stress hormones” are associated with weight loss because they help stimulate the mobilization of fat we have stored in fat cells, which for some is the most sought after benefit of exercise (and side effect of the “stress response”!)  Moreover, adrenaline and noradrenaline also tell our liver to start breaking up the sugar it has stored away for this stressful time, releasing sugar into the blood stream for our cells to use.

What about cortisol? It is the other stress hormone released from the adrenal glands along with adrenaline and noradrenaline. What is it for?   Like noradrenaline, cortisol affects the amount of sugar (glucose) floating around in our bodies for use by our cells.  Specifically, cortisol tells our bodies to make sugars (glucose) out of things we have handy to restore what we have used due to increased need (like in exercise) and what we have used in response to the effects of the other two stress hormones, adrenaline and noradrenaline, which cause our bodies to use up our glucose supplies.

I haven’t told you the whole story by far with regards to what these stress hormones do for us, for example, noradrenaline (aka norepinephrine) has a lot of activity in our brains, and I will spend a portion of future blog entries talking about that specifically.

In short, I wanted to introduce you to the idea that the “stress response” isn’t actually a terrible thing; it is actually helpful/useful and even adaptive for some stressful situations, like exercise. 

In the next blog entries I will go on to discuss in more detail the not-so-helpful, harmful and even maladaptive side of stress and how that looks for body and mind.

Thank you for reading.

God’s peace.

Christopher E Lord

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The Purpose Driven Life - Finding Your Purpose

CHAPTER 20 - RESTORING BROKEN FELLOWSHIP

Relationships are always worth restoring. 

Because life is all about learning how to love, God wants us to value relationships and make the effort to maintain them instead of discarding them whenever there is a rift, a hurt, or a conflict. 

Steps on How to Restore a Relationship

1. Talk to God before talking to the person

2. Always take the initiative 

3. Sympathize with their feelings

4. Confess your part of the conflict

5. Cooperate as much as possible

6. Emphasize reconciliation, not resolution 

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Point to Ponder: Relationships are always worth restoring.

Verse to Remember: "Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody." Romans 12:18 (TEV)

Question to Consider: Who do I need to restore a broken relationship with today?