15 Ways to Fight Stress

by Mark Sisson
Mark’s Daily Apple

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Do I need to really even say the holidays are a stressful time of year? Every lifestyle blog, magazine, evening news program, and newspaper will have a stress-related feature right about now. I bet Dr. Oz has a "holiday stress relief" show airing. It's part of the culture – we expect holiday stress and seem to love wallowing in it. So I'm not going to go on and on about how stress is a problem, or even why it's a problem (I've already done that), because we know it. So, how do we avoid it and, once it's here, how do we deal with it? That's the important part. How do we hack it?

Well, we don't want to hack it all to pieces. We need stress, too – just not too much. It bears mentioning that many things can be considered stressors depending on the context. Lifting heavy things is a stressor, and the right amount causes muscles, connective tissue, and bones to respond by getting stronger, which are desirable; too much, or too little recovery, and muscles, connective tissue, and bones suffer and atrophy, which is undesirable. It's about context, quantity, and quality. With that in mind, I'm going to break down anti-stress strategies into categories.

Fortify

An ounce of prevention is worth… you know the saying. Just as Batman depends on extensive amounts of prep-time to defeat his often-physically superior opponents, our bodies do best when we lay a strong foundation before stress hits. That means:

Brace for the Punch

Stress will come. It cannot be avoided. Accept this. In my experience if you don't and then stress comes it will hit you harder than if you had accepted its inevitability. How you think about stress affects and even determines how it's expressed in your physiology. So flex those abs and prepare for the inevitable shot to your groin.

Plan

We talk a lot about fractals and randomness, but there's nothing wrong with a little order in your life, especially if you're worried about family-related stress. I personally hate flying by the seat of my pants if large groups are involved; I like knowing what we're doing, with whom we're doing it, and when it's going to happen. If things have the potential for spiraling out of control, make a schedule to minimize the guesswork.

Balance Your Omega 6 to Omega 3 Fatty Acid Intake

Our bodies use the PUFAs we eat to manufacture inflammatory cytokines, which are part of the stress response. If the ratio is all out of whack, the response to stressors will be overly inflammatory. An overabundance of omega-6 fats, for example, will produce an overabundance of IL-6, one of the premier inflammatory stress-response cytokines that's potent in small doses but overwhelming in large doses. Avoid industrial seed oils, vegetable oils, and try to eat fatty fish. Take fish oil, and favor pastured animal products over CAFO products.

Go Primal. Yesterday.

Being healthier, stronger, fitter, and less metabolically deranged will prepare your body for the coming onslaught, and going Primal is the best way to become those things. Ditch the grains, legumes, sugar, and seed oils if you haven't already; start a resistance training and sprinting regimen to build up those muscles and organ reserves, because you're gonna need them; start a normal, healthy sleep schedule. You've been mulling it over in your head for weeks now, but it's time to just do it and go Primal already.

Avoid

Avoiding unnecessary and excessive stress is the best way, but it's also the trickiest. Oh, I suppose we could go Thoreau and become hermits to avoid social stress, but then we'd go crazy from isolation stress. Let's explore some effective, realistic strategies for stress avoidance.

Know Your Limits, and Hold Yourself to Them

Man is finite. We can't be everywhere at once. Be honest with yourself when apportioning your time. You probably can't wrap up work by noon, have two lunch meetings, pick up groceries, prepare a five course meal, then meet up with friends for drinks all in a single day without driving yourself mad from the stress of it all. But if you're honest about your limits from the very start, you won't have failed, and there will be no stress – because you never convinced yourself the impossible could be done in the first place. Don't overcommit!

Opt for Acute, Rather Than Chronic Stress

We're built to handle acute stress. Things like animal attacks, natural disasters, confrontations on the street – these are examples of acute stressors. They may not be pleasant, per se, but they make us feel alive. Time slows down, your senses hone in, and you just tough it out. But what about sitting in traffic for two hours every day on the way to and from work? It's not exciting. It's mind numbing chronic stress that drives you insane. I'm not asking you to go get mugged or wrestle with a mountain lion; I'm saying instead of sitting around the house or battling the holiday crowds, go for a hike. Head off trail and climb some boulders. Get dirty and don't shy away from rough terrain. Shock your system with those real-world, in-your-face acute stressors, instead of submitting to chronic stress.

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December 30, 2010

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