Stressing Your Health
Seeking peace and taking care of your body are keys to minimizing stress.

By Matthew Gianforte, D.C.

Is your life on fire? Well, it’s time to wake up and smell the smoke before your entire world is on fire.

The holidays are just around the corner, which means more stress, more crises and less time to douse the flames. It is time to look around and realize that you’re not the victim of crisis—you’re the cause.

Distressing Stress
Stress is a self-inflicted wound. Work, relationships, school, personal and family health problems, money issues—even positive stresses such as weddings and Christmas parties¬—can produce stressful circumstances. Both happy and unhappy events cause stress in people. The only way not to have stress is not to wake up.

Stress is not a person or event. It is a reaction to a person or event. Just how negative the reaction is will determine the amount of stress that you’ll cause on your body. Stress is the real deal. When outside forces overwhelm the mind, negative reactions occur within the body. Stress affects digestion, gland secretion, heart function, breathing, blood pressure, cholesterol, brain chemistry, blood sugar levels and hormone balance. The physiological problems associated with stress will speed the aging process and contribute to every type of symptom.

Manage Peace
To combat stress, stop inflicting wounds. When you’re constantly trying to “manage” stress and crises in your life, you’ll always be fighting an uphill battle. Instead of “stress management,” try “peace management.”

One way to help create peace is to manage your time. Ask yourself, “Am I managing my time, or is my time managing me?”

If you are one of those people who wakes up in the morning without time for breakfast, who handles crisis after crisis at work, and who doesn’t make time for yourself, then time is managing you.

Organizing your time can affect everyone in your life, including your family and co-workers. It can help you get a full 24 hours out of each day. There are important areas in life that you should not neglect, such as spiritual, relationships, parental, school, work, health and fitness and mission. If your life is too busy for the things that are most important to you, you’re too busy, and it is time to re-organize your priorities.

Take Care of Your Body
Another way to help manage stress is not to add any additional stresses to the inside of your body by eating “toxic” foods. Many of the foods that we eat have been processed to make them more appealing to the senses and to allow for quicker cooking time. However, these foods put more stress on the body because they are more difficult to digest and break down efficiently. Processed foods block the absorption of good nutrients, rob your body of energy, create excess fat, affect your mood and can contribute to nearly every known symptom or disease. Stick to as many natural foods as possible, and your body will thank you.

Exercising regularly also can help reduce the effects of stress on your body. Every vital system that keeps you alive requires movement, including your heart, lungs, spinal cord, muscles and arteries. They require movement on a regular basis; otherwise they function poorly and develop disease. In as little as 10 minutes of exercise, your body begins to function better and increase its metabolic processes, with benefits that can last 24 hours. Ten minutes twice a day has all the benefits of 20 straight minutes once a day. Almost everyone can find time for 10 minutes of physical activity.

Balancing all areas in your life is important to combating stress. As you work on improving your time-management skills, build in a little more time for exercise and then try taking steps to improve your diet. You’ll be surprised at how balancing those three elements will lower your stress level throughout the holidays.

Matthew Gianforte, D.C., is owner of LifeWorks Chiropractic, a health and wellness center that focuses on balancing all areas of your life: nutrition, exercise, time and stress management, as well as keeping the nervous system balanced. He can be reached at (913) 397-2293.