Work Stress: Reading Your Body's Work Anxiety Signals

When Stress Stops Explaining Everything

0:20 SPEAKER_00: Hi and welcome to Work Stress Anxiety. I'm Cheryl Harris. Here's the question I want us to kind of explore today. When does I'm just stress stop being a useful explanation for how to feel? Because we all have bad days, bad weeks, work sometimes gets absolutely ridiculous.

0:46 SPEAKER_00: What about when time is irritability and tidy and feeling completely out and become affected? Well today I'm joined by women's health educator, Sierra Samson, and we're looking at when it happens to be 12. Time to stop pushing through and become curious about what's happening underneath and start asking some better questions of ourselves. So let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to work stress anxiety. Cheryl Parris here. Hope you're all doing well. I've got another amazing guest with me, a specialist in women's health, an educator.

Hormones Affect More Than Periods

1:36 SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Ira. How are you? I'm doing great today.

1:39 SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks for having me.

1:41 SPEAKER_00: Okay. So I was hoping to talk about with you today because us women, especially us high-functioning girls, we are very naughty at ignoring um what um our body is trying to tell us. We live in this strange modern world. Uh I'm I'm talking for myself now, where we're supposed to operate um uh up in our heads all the time, or that's how I see it, and almost ignore the signals our body is telling us all the time about our health. So, what I was hoping to ask you today, people often hear the word hormones and they immediately think, you know, what's going on, but can you describe for me the body is much more connected than than just that?

2:40 SPEAKER_00: So, can you explain what that really means in everyday life, especially for women who are career girls who are trying to manage home, still feel sexy, still be a great mom, still be a great daughter.

2:57 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. So you're right. Hormones can mean a lot of things, um, but they're basically chemical messengers in our body, and they tell our body how to operate. Um, so when your levels are off, um, or you're kind of having competing interests, right, with high stress and that affecting other hormonal levels, that's when we start feeling those side effects. For women specifically, we hear a lot about estrogen, and we kind of think of estrogen as just kind of this um, oh, it's fertility, it's reproduction, it's menstrual health.

3:30 SPEAKER_01: But actually, estrogen is tied to our bone density, it's tied to our cognition, our digestion. So when we are not um optimized or in a great space with estrogen, and then also its counterpart, progesterone, that's when you're gonna feel, or when we run into things like risk of osteoporosis, which is a bone loss or digestive issues or, you know, brain fog around perimenopause and menopause when estrogen is changing. So it's really a common misconception that these hormones, like specifically like our sex hormones, are just about reproduction and fertility.

4:10 SPEAKER_01: They really impact our full body. And that's why when we're getting signals and symptoms, it's important to kind of go underneath the surface to see what's happening.

Perimenopause, Menopause, And Quiet Symptoms

4:20 SPEAKER_00: Okay. Now, I'm really fortunate because my daughter, she's uh a personal trainer. She's not personal training at the moment because she's pregnant again, but she still quote unquote nags her mum occasionally because she says I'm not exercising enough. And yes, I admit I am not exercising enough. And she's concerned because obviously I'm perimenopausal and I can't even remember the last time I had a period, you know. So I'm probably very close to menopause. Um to menopause. Now interestingly, I did, this was a while back, I did have I thought I didn't have my period.

5:00 SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make sense. And I actually found out I was pregnant.

5:04 SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.

5:06 SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, I lost I lost the pregnancy quite early on, which which, you know, I I'm I'm okay. I'm okay about it. I mean, it wasn't nice, um, but I'm okay about it, you know. And I wasn't expect believe me, at my age, I wasn't expecting to have any more, any more kids. But I think when stress has become part of the background for people, many of us, what are some of the ways chronic stress can quietly interfere with women, both emotionally and physically, that they're not aware of?

How Chronic Stress Shows Up

5:47 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so from a from a physical standpoint, we see stress, chronic stress like related to lower energy levels, right? That feeling of like you're wired, but you're tired. So you're like you're bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, but you're exhausted. Digestive issues, I know that's like the third time I've said that, but having a lot of gut dysfunction, a lot of bloating or loose stools, right? You might be having some issues with that whole gut-brain connection, abdominal fat distribution, especially as we go perimenopause to menopause.

6:19 SPEAKER_01: And again, those those levels of estrogen are changing. Cortisol, excess amounts can have a direct effect on like our physical appearance. Uh, and then mentally, you know, it's the emotional like depression and anxiety and the things that come with just feeling like you can't get through it. You're always behind. Those are some of the things that you can definitely feel with chronic stress.

6:46 SPEAKER_00: Okay. And just thinking selfishly now, because as I said, my daughter said, Mom, you're not doing enough exercise because I'm just always busy. What would you say is the best because you talked about I can't even pronounce the hormones. I know what exactly what you said. I can't even pronounce them properly, so I'm not going to butcher the words, so to speak. But what do you think is one of the best ways that we can counter the effects of those hormones reducing in our body?

Strength Training For Mood And Metabolism

7:18 SPEAKER_01: Strength training, resistance training. The data shows time and time again that resistance training is key. And the reason is because muscle itself is metabolically active. So the more lean tissue muscle mass you have, the better your metabolism is, the better your ability for your blood sugar control, all those things. And it's it's complementary to being healthy. You do need to obviously do cardiovascular stuff. We need to have a healthy heart. But when it comes to protecting our bones and fat distribution in our body, right?

7:53 SPEAKER_01: Wanting to avoid like that, what they call visceral fat, so heavy fat around our organs. Yeah, strength training is really key. And I would recommend that women do two to three times a week, you know, 20 to 30 minutes. And it doesn't have to be super complicated. You don't need to go a barbell and squat 500 pounds, right? Body weight counts, exercise bands count, dumbbells, kettlebells. Of course, barbells are amazing too. And if you don't know what you're doing and you're kind of feeling lost, there's a lot of great resources on YouTube.

8:22 SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of programs out there. There's also just the mental health side. I'm been researching about depression and exercise, and there's a lot of great research on strength training, also helping mood, mood disorders. So it's kind of like you can't beat it. Right.

8:39 SPEAKER_00: I've been told. I've been told everyone. So yeah, yeah. And I totally agree with you. I used to exercise a lot, and you're right, it really does help with your sort of regulating your mood. You know, you find that you're less irritable. I'm not saying that I'm irritable now, I'm actually doing quite fine mentally now. So I'll just put that caveat in. But I know that yeah, exercise and I love dancing. I'm, you know, mad, mad salsa dancer. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, yeah, I absolutely do it. I love I love salsa, yeah.

9:13 SPEAKER_00: It's great. Yeah, yeah. But like I said, I'm just not doing it's not in my calendar, it's not in my diary, and so therefore, it kind of happens as and when.

Sleep, Food, Movement, And Stress Loop

9:23 SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the things I often say on the podcast is that your nervous system is constantly gathering evidence about whether you feel safe or under threat. And I'm just interested from your perspective, we've got stress, we've got hormones, we've got sleep, and we've got lifestyle. And I'm just interested, how do they all influence one another?

9:53 SPEAKER_01: I consider it kind of like a pyramid. They they all influence each other, they're all there, right? If you're not sleeping, your ability to manage your emotions and your stress is depleted. If you're not getting nutrition, your ability to recover from stress is depleted. But also, stress can lead to nutrient deficiency issues. Um, if you're not moving your body, right, your mental health and your body needs what I call move blood to help with digestive and other processes, it's all connected. And lifestyle, it's this bi-directional relationship between hormones and lifestyle.

10:30 SPEAKER_01: They both impact each other. So if we're looking to feel as good as we can, we have to be putting in those practical things like trying to get seven to eight hours of real quality sleep, you know, consistent sleep and wake times, trying to get sun exposure. At some point during the day, right? Everyone has different schedules, eating whole nutritious foods on a consistent basis, um, going for walks or a run, lifting weights, and figuring out what's the best stress management tool for you. Maybe it's salsa dancing, maybe it's journaling, maybe it's breath work, maybe it's yoga, whatever fits into your life.

11:11 SPEAKER_01: Those things have to be there if you want to feel your bath.

11:13 SPEAKER_00: I must just say because the reason why I love salsa dancing is, and if anyone's ever seen me salsa dance, I'm not too bad, you know, I'm not too, I'm not too bad. But I spend the whole time laughing. I'm just having such a good I'm just having such a good time. And that's what I personally, I personally love it. Yeah, that that's an aside because I do, I do think you're right. You need to find something that brings you joy as well. For yourself.

11:42 SPEAKER_01: For yours, do it for whether it's gardening, like it and it doesn't have to be crocheting, it can be really simple. Um, but do it for yourself.

Recovery Gaps In High-Functioning Women

11:52 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool. And I'm just wondering, can you think of an example of a woman who believes she simply needs to just keep trying harder when she really needs to probably better understand what her body's telling her?

12:07 SPEAKER_01: Sure, I run into that all the time. Um, so I also coach at a CrossFit gym. And I will run into women that are constantly injured or constantly getting hurt. And it's not because of the programming, it's because they're never taking the time to recover, to sleep well, to eat good food because you just worked out. Um, and they're so in this high-functioning, I have to work really hard, I have to train really hard, everything has to be up here. And there's never that where's that time to recover and relax mentally and physically?

12:46 SPEAKER_01: So that's the thing I commonly see, especially in high-functioning women on the go all the time. They will find like nagging injuries or just things they can't seem to get past.

12:56 SPEAKER_00: One of the things I I like to encourage as part of the work that I do is encourage people to be curious. Just like little kids, like you're you're young, your little one. They're so curious about the world. Everything is just new and exciting to them. And that's one of the things that I like to encourage people to be willing to explore.

Google Anxiety And When To Test

13:22 SPEAKER_00: So I'm just curious what you think about what happens in our bodies when we fall into the trap of googling every little symptom that we have and then convincing ourselves that something's terribly, terribly wrong, and then we have the anxiety of those those thoughts.

13:46 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's always wise to consult with the healthcare provider who, you know, whether that again that's your primary care, or I'm not sure what the equivalent is in the UK, but I think it's always good to speak to a trusted healthcare provider if you are starting to feel like you're spitting out and you're Googling things, or even nowadays doing chat GPT or using AI, and AI's telling you you've got some crazy symptom. Because that will definitely keep you grounded when you're like, I have these tests, these 10 things.

14:19 SPEAKER_01: But if but I will say to caveat to that, if you truly do feel like something's off, then go get some blood tests done. You know, let's reassess where you are with your lifestyle. Maybe there is something there that will needs further exploring, especially if you're having consistent symptoms.

Three Simple Foods And A Small Reset

14:35 SPEAKER_00: Cool. And just before we we go, I totally agree with you about trying to eat um healthily, whole foods, and all the rest of it. Is there a particular uh group of food or you would just say in general, obviously some people have um can have allergies and to food, certain food. I mean, I met one one lady at a conference, and when she told me what she was allergic to, I was like, what do you eat? Because, you know, it it was like, you know, the list was extensive, and um, but she was still happy, don't she was still jolly, and I was like, if she could, if she can manage that, Cheryl, you can you can at least manage to eat eat properly.

15:24 SPEAKER_00: But if there was like maybe, I don't know, maybe two, one or two or even three foods that you would say, because I truly believe food is medicine, that's why, that's why, you know, our higher power gave us this array of different foods, fruits, and vegetables that we can can eat as well as other stuff. But if there were like two or three foods that you would say everyone should be regularly having in their diet to help them, what would you what would you say?

15:58 SPEAKER_01: If I had to actually go down instead of food groups just to specific foods, I'd probably say berries because they're high in antioxidants, they've got great fiber, great research on them. Um, some sort of yogurt uh or kefir, kefir, however you pronounce it. Um so it has like the uh the friendly bacteria, they tend to be high in protein, and it's just I don't know, I think it's really delicious. Um and then I would say, so again, people are gonna have different opinions about this. I really like red meat because it's high in B vitamins and iron.

16:40 SPEAKER_01: Some people, if they have like religious or ethical issues against against that, then maybe uh fish, especially uh something like salmon that has like high in omega-3s, because that's anti-inflammatory as far as the omega-3 to omega-6 balance. So if I had to pick three foods only, yeah, it would be berries, Greek yogurt, um, red meat for me, but then maybe fish for somebody else, depending on um their values. Cool.

17:07 SPEAKER_00: Um that's amazing. I want to thank you so much for sharing your insights with me today. Thank you, Tira. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks. This is so fun. So before you disappear back into your day, here's one small thing you can do. I want you to take a piece of paper and write down what your day currently looks like. Then write down what you would like it to actually look like. Not your perfect life, okay? We're not talking about well-being, stuff, and touching it. Just look at one small difference.

17:46 SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a 10-minute walk without your phone, or maybe two minutes of slow breathing. In between meetings. You don't have to change everything at once. I want to thank Thiara for joining me. All of Tiera's links are in the show notes, so bye for now.