-: Today, we are going to be talking
about stress.
We're gonna go over some basics
in terms of the physiology of stress,
very basic
more practical focused.
We're gonna take a look
at the complexity of stress
look at how we can simplify that
and then take a look
at what we're capable of assessing
and you know
what we can do with that information.
So let's get this party started.
So when we look at stress,
it's important to understand
that it's gonna impact every system
stress and inflammation, and you know,
those two things
they impact pretty much
every major process
in human physiology
and psychology as well
either directly or indirectly.
So when it comes to stress
this very similar to hypertrophy
where it's like understanding
how to assess a hypertrophy stimulus,
you needed to understand
what metabolic stress
from a training session look like,
what neurological stress
so that you can kind of understand
all of those things
because essentially
you're going to through volumes stress
one of those pathways.
So with stress, same thing,
you know, stress
like we don't have a stress system
so there's not gonna be like, Oh
my stress system is dysregulated.
I mean, you could argue
that we have stress responses
but in reality,
it's like we have metabolic systems.
We have an immune system,
we have a nervous system.
Those are the things
that are gonna get impacted by stress.
So in terms of the physiology
stress is the equivalent in hypertrophy
and that you're going to use
all of the other
physiological biomarkers to get an idea
of how stress is impacting someone,
because stress is going to be impacting
those other physiological markers.
It's not gonna come up
with anything new.
There isn't a new magical question
that's like, Oh, this says that,
you know, it's stress.
And so you give somebody
the anti-stress supplement
and then they're good to go.
What you're gonna get is
you're gonna get dysregulation
in metabolic processes
detoxification processes,
immune processes
your neurotransmitter balance,
or whatnot,
or dysregulation of basically
any homeostatic regulatory process
that's going to be
both the result of stress
but also at the same time
any breakdown in one of those systems
is a stress, right?
So anything that's not functioning well
anything that is essentially
a reduction in recovery
or decreases our ability
to adapt to things
that's a stress.
The, important part for us is when that
gets to a level
where it starts affecting
our performance
our quality of life,
the results that we're trying to get.
So we kind of have
this chicken and the egg thing
is like, well,
did stress cause the physiological issue
or was the physiological thing that,
you know did that lower my tolerance
so that then a,
what would have been a, you know
a stress that I could tolerate
now as the thing that pushed me
over the edge.
And that's where looking
at all of the lifestyle stuff
and looking at the physiological things,
looking at sleep and digestion
and looking at somebody's calories
and macros of training
and all those things
can give me an idea of whether or not,
you know, a stress is causal
or that we are succumbing to stress
because we have basically
become more fragile
through the breakdown
of our physiological system.
And that's gonna be where you as a coach
need to try and figure out
what's the appropriate intervention.
And we're gonna talk about
being anti-fragile
and building resiliency to stress
because you can't avoid stress.
Life will never be stress-free
your goal is to, you know
to stress manage as much as possible
so that you can have
as much room for positive
you know, we'll say stimulus
going into the system
to promote adaptation and, you know
get all the things that we want,
bigger gains,
faster fat loss, you know,
better wellbeing, et cetera.
But essentially we're always
gonna be managing stress
of some kind, because life is stress.
I mean, anybody here,
philosophy students, you know
they will go as far as to say as life is suffering.
I would say suffering
qualifies as stress.
And really what it comes down to
is how resilient you, we are from that.
So this is a simplified diagram
of the impact of stress.
And what you'll notice
is that it is interwoven
with a whole bunch of other stuff
that we've talked about
in this course
that we've talked about
in the course 2
when we looked at
physiology and trainability
so let's just, you know,
we could spend an entire week
going through this,
but that's not the point.
What I wanna do is
we'll walk through a few things
just so you can kind of see
how this pattern kind of plays out
and get the general concept,
but memorizing this
and trying to diagnose this
is gonna be likely
out of your wheelhouse
and is likely gonna be
a fruitless process
but understanding that
this is what's happening
in the background can help you
with your decision making process
and can help you have
less of a narrow scope
when you go to approach stress
as a possible issue
for somebody's recoverability
with all of the other
physiological assessments
and training assessment tools
that you are using.
So we have,
stress is our main thing, right?
And I kind of just, you know
for simplicity sake
made three bolder arrows
you know, with stress,
we can essentially get to the point
we're going to need to increase insulin.
And that can lead to a hormonal cascade.
We can increase cortisol directly
which is also then going
to lead to increased insulin.
We can get disrupted sleep
and disrupted sleep
let me see, what does that do?
Oh yeah.
That also decreases our ability
to regulate glucose the following day.
And therefore we're likely gonna have
less insulin sensitivity
make more insulin.
So no matter where you put it
like stress is gonna have an effect
on our glucose tolerance
or insulin sensitivity.
Stress is often gonna have
an impact on our sleep.
Stress by the nature
of those two things
and the fact like,
'cause if we're getting disrupted sleep
we're usually waking up
with a higher morning cortisol.
We're usually gonna have
more cortisol through the day.
We're usually gonna have
higher insulin through the day.
So we're really at
a chicken and the egg thing here.
This is like, well,
is the stress the direct cause
of the increased cortisol
or it's the stress caused the sleep
and that caused the cortisol
or it's the stress
that caused the cortisol
that then caused the insulin
or it's the stress that causes sleep
then caused the insulin
or does it matter at all?
As long as I figure out a way to reduce
the burden of stress
and possibly if I am looking
at blood sugar markers,
cortisol markers, daily energy
or tracking sleep
then maybe I could be
hitting this from both sides
of trying to reduce stress
but also trying to build resilience
against that by either doing things
to better support sleep
or to better manage
energy throughout the day
or to better manage
my glucose regulation.
So a lot of this is going to be, well
what can we reduce on the input side
from the stress side
but also what resiliency
can we produce in our physiology
so that, you know,
cause obviously, you know
if we train we're more insulin sensitive
if I manage my nutrition and you know
I'm doing things like managing my light
and my chrono nutrition and, you know
managing the things that I can
in my day to day
then maybe I decrease cortisol
and get a little bit better sleep.
How can I be more
resilient to these things?
Because what happens is,
you get a stress input
and it's gonna affect multiple things.
But all has to do is push
one of those things far enough
that then you get a domino effect
or we'll say maybe
a ping pong ball effect
where it's just gonna shoot
all over this thing
and you could be getting symptoms
all over the place and you don't know.
So the best case scenario
is imagine that at any point
in this like web of arrows
that we could start saying, ah
I'm gonna put a block here
because my physiology is very resistant
to that type of stress.
You know, let's say like, man
I got my sleep routine down really well.
I got my supplementation good,
my light good
my nighttime routine.
I'm managing my training
and all that stuff.
So you know,
a little bit of disruption in sleep
isn't gonna affect me that much
'cause my sleep is pretty good.
How about like, you know,
with insulin, like, well
my diet's pretty good
am managing my macros and my calorie
and I'm training.
Then my tolerance to, you know,
that stress on the blood sugar system
is gonna be pretty good.
Let's say that, you know,
I'm managing my training volume
and I'm, you know, eating clean.
I get plenty of my micronutrients
and stuff like that.
I know how to regulate myself
throughout the day, I've conditioned
in terms of cardiovascular.
My ANS is pretty healthy.
My HRV is pretty high.
Well then a little bump in cortisol
may not push me over the edge.
So my tolerance to stress
is gonna be better.
So what we need is we need
to get that balance of the scale
to the point where there's less
of an opportunity for us
to enter this chaotic web of stuff
and it's gonna be like
nearly impossible to decipher, right?
Because,
let's just walk down
one of these paths here.
So we've got stress
we get to disrupted sleep
well what can we happen
from disrupted sleep?
Well, disrupted sleep
can actually lead to
impaired digestion, right?
Well, okay, well,
if I get impaired digestion
and that kind of start to, you know
affect my nutrients, my nutrient levels
so I can get nutrient deficiencies,
because of less digestion
am getting less out of my food
that's not good.
Disrupted sleep is also gonna
decrease my ability to detox,
including my brain at night.
So, okay.
So if I'm getting
an increased toxic burden
but I have less micronutrients
to deal with that.
Well then what I'm likely gonna get
is lower energy
go into to that like lower power mode
because you know
less micronutrients don't have the
you can't create energy as efficiently.
I also probably can't create
testosterone as efficiently as I start to get in here.
So lack of sleep is gonna lead
to decreased testosterone,
both directly,
both through increased cortisol
and through nutrient depletion.
And if I got poor detoxification
that could lead to you know,
increased estrogen levels
and things like that
we get this cycle
could then come around.
There's a million different ways.
And all of a sudden now we're like, okay now we're getting
into slower metabolism,
slower metabolism
that also means less energy production.
And you know,
I might be decreasing my need now
so my calorie surplus
is getting greater, right?
And if all of that's happening
and now I need more pick me ups
maybe I reach for some coffee
maybe I gotta, you know,
take more pre-workout or whatever.
So I'm pushing that cortisol button.
We're jumping all over
around this thing, you know and we can pretty much go
anywhere that we want to.
So when we get to
increased stress hormones
decreased glucose regulation,
disrupted sleep
poor energy production,
poor detoxification
poor nutrient depletion.
Like any of these things
it just spirals out of control.
So you can look at this,
you can study this.
Maybe this is helpful to you
maybe it's not,
but the goal is not to get stuck
trying to figure out
where somebody is on this web.
So let's look at a simpler model.
Okay.
So I'm gonna go ahead and put
stress and inflammation together
because they
pretty much everything
that causes stress also leads to
at least some level of inflammation.
Okay. So what you're gonna have,
essentially if we look at this,
is, is that nutrition
and like physiological
metabolic function
which is gonna include everything
from our ability to create energy,
to get rid of toxins.
You know, basically if we are stressed
we are gonna negatively impact those.
But if those are negatively impacted
they are gonna be a stress.
So what you end up with
is this push pull relationship
that works all the way
around this triangle.
And so what that means is that
if I'm stressed,
that negatively impacts nutrition
if my nutrition is bad,
that negatively impacts
my tolerance to stress and inflammation.
But also if I decrease my stress
that positively affects the nutrition
because I have less stress
it decreases the nutritional demand.
I'm not burning through
as many, you know
whether they be calories
or micronutrients
to deal with that stress
to fuel that inflammation process.
If my nutrition is better,
if my micro nutrition is better
if my calories are around
where they need to be,
my macros are around
where they need to be, you know
I'm eating in an
appropriate feeding window
and around the times of days
and around my training
that supports me, optimally.
Those things are gonna make me
more resilient
to be able to tolerate stress
and actually recover
from stress and inflammation
and resolve that inflammation
and stress better.
Same thing on the metabolic
dysregulation side, right?
So the better I manage my blood sugar
the more resilient I am
against any stress
that would cause inflammation
or a bump in cortisol that would
maybe dysregulate
that blood sugar a little bit.
So same thing for my ability to detox
my ability to create energy.
So essentially the healthier,
all of our systems are
the more resilient we are to stress.
The more stress that we can handle
the quickly and more appropriately
that we will resolve inflammation.
And that is gonna be as a trainer,
your strategy
for dealing with stress,
your strategy is not gonna be
trying to figure this out for people.
Okay. It's a nightmare.
You'll, this is the, like
somebody leaves
with a shopping bag worth of pills
and a whole like diary worth of stuff
of how all the life changes
that they need to make.
And it's an impossible pursuit.
Nobody wins.
Okay. Getting to this process
getting to this thought process
of saying, okay, look,
if I can improve
any corner of this triangle
it is gonna improve
the other two corners. Right?
And the middle is always gonna be
a sum of what's going on
with the three corners
and that's hormones.
And right now,
it's been this way while
it comes up and down
like the fitness industry
is full of fads
but like hormones are becoming
more fatty again in terms of like,
you know, Oh yeah,
you get your hormones tested
but just be very careful
'cause a lot of people are, you know,
they're pushing blood work
and Dutch tests and whatnot,
but not for like
they're acting like
they're trying to figure this out.
But what they're really doing
is they're saying, Hey
you need to get these things tested
because health is important.
And they're using that
as a driver to sell people, you know
pills and supplements
and things like that
or to sell a higher authority
of nutritional understanding
and intervention
than what they really have.
And I really hate that, you know,
and that was kind of a path
that I even started going down
back when I was into, you know
looking into functional medicine
and doing and testing.
You think that,
'cause you were always looking
for this like plug and play answer.
And so people look at hormones,
it's like, Oh your testosterone is low.
So let's get this test run up,
you know, or, Hey look
a little traffic circle thing
that's often that says
this supplement fixes that.
And in reality, it doesn't
because putting one little benefit
in any one little chink in here,
just it's not gonna matter
if we're have stress
and multiple like system disruption
that's just gonna go all over the place.
All we're essentially doing
is just like, we're
it's kind of like, we're putting up
a temporary dam that's just gonna
push the water somewhere else.
So it's like maybe
we improve one symptom
so that it manifests somewhere else.
It's not corrective, you know
which is a good financial model
'cause it keeps people coming back
and buying the stuff.
But it's a terrible ethics model.
So when we're looking at hormones
we shouldn't be trying to do too much
with hormones,
knowing that hormones out of whack
is a way of understanding that like, man
this whole thing
is under a lot of stress, right.
But hormones are, think of it as like,
they're powerful messengers
but they're like kind of
long-term messengers
not like the most long-term,
but they're like, you know
they're not like the immediate things
with the exception of something,
you know, like insulin, you know,
that like manages blood sugar
like really fast, you know,
like we slowly secrete testosterone
and estrogen and things like that.
A lot of hormones are very slow acting
and are the result of the,
we'll say they have
a fluctuation to them
or they have a rhythm to them.
But their total amounts are a result
of the chronic levels of stress
nutritional and physiological health
of the individual.
So when your hormones are dysregulated
correcting the hormones
does not solve the issue
of why the hormones were dysregulated.
Throwing a nutrient at somebody
doesn't correct the reason why
that system was being overtaxed.
So you could run an organic acids test
or a Dutch test or whatever. And it could be like, Oh,
look, this pathway here
like that's not working
very good on you.
There could be the chance that somebody
has a genetic dysregulation
then, you know, they have a mutation
a snip or something there
that decreases the function
of an enzyme or something.
Those things do exist,
but they're not gonna know very well
if that's really the factor
if this person has a compounding
amount of stress
inflammation, poor nutrition
and metabolic dysregulation
and most people that come to you
whether they be general population
or physique competitors that have been
like over-training and chronic dieting,
and you know living, we'll say
psychologically unhealthy lifestyles
it doesn't matter.
This, little triangle thing is
it's F'd, it's screwed on them.
And so looking at their hormones
is a waste of time in a sense,
if you are trying
to just fix the hormones
what you need to be doing
is figuring out
how do I fix the outer portions
of this triangle.
So that then the hormones
will self-correct
because the hormones,
the hormone shift our physiology
based off
what our physiological capacity is.
So when blood sugar goes up,
insulin goes up
to bring that blood sugar down.
We wouldn't wanna block insulin
because, Oh
your insulin levels are high
we should just give you a thing
that says no more insulin.
You would die.
We tend to forget that when we look
at things like testosterone
and cortisol and estrogen
and thinking like, well, okay,
if your testosterone is low
why would your testosterone be low?
Well, maybe
because testosterone like
is metabolically like proactive
and it's got anabolic properties
and doing that
it's probably a poor idea.
if we have nutrient deficiencies
and toxic burdens and inflammation
and, you know
dysregulation in other hormones
more testosterone is probably
a bad thing for our body.
So it being low is actually corrective.
It's a response to what's going on
in the outside of the triangle.
And so that is a big flaw
in people trying to focus
on those hormones.
And you will see this
a lot in the industry
but we're talking about stress.
And so what I'm telling you is
don't stress about the hormones per se,
as much as understand
that hormones are out of whack,
then focus on the outsides
of the triangle here,
reduce stress and inflammation
improve nutrition,
do everything that you can
to improve their metabolic function
through either nutrition
exercise, lifestyle interventions
and then
see how those hormones start to change.
Because changing
the hormones artificially
or trying to manipulate pathways
too directly by just like throwing in
a specific nutrient here
you can essentially be opening up
the flood gates for an area
that isn't ready for that.
And you're just gonna kill
everything in there so to speak,
like, I don't know,
if it's a good analogy but essentially
it's like, you know,
we'll put it this way
say you got road construction going on
and so lanes are blocked off.
If you just opened up lanes,
that doesn't mean the road is done
cars would just start running in there
and crashing and ruining everything,
and whatnot. And then it's just gonna take you
even longer to fix that.
That's essentially what happens
if you focus
on the hormone side of things or the two
we'll say like, you know,
pill for an ill situation
rather than actually focusing
on fixing the environment
which is our physiology
in our external environment