Three T’s of Stress

I want to start off with a question: do you actually suffer from stress? Haha, right? That’s a big joke these days. We all suffer from stress. Most of the time, we don’t really realize that we’re suffering from stress but it has a tremendous toll on our body. Many times, because we don’t pay attention to it, we don’t actually take into consideration the toll that stress is applying to our body. What I want to do is take the opportunity to talk about the Three T’s of Stress. The Three T’s of Stress are going to be trauma, toxins and thoughts. If you’re not accounting for those three stressors, then you’re not optimizing your health. Let me take each one individually here.

The Stressor that Accumulates with Age

The first T is trauma. We’ve all had some type of trauma as we go through our lives. Maybe we’ve been in some type of motor vehicle accident. Maybe you’re an athlete and you’ve had some type of sprain/strain injury or injured a joint or a muscle. If you’re athletic, the chances are, you’ve probably had some type of injury. Those things, over time, start to wear on our body. It takes a lot of energy to recover from those injuries. If those injuries aren’t taken care of properly, then one of the things that happens is we begin to create imbalances in our body. Those imbalances structurally change the way our body functions. That’s a significant stress that can put a lot of structural toll on our body if we don’t deal with those, even causing changes internally through increased inflammation. Inflammation affects all aspects of our health.

The Three T’s of Stress: You Can No Longer Run From These

The second of the three T’s of stress are toxins. Toxins are ubiquitous in our environment; they’re everywhere. If you think that you’re not being exposed to toxins, let me just clarify — you’re wrong. You are being exposed to toxins; there’s no way you can’t be. If you live in a metropolitan environment, you’re being exposed to the exhaust, to gases, to things that are found as normal, consistent pollutants in the air. If you’re not eating 100%-organic all the time, then you’re going to be exposed to different herbicides and pesticides. A great example of this is going to be Round Up. Round Up is applied to numerous crops, especially grains. This chemical, that herbicide that has pesticide-like effects, is actually absorbed into those foods. When that food is processed and refined, that Round Up is not taken out. So you end up ingesting some of that. That accumulates in your body over time. What does that do? That is going to be a fat-soluble or fat-like substance. That means it’s going to have an affinity for your fat tissue. It’s going to want to hang out in your fat tissue. Your body doesn’t want to get rid of that. As a result, it continues to promote proliferative negative effects, creates chronic inflammation and begins to deteriorate tissues in the body over time. Our bodies have to consistently work to get these toxins out.  This is just another reason the Paleo Diet is not an option, but a MUST if you are serious about improving your health.

The Stressor that is Between Your Ears

We’ve got trauma; we’ve got toxins. Now, the third T is going to be thought. Guys, listen. If you don’t step into each day and step out of bed, hit the ground with a positive mindset, you’re doomed. You’re going to have more stress than the person who has a smile on their face and has taken off each day on the right footstep. So you’ve got to approach life with a positive attitude. Listen, we all have our stresses. We all have things that are not ideal that we all deal with from day to day. It’s all about how you re-center and how you refocus yourself to keep going forward. If you’re not continuing to move forward, then those stresses are going to weigh on you. Those thoughts are going to weigh on you.

The Three T’s of Stress are Real

That seems very conceptual but what you have to appreciate about this is that it doesn’t really matter if it’s a physical trauma, if it’s a toxin or if it’s a thought process. Those stresses and they way your body deals with those and manages those are no different. You’re going to secrete cortisol. You’re going to negatively suppress your gastrointestinal function. You’re going to start having negative effects on your gastrointestinal tract. As we start talking about long-term health, if we can’t control our hormones, if we can’t keep our inflammation down, if we can’t keep our gastrointestinal tract healthy, that’s a recipe for a chronic disease to manifest.

Hear what I am saying. When you’re looking at your health and you’re thinking how do I try to deal with the different stressors in my environment, in the world that I function in, guys, look at the top three. You’ve got to deal with the traumas that you encounter and that you’ve succumbed to over an entire life span. You’ve got to deal with the toxins that are never-ending, that continue to accumulate more and more. Lastly, you’ve got to deal with between your ears. If you’re not stepping into that day with positive thoughts, you’re off the right track. Manage, not conquer, just manage, the three T’s of stress and you will significantly improve your health.