When I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (and for years before), I constantly felt like I was on a gerbil wheel always running, running, running, with something always needing to be done. A big part of healing from rheumatoid arthritis was calming my nervous system and managing my stress.
For a long time, I thrived on the adrenaline rush and the ability to push through and keep going until I crashed at the end of the day. I was always able to dig deep and find the energy every time.
Then things shifted and as my illness progressed, I became exhausted during the day and drained of energy. I wasn’t able to find that deep reserve of energy that I used to rely on.
I’ve learned that this is what happens to the body when it’s under chronic stress.
Some stress is good (exercise, heat and cold exposure, etc.) and is used by the body to regulate and maintain optimal bodily function but our bodies aren’t meant to deal with the amount and frequency of stress we face today.
Constant stimulation of your nervous system, either through your thoughts or information taken via your five senses, is one of the major contributors to dis-ease.
Healing From Rheumatoid Arthritis – The Stress Connection
I also think we need to look at the word stress. If you had told me 8 years ago that I was under chronic low-grade stress, day in and day out, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. I wasn’t stressed, I was just busy.
I see that all the time with the women I work with. They are carrying so much – working full-time, being mothers, supporting family members, being involved in their communities. Their lives are constantly on the go and downtime is few and far between.
“Chronic stress has become epidemic in our society where faster is better and we attempt to pack more obligations into our ever-expanding schedules.”
– Dr. Mark Hyman
Now that I’m on the other side, I’m able to look back and see how hyped up my nervous system was ALL THE TIME. Healing from rheumatoid arthritis involved many components and this was a big one.
“Stress is linked with every identifiable mental and physical ailment and can actually be the root cause of many ailments, ranging from the inflammatory response that increases cortisol and glucocorticoid production to dysregulation in the microbiome. If it is not the root cause of a particular ailment, excessive stress will certainly exacerbate the symptoms of the ailment.”
– Dr. Jay T. Wiles
Here’s another interesting piece…
Stress can come in many forms and everyone’s perception of it is different. What I might find stressful, might not affect you, and vice versa.
Forms of Stress
Here are some types of stressors that are common in our modern world:
Mental stress from a busy workday or trying to meet deadlines, managing a household, anxiety, and worry about the future.
Chemical stress from alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, cleaning products, and chemical-filled personal care products, pesticides, and drugs.
Emotional stress from unhealthy relationships with family or friends, tending to a sick family member, dealing with death – anger, guilt, loneliness, sadness, or fear.
Nutritional stress from food allergies, sensitivities, poor gut function, consuming inflammatory foods, or nutritional deficiencies.
Physical stress from sleep deprivation, an intense workout, an accident, injury, chronic pain, or sitting at a screen all day.
Stress Overload
When I look at the above list, it’s easy for me to see that I actually was under chronic low-grade stress:
Mental stress from working all day teaching children with special needs, and then coming home to cook dinner, look after my kids, do the laundry, etc.
Chemical stress – I used to love the smell of chemical cleaners. I used bleach, Vim, Sunlight soap, Tide, you name it. The more perfume smell the more I used it. I would also have a glass of wine at night to help me unwind from the day.
I thought I was eating well but from my first blog post How I Reversed Rheumatoid Arthritis – Part I, you’ll know the I was definitely under nutritional stress. This was from a daily dose of gluten that I later discovered is very inflammatory for me and other foods that led me to have leaky gut syndrome and nutritional deficiencies.
Physical stress because I used the gym as an outlet but would push myself so hard that there were no restorative benefits coming my way.
Mental stress from trying to be everything to everyone, all the time.
The Stress Cascade
I learned the hard way that our bodies can only handle stress for so long and a key component of healing from rheumatoid arthritis, was shifting my body to spend more time into a parasympathetic (rest, digest and heal) state.
When you experience stress, your body innately responds by targeting the adrenals to release cortisol. The cortisol then triggers the release of norepinephrine and adrenaline—the hormones that cause your “fight or flight” sympathetic nervous system to kick in and save your life in serious and abrupt situations. But if this happens for an extended period of time, like when you’re in an unhealthy relationship, have a stressful work life, are worried about health, finances, or stability, chronically unbalanced blood sugar levels, etc. your adrenals can become taxed. Remember, your adrenals are responsible for making: cortisol, testosterone, dopamine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, among others.”
– Dr. Mark Hyman
Chronic stress leads to chronically low cortisol levels, puts your body into a catabolic state which means your body is breaking down.
A Healthy Stress Response
Many people are chronically stressed, from the moment they wake until the moment they fall asleep. Demands of work, relationships, family, finances, illness, and pain all create a stress response. We are simply not designed to deal with stress on a constant basis.
Think of animals in the wild. Most of the time they are relaxed, hanging out, moving, and grazing. When there are moments of stress, such as a predator chasing them, it is intense and short. They deal with it and then go back to a relaxed and calm state.
This is how we also evolved to deal with stress – in short, intense periods and then returning to a relaxed, rest-and-digest-and-heal state.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you go on vacation. You’re feeling relaxed, rested, and enjoying your time. One night you are woken up by a noise outside your hotel room. You hear a loud bang like a gunshot and you are all of a sudden awake. Your stress response kicks in.
Cortisol and other hormones are flooding your body to prepare you for the fight or flight response. Your heart is racing, your mind is sharp, your wide awake, your eyes are dilated, you’re full of energy.
Survival is the top priority.
While this is happening, the rest of the body’s needs are put on hold. Your digestion is shut down, your reproduction hormones and other functions become secondary as cortisol takes the stage.
You hear another noise and wonder what to do next? Call the front desk? Call the cops? Go outside?
Your body is ready if you need to react to the situation.
You decide to get up and look out the window and see that it is just some kids playing on the beach lighting firecrackers.
You exhale a sigh of relief and think that’s no big deal.
The cortisol flushes out of your system and your heart rate returns to normal as you crawl back into bed.
Modern Day Living: The Loss of Convalescence
Ideally, this is how we are programmed to deal with stress, in short bursts, and returning to homeostasis in-between.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for most people and they either go through an acute, intense period of stress such as the death of a loved one and then back into the fast pace of life without taking time to rest and recalibrate.
We’ve also lost the notion of convalescence when recovering from the flu, a cold, or illness. This would be taking a few extra days off work after recovering from a cold or the flu and slowly easing back into life. Instead, we often re-enter life at full speed as soon as symptoms subside or even suppress the symptoms by taking over-the-counter medications and keep pushing on.
Part of my healing from rheumatoid arthritis was learning how to take care of myself, which sometimes meant before anyone else.
Your HPA Axis: aka Stress Response
Not only was I dealing with mental/emotional/chemical and physical stressors but my body was also trying to manage internal stressors due to a diet that didn’t serve me well and dysfunction within my digestive system.
When good or bad stress or a combination of various stressors becomes too great for too long, a breakdown in the body begins to occur within the hypothalamic-adrenal-pituitary axis (HPA axis) feedback loop.
The HPA axis is a feedback loop that responds to stress. It’s also where the output is looped back to that system as input.
The hypothalamus in your brain senses a threat and responds by producing corticotropic-releasing-hormone (CRH) that signals the pituitary gland to release ACTH (adrenocorticotropin hormone) which signals the adrenals to produce cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.
A functioning feedback loop will identify the amount of cortisol released and if it’s too much the hypothalamus will shut down CRH which shuts down the pituitary release of ACTH which signals the adrenals to stop producing cortisol. At this point, a person begins to return to a normal state.
These three organs regulate your stress response, mood, digestion, immune function, libido, metabolism, and energy production by producing a host of chemicals.
When under chronic stress (external or internal) your feedback loop becomes desensitized and your body continuously produces cortisol and norepinephrine.
Symptoms Are Messages From Your Body
This results in a cascade of downstream effects such as sleep disruption, feeling fatigued, hormonal imbalances such as weight gain around your midsection, feeling ‘wired yet tired’ at night, craving sugar, and carbohydrates, experiencing PMS, having digestive issues, and more.
Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD., ND., uses the analogy of a three-legged stool to represent the interconnectedness of the HPA axis and its effects on your thyroid and sex hormones. She states that “when one leg of the stool is off, it affects the whole network.”
According to Dr. Christiane Northrup MD, if you have any of the following symptoms one of your the legs of your stool is off-balance:
- foggy thinking
- insomnia
- hypoglycemia
- feeling cold
- recurrent infections
- depression
- poor memory
- headaches
- cravings for sweets
I can attest to having quite a number of these symptoms at the time of my diagnosis and I’m happy to report that all have disappeared since healing from rheumatoid arthritis.
Too often, we don’t see symptoms as messages from our bodies telling us that something is out of harmony.
Does Your HPA Axis Need Some Care?
Here are some signs that your HPA axis may need some care and attention:
- you feel groggy in the morning after a night’s sleep
- have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning
- you rely on the first cup of coffee to get you going
- you grab sugary snacks and caffeinated drinks to get you through the day
- you’re exhausted at night but have trouble falling asleep due to anxiety and worries fill your mind
- your sex drive has disappeared
- you have PMS or uncomfortable menopausal symptoms
Calming Your Nervous System
I quickly learned that in order to support my body’s healing from rheumatoid arthritis, I needed to get off the cortisol/adrenaline aka ‘Fight or Flight response that I was constantly in.
After seeing my cortisol results on a functional lab test, I knew I had to get off the gerbil wheel and help my body shift into the parasympathetic state that is often referred to as a rest, digest, and heal state.
Transcendental Meditation
At the recommendation of a friend, I took the Transcendental Meditation (also known as TM) course and I have never looked back. It remains a non-negotiable part of my daily life and looks like this:
- A 20-minute meditation in the morning right after waking (and drinking 20 oz of water)
- A 20-minute meditation any time between 3-6 pm. This has taken place in the car, bedroom, at my desk, in the school parking lot, in the grocery store parking lot, at the beach, you name it!
The investment of 40-minutes each day allows me to recharge, refocus, and refill my energy reserves and coast right to bedtime. It has also helped me calm my nervous system to the point where I can fall asleep easily at night.
At the start of TM, I would fall asleep or felt groggy for a good 10 minutes after it. According to my instructor, this was a sign that my body needed some deep rest and recovery. With consistent practice over time, my body would start to replenish and I would feel energized after each session. It took a few months but I now crave the stillness and rest and feel much more balanced afterward.
Ram Dass says meditation is a “practical tool for coping with life and nurturing personal growth.”
I couldn’t agree more. It allowed me to break free of the internal gerbil wheel I was on and reach new heights within myself.
Meditation: Bringing Deep Calming to the Nervous System
Dr. Candace Pert who was once chief of brain chemistry in the neuroscience branch of the National Institutes of Health, and author of Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, describes her experience with Transcendental Meditation like this:
When I first began meditating, I was besieged by visions of my father lying helpless and dying on his hospital bed, hooked up to IVs and devices, the paraphernalia of his Western medical “saviors.” Other emotionally charged visions, some from childhood, seemed to percolate up into my conscious awareness as I continued meditating, as if these thoughts and feeling had been packed away in storage somewhere, waiting for me to stop everything, sit quietly and relax with a focused mind long enough to allow them to arise.”
Unleashing Pent-Up Emotions
I can absolutely relate to having meditations where “emotionally charged” visions would come to the surface and be released. I think that’s part of the ease of transcendental meditation, nothing is forced yet there’s a lot of shifting beneath the surface.
If you know me, I definitely don’t wear my emotions on my sleeve and often find myself suppressing and burying them. I’m working hard on embracing every feeling, acknowledging it, and letting it be. I’m getting better and very fortunate to have the support of my family to encourage me but I know that I have a long way to go.
Meditation has played a big part in my ability to release pent-up feelings and brings a deep calmness to my nervous system. Transcendental meditation was a key role in healing from rheumatoid arthritis.
If you want to learn more about the science behind the body-mind connection and the new field of psychoneuroimmunology, I encourage to read Dr. Pert’s book Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine.
Transcendental Meditation has been brilliant for me but there are other options out there to help release pent-up emotions and shift your nervous system into a rest-digest-and-heal state.
Strategies to Calm Your Nervous System
Here are a few that I recommend:
1. Insight Timer Meditation App: Meditation for Sleep & Anxiety
3. Joe Dispenza -Open Your Heart Meditation
4. Calm app
5. Cleveland Clinic Meditations
Dr. Kelly Brogan talks a lot about sending a signal of safety to our bodies. I couldn’t agree more. Most people are in go, go, go mode (fight-or-flight) with little time to decompress, breathe, and recalibrate.
6. A Daily Mantra – saying to yourself each day “I am healing” or “I am getting better” helps you start to believe it and it sends positive thoughts/emotions to your cells.
7. Breathwork – Breathing is a powerful way to relax and send a signal of safety to your body – which will help it to heal itself.
Alternate Nostril Breathing
4-7-8 Breathing
1. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
2. Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
3. Hold your breath for a count of seven.
4. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.
This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.
Try doing it 2-3 times a day for a 4-6 week period.
Become Empowered
Finding an enjoyable way to allow your body and mind to relax and shift out of the fight or flight mode and into a parasympathetic state is a very good way to manage the external stresses of modern life and create homeostasis.
Things like:
- meditation
- a walk in nature
- breathwork
- yoga
- exercise
- playing
Find something that you love to do that is relaxing and pleasant and build it into your daily or weekly routines.
I hope you come away feeling empowered that there are many things that you can do to help manage your stress. There are always things we can do to help ourselves but sometimes we need a little guidance.
You Don’t Need to Suffer
If you’re suffering from a dis-ease or chronic pain, you don’t need to. There are many nutrition and lifestyle strategies that you can make to support your body and bring it back to homeostasis = reduce or eliminate your symptoms.
If I can support my body in healing from rheumatoid arthritis, you can get better too.
If you’re interested in hearing more about my 1:1 approach, send me an email, or if you’re interested in a Group Program for people with Rheumatoid Arthritis, I’d love to hear from you. You can connect with me here.
Thanks for reading!
