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Are Probiotics the Key to Stressing Less?

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probiotics and stress

By BodyLogicMDAdmin

Books, articles, and doctors are constantly advising against stress and worry, underlining the negative effects on your health and quality of life, but offering little recourse for keeping it at bay. You can’t avoid traffic jams, give up your job, or stop worrying about your aging parents or rebellious teenager. Life is stressful.

Of course, you have tried to get more sleep or take a weekly yoga class because you have heard those habits help you manage the effects stress. Over time, your motivation for these habits has waned because life gets in the way and you just aren’t really seeing noticeable benefits. You have bills to pay and yoga and sleep do not seem to be helping you address these sources of stress.

However, your health and quality of life are at stake, so what can you do to get stress off your back?

What Happens When You Are Stressed?

When you are stressed, the adrenal glands increase secretion of the hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, and the neurotransmitter, norepinephrine. Adrenaline causes your blood pressure to spike and your heart to race, while cortisol constricts your blood vessels. Cortisol also increases your appetite and cravings for sugar, carbs, and fats—your body is seeking both comfort and immediate energy to help you cope with the stress. And, with more cortisol in your system, your body begins to create fat stores as energy reserves—dangerous, “deep-belly” fat—that contributes to increased levels of inflammation and chronic disease.

As this occurs, the brain sends out signals to the gut, alerting your digestive system that it is necessary to deviate from routine function in an effort to channel energy to the stressor. This effect alone is a leading cause of digestive distress and bacterial imbalance in the gut. Under stress, the body begins to reduce function of several less essential body systems, including your immune system, to channel resources to keep the major organs functioning as you deal with stress. This leaves you more susceptible to infection and impairs healing times—you just can’t get well.

If you are like most Americans, the stress in your life is chronic, meaning your body is never functioning optimally. You always feel sick, tired, rundown, and whether you know it or not, you are at high risk of developing a chronic illness.

A Simple Solution for Stressing Less

Getting more sleep and jumping into a yoga class are two well-known strategies for coping with the effects of stress, but recent research is suggesting that you might experience more obvious benefits with a simple daily dose of probiotics.

A new strain of probiotics has emerged. These types of probiotics have been aptly named “psychobiotics.” Psychobiotics are defined as live organisms that when ingested may produce health benefits in people suffering from mental distress.

At a press briefing at the 2015 Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Annual Meeting, researchers presented the results of a small study that found that men given a daily capsule of the psychobiotic, Bifidobacterium longum, experienced reductions in cortisol and anxiety when placed under acute stress. And, according to a questionnaire, the men felt less stressed and anxious overall while on the psychobiotic. The researchers found that the subjects performed better on visual memory tasks as well.

Though the study was small, its author says that it is proof of a principle—psychobiotics may be useful in helping the general population counteract stress and its effects on the body and, potentially, be made effective in the treatment of patients with stress-related disorders, such as depression or anxiety.

Stopping Stress

Short of winning the lottery, which likely comes with its own unique stresses, you can’t exactly stop stress. You can, however, improve how your brain and body reacts to stress.

Stressors come in many different forms and affect the body in many different ways. If you haven’t been feeling like yourself for quite some time, it may be time to take a step back and assess the stressors in your life. In some cases, you may need to talk to your doctor. You may need a system overhaul, including supplements like psychobiotics to help you manage stress and its effects internally, as well as restoring hormone balance and examining lifestyle factors like sleep, physical activity, and diet.

The expert physicians of the BodyLogicMD network understand that stress often affects multiple aspects of your health, including hormone balance. Many conditions of hormone imbalance are closely linked to too much or too little cortisol—also known as the stress hormone. Talk to an expert today about how stress may be affecting your health and take back control.


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The post Are Probiotics the Key to Stressing Less? appeared first on Bioidentical Hormone Experts.


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