Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello, good morning everybody. So I'm going straight into this one and it's about stress. How stress can hurt women's health. So let's get into what the research says first and then let's talk a bit about it because if we don't tackle this, like we spoke about before, I think Christmas challenge twenty twenty, or yeah, we had like a lot of the battle, a of our stress. And, like, if we don't tackle the cause of stress, you know, even not even tackling the causes, how we deal with our thoughts about the stress causing it to catastrophize, went in for a world of trouble.
Speaker 1:We're gonna make a life a lot harder for ourselves. Let's get let's get into this now. So in a 02/2010 study titled stress and gender involving thousands of participants by the American Psychological Association found that women are more likely than men to report having a great deal of stress. Twenty eight percent of women versus twenty eight percent of men. Almost half of all women, forty nine percent, surveyed said their stress has increased over the past five years compared to men, so forty nine percent versus thirty nine percent.
Speaker 1:Women are more likely to report physical and emotional symptoms of stress than men, such as having a headache, forty one percent women, thirty percent men, having felt as though they could cry, forty four percent women, fifteen percent men, that's a huge difference, or having had an upstep upset stomach or indigestion, thirty two percent women versus twenty one percent men. Women are more likely to report that money, seventy nine percent compared to seventy three percent of men, and the economy, 68% women, 61% men, are sources of stress, whilst men are far more likely to cite that work is a source of stress, 76% for men versus 65% for women. Married women report higher levels of stress than single women. Yeah. Like, don't divorce, guys.
Speaker 1:Come on. I'm not saying that. With one third, thirty three percent reporting they have a great deal of stress in the past month compared with twenty two percent of single women. Similarly, I never guess I would. Significantly more married women report that their stress has increased over the past five years, fifty six percent married versus forty one percent single.
Speaker 1:And single women are also more likely than married women to say they are doing enough to manage their stress, sixty three percent single, fifty one percent married. In The United States alone, nearly half of all women report higher stress levels during the holidays, whilst only a third of men would say the same. So fifty percent of women, thirty three percent men. The women's health specialists at Genesis Women's have seen how high stress levels can be severely detrimental to overall wellness. There are many negative effects on women's health due to high stress during the busy holiday season, thus it is essential to make a check-in with yourself.
Speaker 1:Now we're going on to menstrual health. According to the American Journal of Epidemiology, women who spend prolonged time in high stress scenarios, especially at work, have a fifty percent higher risk of experiencing shortened menstrual cycles, meaning multiple periods in less than a month that may not be predictable. Women under stress also report heavier flow than usual and more severe symptoms of pain and lethargy. Before your period begins, you may even feel severe PMS symptoms than usual, including mood swings that can feel like genuine depressive episodes. Studies on depression in men versus women have shown that women are twice as likely as men to be depressed.
Speaker 1:Women are also at a higher risk of developing anxiety disorders such as general anxiety, PTSD, and OCD. Due to our body's physical responses to stressors, unmanageable stress levels can trigger all of these conditions. Okay. Now we're talking about vaginal health. Yes.
Speaker 1:I'm going into it. The pH or acidity content of the vagina is determined by a balance of healthy and unhealthy bacteria. High stress levels can negatively affect your immune system, lowering your body's natural defenses and throwing off this delicate balance. This can lead to higher risk of contracting uncomfortable yeast infections and various bacterial ailments. Vaginal that's how I say vaginal all time.
Speaker 1:Vaginal yeast infection symptoms include itching, burning, swelling, rashes, and thick white wood less discharge around the vagina and vulva. Okay? Sex drive and fertility. Last one, guys. Are women under grade dealers dressed tend to have a lower sex drive, feel distracted during sex, or may even experience discomfort due to vaginal dryness?
Speaker 1:Women under stress can have more difficulty getting pregnant, and for those who want to build a family, this may become an additional stressor. There's a theory why all of Henry VIII's wives kept having miscarriages. They were so stressed that they had to deliver a a boy, to deliver a guy. It's date to come out, fucking John comes out. 55 years old.
Speaker 1:So they were so stressed about the fact they had to do a boy, otherwise he would get killed. That that that stress involved the stress of pregnancy. They all cause miscarriages all the time. They miscarriages, miscarriages, miscarriages. Okay.
Speaker 1:So, like, women under high stress can begin to display several physical symptoms that affect various body parts. Some of these symptoms include stomach and bowel issues. IBS is also twice as common in in women, and stress can trigger flare ups. Heart problems, prolonged stressful situations can lead to high blood pressure and headaches. Women are more prone to tension headaches and severe migraines than men both related or worsened by stress.
Speaker 1:Now as a lot of information come at you, more you need to understand from others, it's overall women get more stressed out than men, and overall women show their stresses as manifestations through IBS, like flare ups or potentially looking into it. Some they're looking to stress causing these things. So we're not we can't run away from stress. Okay. When we get stressed, the frontal cortex, the decision making part of your brain can speak to the rest of the brain and say, wait now, hold on.
Speaker 1:Don't catastrophize here. This is fine. Let's calm down a bit, and it can work that can calm yourself down. The stress response can chill out. Okay?
Speaker 1:And I'm speaking to Dean about this as well. It's like when you're in the moment of actual complete and utter anxiety, like, you know, Dean's been through it over Christmas, Louise Ryan, can we control that? Oh, is it not about controlling? It's about acceptance that you're stressed and being aware of why the stress has been activated and actually then rationalizing it and bringing it down. Dean says what worked for them is really talking.
Speaker 1:And what talking does is you basically rationalizing things yourself. You're talking to someone. You talk through the process. And, actually, you come to terms. You're talking.
Speaker 1:The brain calms down. The stress response remains at its peak, a few minutes in length. The problem is when a stress response is on throughout the day all day. Right? That's the problem we have.
Speaker 1:Now when you get stressed, and I've spoke about this multiple times, and it's very important to reiterate this. When you get stressed, you're getting ready for fight or flight. You're getting your body is now mobilized to run, punch, whatever it may be doing. Your your your senses are sharpened. Blood glucose in the muscles rapid, boom, to the thighs.
Speaker 1:You're ready to run. Adrenaline, the core sense of the body, heart rate, fly in. You are ready to run. Okay? But what most of us do is we're sitting down.
Speaker 1:We have thought this up. We've thought psychologically the psychological stress is a problem. We have thought thought of something, caused ourselves to have a stress response, kept the stress response on for ages. The body's been mobilized to run. Glucocorticoids are going through the body, which are good in the short term, but if they're always there, really, really bad.
Speaker 1:Stress is one of those things that, like, in acute short term, we need it to survive. We absolutely need stress to survive. We need it to be able run, fight, whatever that we need it. But when we turn it on, it's actual complete opposite. Your immune system, acute stress shoots up.
Speaker 1:Immune system, chronic long term stress throughout the days goes way down. Our desire to eat goes goes to zero when we're stressed. Why does the body need to digest anything when it needs to survive and run? Digestion stops. Mushroom muscle tissue building, everything stops.
Speaker 1:Because why are you what's the point building when you need to survive? Right? Long term stress causes appetite to go up, causes you to desire more salty and fatty foods. That's not good. That's not good at all.
Speaker 1:So glucocorticoids long term in the bloodstream can actually merge or mix with fat cells and cause blockages in the arteries and stuff as well, raising blood pressure. It's not to scare you. It's like, what can we do about stress? There's a few simple things we can do. I think we need to start thinking about it.
Speaker 1:Is if you start thinking about your stress, and this is where sometimes when you look at stress, anxieties, is it that we become tense and then stressed psychologically doing that? Because if you take a muscle relaxant drug and you have your muscles are all relaxed, your anxiety literally melts away. Tension goes in the body. You're not tight. Anxiety goes.
Speaker 1:You're not tensed. K. That's what happened, isn't it? It's gonna work out well. K.
Speaker 1:If that happens, then is it a bodily thing causing it? So the first thing is to do right now, check-in on yourself. Where are you tensing up? You know, relax for a minute. You know, Drop the shoulders.
Speaker 1:Where are you tensed up? Think about it now. Look at your body. Examine it. Where is the tension?
Speaker 1:And how are you tensed all the time? Is your jaw clenched? Your fist clenched? Like, are you always, you know, tighten up? Do we need to be more aware day to day to actually check-in with ourselves, go right, okay, let me just check my body, I'm tensed up, am I ready to go, let's relax a bit.
Speaker 1:That's gonna help. The second thing that's gonna help is, if you are stressed and you've triggered the stress response, your heart rate is flying. Okay? Is it can you, at the peak of that, actually stop it immediately? Probably not.
Speaker 1:You are now ready to run, fight, punch, workout. Go and do that thing. If you have sat on a chair, 10:45AM, got your phone up, and you've seen Dean Leakers text you, and you're like, oh, Dean Leakers and nob, and you text your message, oh, Dean Leakers, he's pissed me off for this message. And you get worked up, bro. You got six messages from your friends going, yeah.
Speaker 1:You tell him he's a knob, do you, know, you know, you're working up. Are gonna send you both send this message. You can't send it to him. Your head's going all over the shop. Are you gonna tell him everything easy?
Speaker 1:And then you're in this frenzy state of stress. Yeah? And you've activated it. Is the next two minutes chilling out a big and help? You know, your heart rate's still right risen.
Speaker 1:So what you wanna do there is get up off the chair, go for a walk, a brisk walk, go and do a ten minute workout, go and do a you need an outlet. You need an outlet to this point, which is which is vital. So that outlet will be able to reduce stress, and it is a grim image, but Robert Sapolsky talks of this. When when the world goes worse and the economy tanks and men lose their jobs, the egos get hurt, they're at home, And the lockdown proved this. Domestic domestic violence increased.
Speaker 1:So when men were out of control and stressed, chronically stressed, their outlet was domestic violence. They managed to get their stress out on their partner, and it was grim. Right? But that stopped them getting ulcers, but gave the ulcers to the partner. Am I making sense?
Speaker 1:So they were able to release their stress, get rid of it, but at the same time, stressing their partner out in with the worst conditions, thus causing their partner to be chronically stressed, and then the partner actually having the negative effects of having stomach ulcers and all that when being chronically stressed. Okay? So there is this transference of stress. And now domestic violence is unacceptable. Of course, it's it's fucking these people need need help.
Speaker 1:But if you can channel the stress into an outlet such as maybe a punch bag or a workout or a brisk walk or something, you can kind of unleash the stress out and not hold her in. And if we hold her in, it's not gonna be good for our bodies, but we can release it. That's a vital part. I'm speaking to Dean yesterday as well. Really good chat, talking about the mind.
Speaker 1:Fascinating stuff. This will be coming on our morning talks on the on the octagon challenge. Some deep stuff, the normal stuff, obviously, having a laugh. We spoke about as I said, yeah, but Dean okay. So, Dean, let me put it this way for you.
Speaker 1:You're you're you're in bed. You're trying to sleep. One part of you is your body's racing, heart is going, thinking crazy stuff. The other side of you is going, fucking hell, Scott. Shut up.
Speaker 1:What are thinking this shit for? Stop thinking about Wales England colonized Wales, man. Get to sleep. Stop thinking about you're gonna overthrow the pessimistic compliment. Go to sleep.
Speaker 1:Okay? So you're trying to talk to yourself in your bed, but it never works, does it? We're just up for hours. The Dean saying is, well, if you're in that state, which is basically a stress response state, you wanna get up and do something, wanna get out of the bedroom, you wanna start doing a journal, you wanna do it, you wanna do and read it, you wanna do something, you wanna get out of the bedroom because if you start connecting that bedroom as a place where you start feeling is thinking of these things as a habit, oh, when I'm in a bed, I'm gonna start thinking about all my life problems. If you are connecting bed to life problems, every time you go to bed, you're gonna have them and you won't be able to sleep.
Speaker 1:So sleep is for two things Dean said. He's from his book, is for sleeping and sex. That's what Dean said. Dean said it's only for sex apparently. He doesn't sleep anymore.
Speaker 1:But Dean, that's the two things. So if you start thinking too much in your bed, get out. Go to live in Rogozamin. I think that's quite a good tactic as well. So when we're stressed, we wanna safe and, yeah, we wanna safe and predictable outlet for it.
Speaker 1:If we ask if we're if our sleeps get impacted, we wanna make sure we're not trying to fight through that in the bed. We wanna go out, let it hang, then go back to bed when we ask we're ready to sleep. So the sleeping pattern is better. We're gonna catastrophize, psychologically catastrophize our stress. We wanna realize the impact of because this is the thing.
Speaker 1:It's like smoking. You speak to smokers. You go, you know, smoke is bad for you. You go, yeah. But it's not one smoke, and there's not one faggot's gonna do it.
Speaker 1:It's not they smoke one faggot, next day they got lung cancer. If something happens gradually for ages, it just it just creeps up on them. So because it's not an instant thing, they don't care so much about it. Same as stress. You can say to yourself today, yeah, Scott, I'll I'll tackle stress tomorrow.
Speaker 1:I'll I'll I'll think about tackling my stress next week. There is no next week. There is no tomorrow. There is no. Can we be free from these stressors or made up psychological fears?
Speaker 1:No. That's the question. Because if we can, which we should try to, and there's no actually there's no trend that it just is. We're not going to go through all the stats I just said to you just early in this voice note all the stats, they should be quite scary. Don't run away from him.
Speaker 1:That's the science. That's the fact is, as a woman most of you listening are women, you are more stressed than men and you have more the the more negative impacts on you than men when it comes to stress. So you better start dealing with it now because if we're not gonna deal with the most important things that impact our health, what are we doing? I mean, is work more important than your mental and physical health? No.
Speaker 1:And this is I'm gonna finish this. The research is clear. When you're stressed, your frontal cortex is impaired. It doesn't work. The frontal cortex is the logical part of your brain.
Speaker 1:When we're stressed that doesn't work properly, severely impaired. You can't make good decisions when you're stressed. You make terrible decisions when you're stressed. So if you really want to start thinking we're sorting your life out, if that's the term you want to use or improving your life in any way, You're not going to improve your life following the same silly path of overworking, over analyzing everything, overstressed, making everything making everything everyone says to you impact you, Every negative thing that comes towards you, taking it to heart, being stressed about it, being in the middle of gossip all the time, talking to gossip, blah blah blah, all this shit. If you keep being in our state, listening to the news all the time, being stressed, gossip columns, this reality, like, all the things that make you stressed, you keep going on our plan, your decision making abilities impaired, then the fully rational self, the full intelligence of your being cannot be used because you've impaired it with chronic stress, and you're going to be hungrier.
Speaker 1:And you're going to be just you're going to be developing health conditions and the general path of your life is going to get gradually worse. It won't be happening tomorrow, it'll gradually get worse. So it's of vital importance to start thinking about our stress. And that's where you need to start thinking one big thing today. How stressed really are you?
Speaker 1:How many times do you trigger your stress response every day? How many times do you let something get to you and your heart starts racing? This is Stoicism comes in. Stoicism can limit that. Stoicism is not a 100% the answer.
Speaker 1:Stoicism can limit that. Our perception of things in my autism happens to us, and it's it's a story about that, that what what what triggers whatever inside us, not what actually happens to us. As, you know, I know some people won't agree with it, but this is truth. And another okay. This one I'll leave you with.
Speaker 1:Me and Dean were talking, and we were like, right. Dino, if we dumped you on an alien planet or a desert island right now on your own, you had no clock. Right? Your son is desert island. No clock.
Speaker 1:No clothes. No time. You're in a coma. Don't know what your your ears is. When you wake up, do you worry about what you are in?
Speaker 1:In this alien planet on your own or on this desert island on your own? No. Do you worry if you're five pounds heavier than if you were you were a year ago? No. Do you worry about needing to achieve something by 35 years old?
Speaker 1:No. Because you don't even know your age, so can't you even think about it. I should do this by then. You don't even know. You don't even know your age.
Speaker 1:You can't say I wanna do a spin. There's it's not it's not there. It's not possible. Are you worried about yesterday? No.
Speaker 1:Are you worried about tomorrow? No. So in that fact, on on your own desert island or on an alien planet, all these fears that we work up, the security we demand and the the things we're trying to become are all made up in our own mind. Because if you can be free on a desert island, right, can you have that freedom, right, so there's no one there in today's in the world now, right now? Is that possible?
Speaker 1:Because if it's possible on a desert island and we know nobody's there, but can we bring that perception to now? Yeah. We can. So in that regard, if we can do that, we can start eliminating a lot of these fears that cause a lot of stressors. Guys, oh my god.
Speaker 1:Because twenty minutes, gotta go, guys. Gotta leave you to it. Start thinking about it. Start thinking about it today. Enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1:Obviously, have a smile on your face. It's a new day. Beautiful day yesterday. Blue skies. It wasn't the cloud in the sky.
Speaker 1:Unbelievable. I absolutely did Dean on an Instagram story. He thought I was doing a photo shoot for him. He was smiling, pausing. No, Dean.
Speaker 1:It was a video I done knew. Top of mindset, coach Dean. I read you like a book. But, guys, enjoy your day. Speak to you tomorrow.