Have you ever found yourself, right after a stressful situation, reaching for some candy or the first food in sight? Any time we face an obstacle or challenge in our life, we fall back to what is comforting and for 98% of us, that is food. Food is comforting.
The reason: Two-fold infact! Food increases serotonin production in your gut and serotonin is our "happy" neurotransmitter. Also, eating helps to increase our parasympathetic nervous system. That is the part of your nervous system which slows us down. It slows down our heart rate, it slows our breathing rate, it quiets down our muscles. This system gets activated when...you guessed it, we eat!
So, there is a reason you are reaching for the snacks but here's the kicker, there are other things we can reach for to balance ourselves out! Reach for a book, exercise, pray, knit, cry, talk on the phone, go for a walk and deep breathing can all raise serotonin levels as well as stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system!
Lastly; one major contributing factor to how active our parasympathetic nervous system is...Pain! The more pain we're in, the less active our parasympathetic nervous system is, and that's not good. So if you want to find out more about how to get your stress under control, make an appointment!