Stress is nothing new to us. In fact, stress was here far earlier than humanity. It allowed the organisms of days of ole to avoid and remember danger, it regulated their sleep and wake schedules, and even prepared them for future, more daunting threats.

Those responses are still deeply embedded within us, expressed through our physiology. Think of a time where you were walking, maybe it was late at night, and you are suddenly presented with what appears to be a snake near your boot. Before you can even think, your startle response catapults you into the air. Your arms curl up to protect your trunk and throat, your heart begins to pound, and you have the almost unavoidable urge to either run or curl up and defecate. This all happens within mere milliseconds. And then, as suddenly as the snake appeared, it is replaced with a coiled rope and you realize there was no threat in the first place, and you turn your would-be flight into a light chuckle “ha! Phew, I wasn’t scared anyways”.

What you have just read, and have surely experienced, is known as the stress response. It is a completely natural, protective reflex that is as ancient as feeding. What is recognized as “stressful” or “threatening” though, is highly determined by the individual organism and it’s genetics + past experiences.

The stress response has a particular set of physiological processes that it can be pinned to. The entire process is initiated upon the percept of an alerting sensation, whether that comes from the visual field, the auditory field, our own thoughts, or otherwise. Lets stick with the former example of the rope disguised as a snake. Our visual system perceives something that looks snake-like enough to initiate the response to get us the heck out of there. As the signal travels into and through the eye, down the optic nerve, bifurcates at the optic chiasm, it reaches the thalamus and is then split into 2 different pathways, the “high road” and the “low road”. The “low road” is a very rapid pathway that shunts the signal to the amygdala which will communicate the possibility of a threat to other brain centers. The first structure the amygdala communicates with in this particular circuit is the hypothalamus which releases Corticotrophin-Releasing Hormone (CRH), activating the Pituitary gland which in turn causes a release of Adrenocorticotrophic Hormone (ACTH). ACTH is released into the blood stream via the pituitary portal and attaches to associated receptors on the adrenal cortex of the kidneys. The message also activates the liver which stores energy in the form of glucose, which upon adrenal cortex activation, is dumped into the blood in the form of glucocorticoids that will fuel our body to fight or flee. All while this is happening, the other slower “high road” signal takes a detour up through our frontal lobes and hippocampus where the signal can be reviewed to see what all the fuss is about. If the sophisticated analytical structures of the frontal lobe and the memory storage of the hippocampus deem the stimulus as non- threatening, they will put the breaks on the stress response, effectively inhibiting the continuation of the adrenal response.

Why the long winded shpeal on the neurophysiology of the stress response? Because I deeply believe that through education, we can all have something to bring to the table to push us forward in our understanding of the mind. The nitty gritty just gives us some footing to understand what exactly we think is going on.

If you’ve read any literature on stress in the past decade, you’ve probably stumbled across the HPA axis. That is what we just went over; H (hypothalamic), P (pituitary), A (adrenal) axis, the set of primary structures associated with the stress response.

Unfortunately, what I find to be often left out of the “stress response” conversation, is just how plastic this circuit is, to both acute and chronic factors. Think back to a time where you had to give a presentation in front of your class and found yourself “stressing” about it the night before, which led to you have a less than favourable sleep that night. Exhausted, you arrive to your class the next day and notice that you are feeling stressed, or even panicked on a much higher level than usual, or if you would have had a better night’s sleep. Sleep is just one of many factors that donate to the “braking” capacity of the hippocampus and frontal lobes. Other factors that have an impact on our ability to inhibit the stress response are:

·         Genetics

·         Nutrition

·         Cardiovascular health

·         CO2 Tolerance

·         Sleep (I’ll say it again for those in the back)

·         Mood

·         Supplements/OTC/prescriptions

·         Unique neural architecture

·         Circadian Rhythms (consistency of routine)

·         Even more…

So what’s the point? Why am I writing this?

In case you’ve been snugly stuck under a rock for the past few decades, the average chronic stress level of individuals has increased. There are skyrocketing cases of degenerative diseases, cancers, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes to name a few, that can be directly, or indirectly linked to the chronic stress we deal with on a daily basis. Reducing the impact of stressors in our lives posses as one of the greatest difficulties we currently face as a global community. Luckily, we have a swath of educated individuals who are beginning to share their thoughts and findings in how to blunt this stress epidemic.

One particular facet among many that has burst into the literature is the power of breath. What I left out in the conversation of the HPA axis, was the influence of bottom-up sympathetic tone. Anyone who has taken a good yoga or breath focused class and managed to really get into it, has noticed the sheer contrast of how one felt arriving vs leaving. Beyond the exercise induced effects like increased endogenous opioids that leave us feeling calm and comfy, the focus on breath work directly impacts our “physiological arousal”. You can think of it like the rpm in your car; you want to spend most of your time idling at a comfy rpm, not too high, not too low, but you still want the ability to crank it open every now and again without worrying about your engine exploding. A lot of life is making sure you’re taking care of all the processes that donate to a nice healthy idle and reducing the processes that lead to break down. Taking a few minutes every day to focus on getting some deep quality breathing is like getting an oil change (but way faster and cheaper). By temporarily reducing your physiological arousal, you are not only improving how you feel in the moment, you’re also moving yourself farther and farther away from the likelihood of that “low road” pathway turning into an avalanche of stress. Remember the example where we didn’t get enough sleep before our presentation? Had we had a good night’s sleep our frontal lobes would probably be much more capable of putting the brakes on our dry mouth, shaky voice and hands, and breathlessness. This is a perfect case of how sensitive our ability to calm ourselves down and to take that “high road” is when we aren’t dealing with the most “perfect” of situations; like little sleep, fluctuating blood sugar etc. But even though we may have had a crumby sleep, by taking a few minutes before our presentation to take some deep, slow breaths, we are able to reduce that physiological idle, and deliver a much better presentation.

Need a quick crash course on calm breathing?

Get comfy. Set a 2-minute timer on your phone. Counting in your head, take a 4 second inhale through the nose into the belly, relaxing your shoulders, jaw, and neck as much as possible. See if you can visualize the cool air being pulled in through your nostrils and feel it hit the back of your throat and into your belly. Follow the inhale with a 6 second exhale through the nose, from the belly. See if you can do it without moving the fine hairs in your nose. I promise those 2 minutes are going to fly by.

If you tried it just now, let me know how you felt before and after. And that’s just 2 minutes. Taking 10 minutes a day to just breath will completely change your level of arousal, or your money back! And if you want to add a little more to your stress reduction, brief breath holds at the bottom of every exhale can further facilitate the calming effects of breathing.

We’ll be revisiting breath and it’s pluripotential biological mechanisms much more throughout these posts, so I hope we reached an appropriate depth with this one. If you want to see more about the stress response, or more specifically about breathing, or anything that you are interested in, please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading.

-          Our Blue Sky Minds