Sneaky Stress: How It Silently Hijacks Your Health

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Is stress silently sabotaging your health without you even knowing it? Discover the surprising ways sneaky stress infiltrates our daily lives and takes a toll on our well-being. This episode of "It Starts at Vagus" with your host Emily uncovers the hidden stressors that we often overlook, from the seemingly innocuous noise pollution and poor sleeping habits to the insidious effects of toxic relationships and social media overstimulation. Join Emily as she unravels how these factors contribute to the stealthy accumulation of stress and what you can do about it.

We'll guide you through the subtle yet profound impact of chronic, low-grade stress on your health, illustrating how small habits, like a nightly doom-scrolling routine, can spiral into persistent fatigue and physical ailments. Learn actionable tips to identify these stress triggers and practical strategies to manage them, all centered around the powerful connection between your vagus nerve and holistic health. Empower yourself to recognize sneaky stress before it undermines your wellness and peace of mind, restoring balance to your life with informed choices and newfound awareness.

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Episode Transcript

Emily (00:00):
Welcome to It Starts at Vagus, the podcast where
holistic health meets modernliving.
I'm Emily, your guide tounlocking the power of the vagus
nerve, which is your body'sultimate key to calm, connection
and overall well-being.
Together, we'll explore simpleways to nourish your mind and
body with natural remedies,actionable tips and empowering

(00:23):
stories.
Whether you're here to reducestress, restore balance or take
charge of your health, you're inthe right place, because
wellness doesn't just happen.
It starts at Vagus.
Let's dive in.
Do you ever feel exhausted butcan't figure out why?
Or struggle with these randomaches, brain fog or poor sleep

(00:47):
without really an obvious cause?
You might be dealing with thatsneaky stress, that stress that
just sneaks into our lifewithout us really realizing it,
because it's so small and it'sjust a little bit that we don't
even really pay attention to it.
But research shows that up to75% of doctor visits are linked

(01:11):
to stress-related conditions andmany people don't even realize
that they're overstressed.
That chronic stress, thatchronic stress that creates the
sleepless nights, the gut issues, the can't think.
I just don't feel like myself.
Those kind of conditions arewhere they go to their doctors

(01:32):
and they're like what do I do?
And the whole time you've gotthe answer right within you.
You just have to implement itso well.
Welcome to It Starts at Vagus,the podcast where we dive into
fascinating ways to support yournervous system that helps shape
your health.
I'm Emily, and today we'regoing to uncover how stress

(01:56):
sneaks into your body withoutreally noticing and what you can
do to stop it before it takes atoll on your body.
So what is sneaky stress?
That stress just isn't in yourhead.
It's not just that mental load,it's in your body too, which is
why people go to the doctor forit, because they just don't

(02:17):
know what to do.
And most people associatestress with major life events
and losing your job, getting abig deadline at work or having
even family problems.
All those are really big andyou can point to it and say this
is my stressor.

(02:38):
But sneaky stress is a littledifferent, little different.
It's that low grade, consistent, chronic stress that builds up
over time from things like noisepollution, which we talked
about in brain health part one.
We talked about how thatconstant background noise from,

(03:01):
you know, tvs or screens, oralways having music, or even
traffic All that creates noisepollution and it causes stress
in our mind.
Another one would be poorsleeping habits.
Even those little disruptionscan spike your cortisol and

(03:23):
that's going to affect how youhandle sickness, how your
immunity takes care of, howthose you know viruses and
bacteria and so on and so forth,how they show up, because if
your body's like, oh, I got toomuch stress, that immunity is
going to go down because itcan't handle it all the time for

(03:44):
that chronic stage, chronicstress, even well, and even
connecting to the sleep, both ofthose things can even affect
your blood sugar imbalances.
So you go from too high andthen you, you know, crash down
and then you're thinking, oh, Ineed some caffeine and throw

(04:04):
that some sugar in it, and thenyou get that caffeine boost and
crash with the, the glucosespike.
So it just goes up and down, upand down and it just creates
that roller coaster of thatstress that impacts your body.
Another example of that chronicstress would be toxic

(04:29):
relationships or evenoverstimulation from social
media that doom scrolling you'realways focusing on the news and
things that we should changeand things that kind of just
weigh us down instead of liftingus up.
So I knew a person who wasexperiencing constant headaches

(04:53):
and just tired all the time,that like that chronic fatigue.
But she claimed she had no bigstressors, nothing that she
could say.
This big thing is a problem.
And she did realize that herstress was coming from that doom
.
Scrolling on social media beforebed Because, let's face it,

(05:13):
that's an easy time to do.
Just you're like I'm gonna rest, I'm going to just sleep, or
lay down before I go to sleepand scroll to see what everybody
else is doing, see what else Ican see.
But instead of uplifting things, we find those doomsday.
But instead of uplifting things, we find those doomsday.

(05:37):
Or politics or things that justit's just the wrong way.
And if we're going to scroll,start looking for things that
really make you happy.
Again, my back is just always.
My default is comedy, becauseit makes me laugh and it uplifts
everything else.
Because it makes me laugh andit uplifts everything else.

(06:00):
But those hidden ways thatstress hides in your body.
It really creates havoc on yourbrain and physical parts of you
.
You can just feel that stresshiding in there and when you
ignore this sneaky stress, itslowly deregulates your nervous
system and that vagus nerve.
Hidden signs of stress would befatigue that doesn't go away,

(06:24):
no matter how much you sleep,it's just always there.
You just feel like blech.
Or your increased sugar andcaffeine cravings, the digestive
issues, because, remember, thevagus nerve has that direct link
to your gut.
So if you've got bloating andgut discomfort, really slow

(06:45):
metabolism, that's just a way ofsaying hey, you're stressed out
.
It's just a way of saying hey,you're stressed out.
And that's where that somaticexercises usually start being
talked about, because it's a wayto bring that stress down.
So your body says, okay, wefeel comfortable using up our

(07:07):
energy.
Other examples could includemood swings, anxiety and anxiety
.
That again, maybe you can'tquite pinpoint what is causing
that anxiety or evenirritability.
You just feel like on edge andlike the little things just like

(07:27):
on you.
Those things are just thoselittle stresses that just keep
adding up, adding up throughoutthe day.
And one that I have been atfault in the past is feeling
wired but tired at night andthen sluggish in the morning.
And listen, I used to haveterrible sleeping habits and

(07:52):
sometimes I still struggle withthem.
But I know that I need thatnighttime routine, I know I need
to watch something happy.
I know I need to do thesethings to trigger my, my body,
to say hey, you really, youreally are tired and it is time
for bed, so that I actually dogo to bed, do fall asleep, so I

(08:16):
can feel rested in the morning.
And that one was a hardstruggle for me for a while
because I didn't want to go tobed.
I was like a three-year-old andI just didn't want to.
I wanted to pout and I wantedto stay up late.
But once I found my groove itfelt a lot better and I could
feel my body feeling rested.

(08:36):
So that chronic stress keepsyour body in that low level
fight or flight state and thatin turn, weakens your vagus
nerve's ability to calm andrecover because it's saying I'm
not sure.
I think we still might have toguard ourself right now.
So it stays aware instead ofrelaxing and calming down.

(09:00):
How do we identify and reducethis sneaky stress?
Well, there are simple steps tocatch and calm that stress
before it overwhelms you andtakes over.
The first one is to payattention to your body.
Really, what does that mean?

(09:21):
It means allowing bells to gooff in your head and saying, oh,
you're clenching your jaw a lotor you're really easily
overwhelmed.
All these little things, likethese things are so little.
Why are you overstressing aboutthis?
And if it's just a little thingthat kind of pushes you over,

(09:45):
that can be a really good key,saying I have too much of that
sneaky stress.
And if you need to just make alittle journal or a little log
saying how you felt that day andto see if you can find any
patterns where those bells couldgo off and you just overlook
them, you didn't hear them, theyweren't loud enough for you yet

(10:06):
, but eventually you become moresensitive and can hear them
saying Ooh, we got to addressthat before it gets too big.
Second step is to reset yournervous system.
So this is where the vagusnerve comes in and we engage the
vagus nerve with the humming,the deep breath.

(10:27):
If you're really struggling,you can do a cold water splash
on your face or just on yourhands.
Again, we don't have to do thewhole body, but just to give a
different sensation to yournervous system, to say, oh,
let's pay attention to this andit'll help tone that vagus nerve

(10:50):
.
And then you can take minireset breaks throughout the day.
You could step outside, whichis a favorite of mine.
I love going outside sitting onmy porch, rocking in my rocking
chair.
That is my favorite.
Another popular one is tostretch or just do a few moments

(11:14):
of breathing in and out.
Those things help settle downyour nervous system so you're
able to focus, feel calmer, helptone that vagus nerve so that
your gut doesn't feel sowrenched and that brain fog just
lifts.
Gut doesn't feel so wrenchedand that brain fog it just lifts

(11:38):
.
So by reducing this dailyoverload, which is kind of step
three of this, you can do thereduced screen time, especially
at night, and cut back on thatcaffeine to avoid those cortisol
spikes, that caffeine to avoidthose cortisol spikes.

(11:58):
My favorite one is creating kindof like a buffer time between
activities.
So instead of going rushingfrom like this to this, to this,
to this, to this, I oftenreally enjoy when I can have you
know some, you know it might be15 minutes of you know some,
you know it might be 15 minutes,it might be a half hour between

(12:19):
transitions.
Because I really found out thatthe clock, particularly the
clock, gives me a little moreanxiety because I have to be
here at this time and this timeand this time and this time,
versus when I don't have to payas close attention to the clock.
It really smooths out my dayand that is one one way how that

(12:40):
buffer time helps me.
So I'm, if I am running alittle bit behind, I don't add
that extra stress, I don't makeit too much.
There's again the balance, ittoo much, there's again the
balance.
But having just a little buffertime throughout your day will
make that stress go down.

(13:02):
Let's see morning routine,mid-afternoon routine, if you
need more structure, the eveningroutines.
We've kind of talked about thatbefore in other podcasts.
So just know that that sneakystress isn't something we want
to just push through.
It is a silent force thataffects your mood, your health

(13:25):
and your energy.
But you know the good news thatonce you start noticing you can
shift it and you can do thosevagus resets with the humming,
the singing.
If you really need to do asolid reset, vagus nerve
exercise, we have that in thelink below.

(13:46):
If you want to watch a video onhow you can do kind of like a
hard reset and by hard I mean itjust it's kind of like a your
soft off button on your phoneversus a hard reset on your
phone this is just a hard resetfor your body.
It just takes a little longer.
It's not hard, it doesn't hurt,it's just more focused than

(14:08):
humming or singing, but it is inthe show notes on the bottom.
So when you allow your bells togo off and say, ooh, that's a
stressor in my life, we can copewith it, adjust it, but we
cannot ignore it because itwon't go away.
It'll just internalize in us.

(14:29):
So remember to breathe and dosomething today that makes you
happy.
Thanks for listening to it.
Starts at Vagus.
If you enjoyed this episode,subscribe so you don't miss
what's coming next.
And if you're ready to take thenext step toward calm, grab my
free Vagus nerve reset video inthe show notes.
It's quick and easy way tostart feeling better today and

(14:53):
until next time, rememberwellness starts at Vagus.