"Health care for oneself starts from the inside"
It is perhaps strange, but stress once provided by nature in the early days of mankind has given us a weapon guaranteeing our survival. For many millennia, it literally saved our lives - forcing people to flee when there was great danger, or forcing them to fight when it would pay off. And even today, fight or flight are two basic responses to stressful situations. Someone is able to fight them exemplarily, while with other others they simply do not agree to such an extent that they prefer to leave. But at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, stress has earned another - this time not very flattering - mission. According to immunologists, it has become the main trigger for so-called “civilizational” diseases, from which more and more people die. It is caused by a change in the nature of the stressors; in the fact that we are suddenly exposed to them for an extremely long time (while our ancestors were for a short time only), and the overall change in the way of life which began to lack, let us say, the spiritual dimension and was directed primarily towards material success. The result? Tired soul, sick body and decaying beauty ...
Along with the fact that stress has not only a positive effect, which the Canadian scientist Hans Selye discovered already in 1939, but later it turned out that we also have more types of stress and not all of them are harmful. The “so-called" eustress still retains a positive effect. These are the terms at work that push you to an excellent result in a short time, especially when motivating you to the vision of a higher salary. Positive stress is also experienced by athletes before performance, before entering the catwalk, brides in front of the altar ... It is a stress when not only tons of adrenaline are transported into the blood, but also endorphins, the hormones of happiness which come as a reward. But this does not happen in so-termed dis-stress, which is exaggerated, persistent and depressing. It’s like when you're afraid that you'll lose your job or a partner, or when you sit at the bedside of a long-term ill person, or when you undergo an unpleasant divorce process lasting many years, and so on. This stress is literally killing us and it should be emphasized that this should be eradicated from our life if at all possible. Because we of course have a certain degree of adaptability to stress, but it is limited and the process of adaptation is extremely exhaustive and devastating," the coach Mgr. Nikola Šmorancová from the Prague institution Životní průvodce (Life Guide) explains.
It is of course true that with many stress-triggers, we cannot choose whether or not we will avoid them or react to them. These are just the external circumstances we are exposed to, without an expressed desire for them. Worse, however, is that in the 80’s and 90’s of the last century we caused a huge problem for ourselves by intensifying the effects of internal stressors. With political freedom, many options opened that seemed to shout: You must use us! And so we came from a peaceful pace of life and literally jumped onto a carousel. Everybody suddenly had to have everything. It was no longer trendy to go to work for eight hours - it was "cool" to show oneself off with overtime, to claw at a career, to buy expensive cars, to have a state-of-the-art television, phone, and brand-name clothes ... This has namely become the signs of success. Not peace, inner balance, and knowing where we are going. But how much we have and how frazzled we are in the conquest of that dubious wealth. Or maybe you've never had the feeling - "Gosh, he/she does and has so much more than me, shouldn’t I too have that!"?
At the beginning of your journey to "eternal youth," there will surely be an adequate examination that will assess your real, biological age. "The entire examination complex lasts for 3 hours. And it consists of a measuring of the functional vitality of the individual organs and specific preventions. First you undergo a set of medical and complementary examinations (clinical examination, imaging techniques, lab tests, functional examination) that are evaluated by a special methodology. Then you are looking at an assessment of your own lifestyle, nutrition status and fitness history in the form of a test that has been developed on the basis of long years of scientific research," says MUDr. Golková and she then goes into more detail: "For example, the test includes questions of the following type: What is your weight? Which of the mentioned dairy products do you consume most? How much time do you spend on exercise activities per week? How do you sleep? Do you breakfast regularly? It's really going into detail, but it's just the details that matter. That's why you do the tests in the presence of a nurse who can advise you. Or you can ask your doctor for advice, if you stumble. The truth of your answers is namely very important."
"Health care for oneself starts from the inside"
"There's nothing wrong with wealth, success, or expensive shoes. And it is even understandable that you want to possess them. Yet it should be understandable to all of us that everything costs something, and when we exhaust our body with stress, we must appreciate its achievements with subsequent rest, relaxation, joy and self-appreciation. And that's just the most problematic moment. In the pursuit of movables and immovables, we have succumbed to the impression that we will never be good enough, and we’ve made self-love a little bit impossible. After all, there have never been so many mental illnesses as today!" the coach says and adds that these illnesses are not the consequence of anything other than our constant stressing of ourselves by what we should do more, to ... to actually what? To be appreciated by someone else, or by ourselves? Therefore, it would only matter to the other. Wise people know that as we perceive ourselves determines how those around us will see us ...
Persistent distress results in, among other things, many diseases including the so-called “civilizational” diseases. Long-term stress has namely a direct effect on blood pressure which in time permanently remains at higher values. Stressed people often eat too much and move too little, so that they get fat. Being overweight is then followed by obesity and obesity is often connected with type-2 diabetes. However the combination of high blood pressure, obesity and type-2 diabetes causes a complicated illness, the so-called ‘metabolic syndrome’, which in connection with cardiovascular disease is one of the most frequent causes of premature death alone in our country, the Czech Republic. Excessive stress is unfortunately also associated with a higher risk of cancer. It does not cause it directly, but it weakens the natural barriers that protect the body of a healthy, unstressed person from everything that is alien to it - thus even from a cancerous growth. A healthy body resists, while a stressed and weakened one simply cannot
Luckily for all of us before the devastating effects of stress appear, it takes at least months, but rather years, so we have enough time to prevent them. Stress has of course immediate consequences as well. Inside the body, it triggers an unbelievable number of processes. The production of adrenaline (challenging us to fight) and noradrenaline (suggesting the flight reaction) hormones increases, while the level of another stress hormone, cortisol, also changes considerably. During stress, many internal processes will accelerate - the heart beats furiously, the breath is shallower and faster. You can feel the feelings of a "lump in your throat", tightness in your stomach, a dry mouth and sweaty palms, back and underarms. How many times it is said that you were literally drenched with sweat in a difficult situation? Again the culprit is adrenaline that increases the pulse and activates at the same time the sweat glands, and the uneasy embarrassment due to a sweaty blouse. During stressful situations, you can also have a headache, be dizzy, and even experience increased sensitivity; nervousness and irritability are not rare. This is because the body simply gets in a crisis situation and responds accordingly. Even in the case of beneficial stress - eustress - the body does this, but there is no harm caused. There is a short-term effect crowned by joy, success and profit. In distress, we actually only lose. And it unfortunately also concerns our beauty and youth…
If you would place a woman stressed in the long term beside a woman of the same age who is perhaps freshly in love, you will see a world of difference. The stressed one will have a tired look, circles under her eyes and far more pronounced wrinkles. As well as a few extra pounds. She will generally look even ten years older. “Stress hormones are guilty of everything! The culprit is in particular the hormone cortisol. It is one of the few hormones whose level increases with age. And by its influence, during stress, other hormones called catecholamines are washed out. It is then that we feel palpitations of the heart, tension, and anxiety. The body is namely ready to fight," MUDr. Monika Golková, the head of the first anti-aging clinic A2C in our country explains. When we have a lot of cortisol, we can have too little growth hormone which is important in adulthood for firm skin, more muscles and less fat. The fluctuations in cortisol levels then lead to an imbalance of other hormones. "A high level of cortisol literally steals the hormone progesterone - the hormone of w
As well the internal organs age, therewith not only the risk of getting older increases disproportionately, but also the risk of multiplying your so-called ‘biological’ age. "This is the age that can vary greatly from - say - the age on your birth certificate. With the right lifestyle, optimal health and adequate stress, even a fifty-year-old woman can experience the biological age of a quadragenarian and look forward to a much longer life. But if she does not manage stress and other lifestyle components, a thirty-year-old woman may look ten years older. First of all, the state and the (non)functioning of the internal organs will also correspond to a higher age," MUDr. Golková explains.
To eliminate the negative impact of stress, the most ideal measure is of course to remove stressors one by one. But what if your body is exhausted, tired and somehow older just now? "The body definitely needs to add substrates that are missing. These are primarily vitamins and minerals - for example, vitamin C, B, magnesium and iron (if it is found to be lacking) and the proteins that create brain neurotransmitters; fatigue, feelings of exhaustion are eliminated and the new production of the lacking serotonin, the hormone of happiness, begins," the doctor says. Of course, you can bet on fruit, vegetables and the optimal diet - in the long run, it's really a very sensible decision. However, if you need help to get rid of the effects of stress immediately, there is another solution. "At our clinic we prepare individually-assembled mixtures of the aforementioned substances and apply them by infusion directly into the vein. This results in a faster and more intense anti-stress effect. However, I also want to emphasize that this is no panacea. The most important thing is a comprehensive examination of the state of health because stress can manifest itself in everyone in a different way," MUDr. Monika Golková from the 1st anti-aging clinic A2C says.