Most people have had the experience of being told to relax their shoulders and realising just how much tension they had been carrying. This can be caused as part of the fight or flight response to stress. Muscle tone will tend to increase under stress, however not all muscles respond the same. Larger global muscles such as the muscles of the hips, back of legs and neck will tend to be most effected. Joint health relies on finely balanced muscle co-ordination and when disrupted this could disrupt joint function predisposing to both acute and chronic injury. Similarly, increased muscle tone increases...
Stress from a mental perspective is simply fear. If you think of a stressful event in your past you’ll probably be able to find the link. This perception is interpreted by the nervous and endocrine system to produce the stress response, “fight and flight”. This causes increased release of stress hormones, such as cortisol and “heightening” of the activity of the sympathetic part of the nervous system. In the short term this helps you escape lions from an evolution point of view. However it also prevents you from sleeping well, affect the testosterone production in men, causes increased fat deposition...
In the first two parts of this series we discussed the importance of body fat and gut health to lower abdominal function. In this part we will discuss the role of stress.
Stress can be defined as any stimulus to a system. In this blog we’re talking specifically about psychogenic stress. The stress we perceive in a stimulus.
Stress can influence the appearance of the lower abdominals in a number of ways. High stress levels put the body into fight or flight altering the function of every cell in the body almost instantly. Depending on the duration and intensity of the stress it can affect the...