Words of Wellness with Shelly

Shelly's Shares: Chronic Stress and Your Body: Understanding the Hidden Impact

• Shelly Jefferis • Season 2 • Episode 113

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Stress isn't just a mental state—it's a powerful physiological force reshaping our health from the inside out. Chronic stress elevates cortisol levels throughout the body, triggering a cascade of harmful effects that manifest as stubborn belly fat, compromised immunity, metabolic slowdown, and even cellular damage.

What separates anxiety from stress? While anxiety often paralyzes us through exaggerated fear, appropriate levels of stress can sometimes motivate action. Yet our bodies respond identically whether we're experiencing "positive" stress (like planning a wedding) or negative stress (like financial troubles), flooding our systems with stress hormones that, over time, compromise our wellness.

The body's response to chronic stress explains why college students fall ill after finals week or why professionals catch colds immediately following major project completions. Your immune system, suppressed during high-stress periods, finally reveals the strain it endured once you allow yourself to relax. This pattern isn't coincidental—it's a predictable outcome of cortisol's effects on immunity.

Managing stress effectively requires a multifaceted approach. Regular movement—even a simple daily walk outdoors—works wonders for clearing the mind while reducing stress hormone levels. Proper nutrition with all six essential nutrients builds physiological resilience. Quality sleep allows your body to regenerate and process daily stressors. And perhaps most importantly, talking with others about your challenges provides perspective that can transform overwhelming situations into manageable ones.

Take time today for your wellness—whether through movement, nutrition, rest, or connection. Your body's response to stress may be automatic, but your approach to managing it remains entirely within your control. For moms seeking additional support, join our upcoming Moms who Flourish wellness event or reach out about one-on-one mentorship opportunities. Remember, stress isn't going anywhere—but with the right strategies, it doesn't have to manage your health.

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LINK to upcoming MOMS WHO FLOURISH Wellness Event October 4th: https://buy.stripe.com/00weVc40n64nbsNblH0gw0p

A few of Shelly's favorite clean products:

High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix

Clean-crafted wine, free from chemicals & pesticides:
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Cayla Gray- Non-toxic cologne & perfume: https://caylagray.com/wellnesswithshellyj (10% discount)

JuJu Non-toxic candles & air fresheners:
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Coupon code for 10% off: ShellyJefferis

Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.

Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
In Health,

Shelly

Speaker 1:

Chronic stress leads to elevated levels of cortisol and it can affect our insulin levels. It can affect free radicals at the cellular level in our bodies. It affects our metabolism. Then again, it affects our ability to burn calories and fat. It's going to affect our belly fat. Going to affect our belly fat. All of these different health issues that we deal with again, so much of it can be traced back to stress.

Speaker 1:

Do you get confused by all of the information that bombard us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or should not be eating, how to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more to share tips, education and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you, to bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives, full of energy, happiness and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today.

Speaker 1:

Today, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Words of Wellness. This is my Shelly's Shares episode, and today I am starting a four-part series about some of the issues that are really at the heart of what is affecting our health, the health of our nation, in a really negative way, and it's becoming more and more discussed. It's a topic that is getting more and more attention and there's actually a syndrome it's called T-DOS and I have talked about this over the years. There is a gentleman by the name of Peter Greenlaw. I have had him on my podcast and he is very well educated on this topic and what this is about. This is relating to four areas that affect our health in a very negative way. The T is for toxins, the D is for deficiency in nutrition, the O is for overweight and obesity and the S is for stress.

Speaker 1:

Now I today am going to talk about stress, and I know that I have talked about this in the past, but I wanted to share some information, because our sermon in church this past Sunday was about anxiety and stress, and I found it to be so very interesting because in some cases, stress, a little bit of stress, can be beneficial, right, for some of us. It can be motivating, it can give us some energy, it can help us to take action in areas that we need to take action in. However, when it becomes too much stress, when it becomes chronic, then it can lead to health issues. Now I want to back up for a minute and talk about anxiety. So if we had to look at anxiety versus stress and I know for some people it's a very personal subject I know many individuals who deal with anxiety, who also have to take medication for anxiety, and I am not in any way, shape or form, trying to demean you or demean that situation that you're dealing with.

Speaker 1:

However, I want to share what was shared the other day in church because I found it very, very interesting and this is coming now from a you know faith background and our pastor was talking about the verse that talks about do not ever be anxious, right, and I know that's so much easier said than done and the idea is to give your cares, your burdens, to God and to not be anxious. He doesn't want us to be anxious and some of you might not have that same belief, but that's kind of what was. I just want to set up what was being shared on Sunday. And I found it so interesting because when he was talking about anxiety versus stress, anxiety can actually paralyze us, right. We get to a point where we just can't, we can't take action, and many times what happens with anxiety is it's a fear that kind of manifests itself, it's kind of more of an exaggerated fear that gets manifested and it can really get to a point where it just basically paralyzes us, like we can't take action, where, on the other hand, stress, like I said earlier, sometimes can actually motivate us, but it just depends on the level of stress, the type of stress and how long we have been experiencing it.

Speaker 1:

So when it comes to stress. There are stressors and they can be negative or positive. We can experience stress from negative situations, from positive situations. So, like a positive stress would be something exciting happening in our life, like a new baby or a wedding or a new job or anything that is a really positive, exciting time. It can be stress, but it's a positive form of stress. And then, of course, we have the negative forms of stress the distress that if we lose a job or financial stress, or the loss of a loved one, all these different areas that can be negative and they are also stressors, right, and what happens is our body physiologically responds in the exact same way, no matter what type of stress it is.

Speaker 1:

So that's why it's so critical for us to be able to really get put our stress in check. We're always going to have stress that's not going to ever leave us, but we need to be able to manage it and be able to really, I think, take a step back and get the proper perspective on what stress we're experiencing, what's normal and what's not, and how can we best effectively manage the stress of our day-to-day lives. Because it's there, it's not going anywhere and, like I said earlier, it can actually motivate people and for some people they thrive on stress. I'm not that person, but for some people they do really well, they perform very well under stress. But we also have to realize that too much is not a good thing for us, and what happens is, if we're going through chronic stress, that can lead us to the point of what they call exhaustion. There are three different phases when it comes to experiencing stress, and in the third, the most concerning one is exhaustion, and we kind of don't want to get to that point, but I'm afraid that many of us do.

Speaker 1:

And a lot of times you could be at a point where you're like I'm feeling so tired and so exhausted and you're like why do I feel so tired? And if you think about it you can go oh, it's because of this, this and that that happened, and you can relate it back to stress that's occurring in your life. Or maybe it's something that's been going on for a long period of time and you didn't realize that it was affecting you in that manner. And I think that's really common to that. We go through our day to day lives not always realizing certain things that are creating stress for ourselves and inside our bodies, and I think that's something that we need to really be aware of, and what happens is stress too much of it can definitely take its toll on our immune system.

Speaker 1:

So many of you can probably relate to this, when we are going through a, let's say, a project or a big deadline with our job and we finally reach that deadline, and then we can go, oh gosh, okay, I can relax now. Well, your body was in this state of stress for you know, however long it took, and now you're like letting yourself relax. And because you were going through that stress for so long, you, your body, was on overdrive and now your body is going okay, your immune system is not doing so well, and now I'm going to you're going to be sick for a little bit, because you were just going strong and full force for for days, for weeks, months, whatever it was, and so that happens pretty commonly, and I I can remember back when I was in college and it never failed. Even, I think, as a professor I noticed this that when it was during finals week and then the semester came to an end, it just seemed like a pattern. Each semester right after it ended, I feel like that was when I would get sick because I would just let myself go, my body just would relax and it was like all those whatever leading up to finals and that stress leading up to it. My body was going just on overdrive and then when I finally stopped, he goes okay, now you're going to pay for all that time that you spent being stressed. So it's a common theme, but I think it's so important for us to be aware of it because another thing that happens there are many stress-related health problems. We have ulcers, high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma, even allergies. Some cancers, even headaches have been related to stress, and I think that for the medical profession it's sometimes challenging to pinpoint something that's being caused by stress. We know now so many of these illnesses are related to stress, but there are so many other things that we experience that we might not even realize were stress related.

Speaker 1:

I can share for me my personal story. Many years ago, I was dealing with a vertigo and I had been diagnosed with an inner ear disease. I've talked about this a little bit on my podcast and you know my husband. When I would have an episode, he says I think it's stress related and I'd be like, yeah, but I don't, I don't, I'm not stressed right now. It could be at the most relaxed moment. All of a sudden I get, I have an episode and I never quite understood it back then and I don't I to this day. I don't think it was stress related, but maybe it was. But I mean, you know, thanks to God, and getting some new nutritional protocols into my life, I don't have any more of those symptoms in those episodes, thank God. But it was a very, very challenging time. But my point with that is that I don't know, I don't truly know, if any of it was related to stress. Maybe some of it was. I can tell you that when I thought an episode was coming on, yeah sure, I felt stressful and anxious because I didn't always know when it was going to happen. So that part of it was quite stressful. So, again, we have these situations, we have these life situations that we deal with.

Speaker 1:

And another part of the stress is that it affects the hormone. It's a stress hormone called cortisol. The hormone, it's a stress hormone called cortisol. And, again, if we are going through a lot of stress, chronic stress, it raises those cortisol levels and if those levels get out of balance and they are too high for periods of time. There are a lot of different negative health results that happen because of it. One it can affect again our immune system, it affects our metabolism, it can cause weight gain. A lot of different other things that can happen when those levels increase.

Speaker 1:

And there's a quote from Dr Sean Talbot that he wrote the cortisol connection and he says that in some studies people with high stress and lots of abdominal stress fat had normal or low levels of cortisol in their blood, indicating that there was no systemic cortisol overexposure. What we now know is that certain enzymes are deregulated in obesity, most notably the HSD enzymes in fat tissue, effectively leading to a high cortisol level within the fat at all times. So there's so many different causes of this right and there's so many ins and outs of what's affecting our health and our weight and this just shows that kind of in an indirect way. Those high cortisol levels definitely affect our fat cells and when they start getting up there and getting high, this tells us that those levels can hang out within the fat cells and we don't want that right. We don't want that. So so many different things that happens, but I just really wanted to talk about it just a little bit and just share, because I felt it was really fascinating to think about the differences between stress and anxiety and it really made a lot of sense to me and I hope it kind of makes some sense to all of you and maybe, maybe it's a way to to go okay, a little bit of stress is okay.

Speaker 1:

And and if I, if I am experiencing anxiety, what can I do to counteract that? What can I do to take steps to help me with that? And that's going to look different for every single person and I and I also believe that when we do go through stressful moments and we are going through some high stressful times, that in itself also can lead to anxiety. So obviously they're definitely related. It's just we want to be able to take steps, manage our stress so that it doesn't get out of hand, so that our cortisol levels don't get out of whack, so that it doesn't turn into anxiety. And I know, believe me, I know it's easier said than done, but I just wanted to kind of remind everyone about just the concerns and what we can do about it and I think that that's really important to be reminded about on a regular basis.

Speaker 1:

So again, chronic stress leads to elevated levels of cortisol and it can affect our insulin levels. It can affect free radicals at the cellular level in our bodies. It affects our metabolism. Then again, it affects our ability to burn calories and fat. It's going to affect our belly fat. All of these different health issues that we deal with again, so much of it can be traced back to stress. So what do we do about it?

Speaker 1:

I'm going to share with you a few tips right now. So one big one is to exercise. Get regular movement in. Whatever that looks like, it doesn't have to be strenuous, it can be just a walk outdoors, walk around the block. Get some fresh air, clear your head, clear your mind. I'm telling you it works wonders. And I was just doing a podcast episode with a dad who's a health coach and he has his clients talk to him. His coaching clients talk to him on the phone while they're walking. He does his session with them while they're out walking. And I said that's a great idea Because guess what, when you're out walking, your mind is more clear, you can think more clearly, speak more clearly, and I don't know about you, but that's when a lot of ideas come to me personally, when I'm out running and or walking, so exercise is huge. Not only does it help with clearing your mind, but it helps to reduce stress, and for years they have found those that exercise regularly are able to manage their stress more effectively. So there's that.

Speaker 1:

So number one, exercise. Number two what are you doing for your nutrition? Are you getting all the nutrients in that your body needs? I did a few episodes recently about the six basic, essential daily nutrients that our bodies need Vitamins, minerals, fat, carbohydrates, protein and water. Are you consuming that daily, and are you consuming high quality forms of each of those Clean, high quality forms? And if you have a question about any of those at all, I can help you. I can share with you what I have done for over 11 years for my nutrition protocol. I'm happy to share with you what I have used and it's been a game changer in my life Very simple science backed nutrition that has just literally I'm not kidding made it so simple and convenient and has helped me tremendously with my energy, my sleep and just my day-to-day routine. So I'm happy to share, reach out to me. I would love to share with you what I do.

Speaker 1:

So exercise, nutrition and also sleep these all go hand in hand and I know sleep can be challenging for some and when you don't sleep well and you have to get up early for work, or the next day that you have a big full day of work or activity, that can add stress in and of itself right. So find ways to relax at night, start winding down before bed you know, whether it's reading, taking a hot bath, drinking some hot tea, whatever helps to relax you so that you can start to get in that sleep mode and that will lead itself to a more effective sleep not guaranteed, but we can start to kind of wind down in the evening and that can definitely reap benefits when it comes to our overall sleep. So, getting enough sleep, getting quality sleep as adults it is recommended we get at least seven to eight hours and that's your body's time to regenerate and rejuvenate and rest and it's so, so important. And then another point I will share is just being able to have a person to talk, to share what you're going through. You know, just bounce ideas off of. You know, talk to other people because when you are going through a situation or a scenario that might be stressful for you, I pretty much can guarantee someone else is going through the same thing. I experience that all of the time with myself and with friends and with family you start talking about it and you go oh, this person has gone through this as well, oh, this person has experienced this as well, and then it just helps to release some of the anxiety and stress that you might be carrying around that situation, just to know others have experienced it or are experiencing it and therefore you have a somewhat of a support system. So talking to others if you believe prayer, praying about it is so important. So I just wanted to kind of do a little bit of an overview, talk about this a little bit more today.

Speaker 1:

Again, this is going to be the first of a four-part series when we're talking about these four areas that affect our health, and I hope you find benefit and value in this. And again, please feel free to reach out to me. My contact information is in the show notes. If you want to know anything about what I do for my personal nutrition, I'm happy to share. Also, when it comes to stress, I have a couple of products that I take that actually help with that and I'm happy to share that as well. And again, I will share.

Speaker 1:

For any moms who are local, join us October 4th. Our Moms who Flourish wellness event is happening on that day and I would love to have you join us. The early bird registration link is in the show notes. I also offer one-on-one mentorship for any of you moms out there who feel like you need some clarity in this area of managing your stress, nutrition, your fitness program, your complete wellness. I am here to help you and to serve you in any way that I can. So please feel free to reach out and, with that being said, take some time for yourself today, for your own personal wellness. Go out, get a walk in, get some fresh air, take some downtime, take some quiet time, do some yoga, do something that can help you release a little bit of that stress, because it's not going anywhere and we just need to take the steps that we can to manage it effectively so that it does not take over our lives and our health. So, with that being said, god bless you all. Have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week and I will see you next time on Words of Wellness.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did, and if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness, so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening and if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness, on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy and blessed week. Thank you.