 It is a normal thing to feel stress in this day and age due to the constant fast pace of our lives! But it is important to realise when we are in a constant state of stress and the negative impacts this can begin to have on our bodies.
What happens to our body when we are stressed? Stress can affect every organ and system in your body, meaning it can cause more than just a restless night sleep if we are constantly experiencing chronic stress. We will discuss the stages that each of your systems go through when experiencing stress and the long term impacts it can begin to have for you. Initial signs: Most of us have experienced stress at one point or another and can recognise the initial signs that may present. This can include headaches, muscle tightness (particularly around the neck and shoulders), being unable to focus, your mind racing or even flutters in your chest. These are all indicators of the things occurring deeper within each of your crucial systems such as the nervous, circulatory, digestive and immune systems. Circulatory System: Stress causes your heart rate to spike which as a result also increases your blood pressure. Most people’s hearts recover relatively quickly from this when the stress hormone, Cortisol level’s returns to normal again. When you experience long term periods of stress it can result in more chronic conditions such as cardiomyopathy to result. This condition is often known as the broken heart syndrome and can often occur after severe physical or emotional stress, causing the heart’s left ventricle (the pumping chamber) to weaken. Hormones: As we have mentioned stress occurs as a response to an increase in the hormone, cortisol. There are also increases in adrenaline and epinephrine within the body when stress occurs and this can affect our sleep, explaining why we can struggle to get a restful night. The combination of these hormones also increases an individual’s likelihood of having a stroke, heart attack, high blood pressure or even developing anxiety and depression. Digestive system: Besides experiencing some butterflies in your tummy when you become stressed or overwhelmed, stress can have many negative side effects on our digestive tract. Our digestive tract is filled with nerve endings and immune cells which are heavily impacted by the hormones released when we are stressed. This can cause symptoms and conditions like acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease to develop. Brain function: Studies have found that those who experience chronic stress have more activity in the amygdala brain region which is associated with fear and emotion. It can even affect how the brain processes information and negatively impact your cognition and attention levels, explaining why it can be hard to focus or learn new things when you are experiencing stress. Immune function: I’m sure you have all experienced it, that at the most crucial time at work, when Uni exams are approaching or on the first day of your holidays, you come down with a dreaded cold. This is due to your stress levels being high for so long leading up to these events that your immune system has weakened as a result. 3 tips to decrease your stress.
By Aleisha Michael Accredited Exercise Physiologist
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 Low back pain is very common with approximately 80% of Australian adults experiencing at
at least one episode of low back pain during their lifetime. For most people low back pain is not caused by a serious problem and will resolve with some routine care and exercise. Occasionally low back pain can be caused by serious disease or damage to the tissues of the back. If you are experiencing any of the following symptoms, you should seek advice from a health care professional as soon as possible:
How can we manage low back pain? If you simply have low back pain without any other issues, then your pain is likely to be ‘uncomplicated low back pain’ that will improve. You may find that a heat pack, certain posture positions, and perhaps surprisingly to some, staying as physically active as possible helps you to manage your low back pain. How Should I Stay active? Exercise is great medicine for lower back pain, with no specific type being found to be superior. Many people believe that core strengthening and pilates type exercises are the best, and while the research shows that these exercises are beneficial for low back pain, they have not proven to be better than other general forms of exercise. The takeaway message from this is: - stay as active as you can, with an exercise you enjoy and feel comfortable with, allowing for the restrictions in movement that may come with pain. Examples are:
If you don’t exercise regularly, an episode of low back pain may be your prompt to start! Walking, swimming and cycling allow people with low back pain to become active and stay active. Some forms of dancing, yoga and tai chi are popular too. The bonus of staying active is that it prevents loss of physical fitness, muscle strength and cardiorespiratory function or deconditioning. Staying active, even if at a reduced volume and intensity whilst you are experiencing low back pain, helps you ensure that other aspects of your health do not decline too. After the initial phase of staying active,how can we progress to keeping pain free? In the initial phase when you may have had severe low back pain, we use exercise to stay active and maintain mobility. After the initial phase, and once pain has reduced the goal is to get you better and stay that way. As your low back pain reduces, you can increase your program of preferred exercise to include ‘graduated training’ and specific exercises that increase your range of spinal movement and strengthen the trunk and abdominal muscles. There is moderate evidence that undertaking exercise at this post-back pain stage can help prevent another episode of low back pain, and that is really important for quality of life. Graduated training means a program that becomes increasingly more difficult. An example is that if you were staying active by walking, to gain further health benefits you now need to walk further, or faster, up hills or carry weights. Increasing and maintaining range of movement is also important to maintain movement in your back, and exercises like tai chi, yoga, and general stretching exercise at home can be included. Strengthening exercises are also important, working the small muscles of the lower back, extending to larger muscles including upper and lower body exercises. Again these need to be graduated, progressively increasing the difficulty and load. We suggest seeking help from your Exercise Physiologist or Physio to help you plan and progress appropriate exercises for your return to full recovery and beyond. Lisa Parkinson Accredited Exercise Physiologist  Have you recently been told you have high blood pressure or hypertension? Are you sick of taking medications every day to help manage your high blood pressure? Are you concerned about your high blood pressure putting you at an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and stroke? Then it might be time for you to get moving!
What is hypertension? Hypertension or high blood pressure occurs when the pressure of your blood against the walls of your blood vessels is too high for a prolonged period of time. This pressure is created when your heart beats and is the result of two forces. The first force is your systolic pressure which happens when blood is pumped out of the heart to the rest of the body. The second force is your diastolic pressure, and this occurs when the heart rests between two beats. One of the main reasons that high blood pressure can cause harm is that the constant increase in workload and pressure makes the heart and blood vessels work harder and less efficiently. This can eventually cause damage to the internal tissues, tiny tears in the artery walls, and plaque entering these tears and causing narrowed blood vessels, which further increases your blood pressure. How does exercise help? I’m sure that we are all aware that movement in any form is good for our bodies, but the question is how is it helping our blood pressure specifically? There is a lot of research supporting the benefits of exercise and evidence proving that regular physical activity and moderate levels of cardiovascular fitness protect against the development of hypertension and all cause mortality. Regular aerobic exercise has been proven to decrease daytime blood pressure readings of both the systolic and diastolic values. This decrease occurs because the heart is a muscle and when we exercise this muscle is worked and becomes stronger as a result. When the heart is stronger it is able to pump more blood around the body with less effort, which as a direct result lowers the pressure that is being put on your arteries with every pump. How much exercise should I do? The National Heart Foundation of Australia provides recommendations around physical activity to help manage a healthy blood pressure. We should be engaging 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity activity or 75-150 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise each week. Individuals should also be completing muscle strengthening activities on at least 2 days of the week. Initially this may sound like a lot but it’s as simple as a 30-minute walk 5 days per week and lifting something heavy two days a week. Or if you’d rather smash it out in fewer days, try a 45-60-minute walk 3 days a week and lifting something heavy for 2 days. Before you get started..
By Aleisha Michael Accredited Exercise Physiologist  Dyslipidaemia refers to abnormal levels of blood fats or ‘lipoproteins’. Lipoproteins are the transporters that move fat around our bodies.
The most common dyslipidaemias are high blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels known as hyperlipidaemia, high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c, the ‘bad’ cholesterol) and low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c, the ‘good’ cholesterol). How is it diagnosed? A blood test called a lipid profile is used to diagnose the condition, and management of dyslipidaemia is important for people with, or at risk of, cardiovascular disease because we know that a poor lipid profile is a significant risk factor for blood vessel damage. The risk of heart problems also increases with high triglyceride or LDL-c levels, or with low HDL-c levels. How does exercise help? Management of dyslipidaemia aims to reduce the risk of cardiovascular ‘events’ such as heart attacks that may occur within the next 5-10 years — this is called the absolute cardiovascular risk. Any lowering of LDL-c and triglycerides, or raising of HDL-c, is likely to reduce this risk. Improving our lifestyle by improving our diet, increasing our exercise to reduce our weight, especially body fat, is a key management strategy for decreasing cardiovascular risk. Physical fitness and regular exercise have both been shown to considerably reduce the absolute cardiovascular risk and death rate. Studies have shown that regular aerobic exercise can:
What types and intensities of exercise are recommended? People with dyslipidaemia should undertake aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes on most, if not all, days of the week to improve their lipid profiles and reduce their cardiovascular risk. This amount can be accumulated in shorter bouts of 10 minutes duration and can be built up over time. We suggest aerobic exercise that uses large muscle groups such as brisk walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, dancing, skiing, playing ball games or other sporting activities. Research has also found vigorous aerobic exercise to be beneficial and improves HDL-c more than less-intense exercise. Vigorous aerobic exercise is described as a ‘very hard’ effort, and at this level you would not be able to hold a conversation whilst exercising as you would not have the breath to do so. In addition to aerobic training, progressive high-intensity resistance training (i.e. weight training) has also shown to improve HDL-c. For this the goal is to undertake 2–3 sets of 8–10 different exercises, at a load that can be performed for 8–15 repetitions of each exercise, at least twice a week. Don’t forget your warm up before both your aerobic and strength training exercises. Precautions People with known or suspected cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome or diabetes; people with a family history of heart attacks; people with high blood pressure; smokers; men aged over 45 years or women aged over 55 years; and people who have not been doing regular exercise should consult their doctor or Exercise Physiologist before commencing an exercise program. Lisa Parkinson Accredited Exercise Physiologist |
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