The #1 Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Health Naturally

Today I’m taking a little bit of a break from the uber educational or product recommendation posts to peel back the curtain a little bit on a bigger issue impacting your health that sometimes seems to be missed by the natural and nontoxic living community.

Stress.

There’s so much solid research out there about the link between stress and negative health outcomes. The linked review is a very reader-friendly and thorough primer on stress and its impact on health if you want to get deeper into it. I’ll just briefly touch on some of the key points here.

Skip straight to the punch line.

First, stress is natural.

Stress is a broad term used to refer to events that produce changes in cortisol levels as well as create behavioral response. A lot of the research really looks at big stress events, as these are the actual points where damage can be done or resilience can be built. So most of the time when we talk about stress, we mean big, life-impacting events and struggles, not spilling your Starbucks all over your front seat.

Though trust me, I know how stressful that truly is.

There is such a thing as a high level of cumulative “smaller” stresses creating a response in the body similar to if a larger stressor occurred. These would still need to be larger than basic inconveniences, but don’t need to be a traumatic event.

“Stress” is helpful.

When we talk about stress, we’re really interested in how the body is adapting to a difficult event. Someone can either adapt poorly, often causing trauma or simple stress, or one can adapt positively and develop resilience. That’s a little too much to get into here, but our body’s response to stimuli in this way is incredibly helpful.

Your body has a few physiological processes that it uses to help you adapt to stress. This includes hormonal responses (cortisol and adrenaline spike when something major happens to help you heighten your capacity to survive in that moment), activating the autonomic nervous system to regulate body processes (such as breathing) that are important to responding to an event, and your central nervous system.

These processes are all helpful. Without them, when someone started drifting toward you over the center lane you wouldn’t be able to adjust appropriately to avoid a collision. And actually, at a very basic level, cortisol production is necessary for waking up. All these processes are related.

Stress can be… well, stressful.

The problem is that, while necessary to survive, stress can damage your body. These hormonal and physiological processes cause oxidative stress, which damages cells. There are different theories of aging, but one prominent theory is that oxidative stress is a major contributor to aging. This is related to antioxidants, which improve your health by reducing oxidative stress.

Additionally, stress (or really maladaptation to stress and chronic stress) is associated with negative health outcomes, psychological impacts, and negative health behaviors.

Some stress is good and helpful as it allows the body to grow and adapt. In the same way as lifting weights, the adaptive response to stress (whether lifting weights or dealing with stressful events) builds strength and resilience. So it’s not that we need to completely eliminate stress.

But excess of stress goes beyond what our body can adapt to. Again, just like weightlifting. If you try to bench a weight that’s too heavy, it will fall on your chest, or you will need support to lift it. Life stress is the same way. If it gets to be too much, you will not be able to maintain it, and if you will suffer negative consequences.

Additionally, chronic stress can be problematic because your body remains in a reactive state that, again, while necessary, wears your body out.

So, it’s important to control stress levels where possible.

In fact, I’d say this is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Yes, eat well. Yes, move your body. Yes, sleep enough.

But perhaps more importantly, reduce your stress.

I’ve actually had firsthand experience recently of how much stress can impact health in my own life and in the life of a family member. It’s shocking how much it can impact you. Especially if you already have health issues, stress is more likely to negatively impact you if unmanaged.

So what do you do?

There’s many things you can and some you definitely should do. I’m not a doctor and this, while based in evidence and science, veers off somewhat into personal anecdote and opinion.

First, I would say that you need to deal with whatever is causing the stress if at all possible. Especially chronic sources of stress. If you can deal with it and remove that stressor, that will benefit your health in all areas.

Sometimes that’s not always possible. To manage stress levels, sleep may be one of the most important things. Your body produces the opposite of the stress hormone when you sleep, melatonin, and this is very reparative and helps balance your hormones and improve regulation of the impacts of stress hormones on health.

Beyond that, we know that food and movement play a role. If you eat a lot of inflammatory foods, that adds a certain kind of stress to your body, and your body needs exercise to manage stress hormones. It’s all related and interconnected!

There are also mindfulness techniques you can employ such as deep breathing or visualization. There is a lot of research on meditation, but even other mindfulness techniques appear to help reduce cortisol and improve sleep and other markers of health.

What’s the point here?

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about what chemicals are important to avoid, what products to look out for, and what not to worry about. I think it’s so important for individuals to have the information they need to make informed choices about things impacting their health.

Unfortunately, we often see in the health (and especially natural health) world so much fear mongering and misinformation. Everything is going to give you cancer or cause your kids to be infertile!

You have to cut out all sugar, toss all the plastic, purify your water and your air, only eat certain foods, ditch your old beauty products, and so on and so on.

And while a lot of these things are great, sometimes it’s too much! Some of the recommendations you see are just flat out wrong or at least taken out of context. It’s so overwhelming to understand all of this and feel like you’re doing enough.

That’s why I’m here to say, as loud as I can:

“You know what’s worse than a few microplastics in your kids’ Craft mac ‘n’ cheese? A boat load of chronic stress over every little thing that might be poisoning you.”

Now, like I said, the research we have on stress really has more to do with stressful events and significant things. Worrying about your health isn’t necessarily going to cause harm.

But excessive worry can.

That’s why I always say on here not to worry about certain things too much. Some things are very important. Others are not worth significant concern if it’s not manageable for you to address.

I like to think of it on a scale from changing out your clothing to stopping microwaving food in plastic. Your polyester clothes are unlikely to cause significant issues for most people and it’s a difficult (and expensive) change to make. But microwaving your food in plastic is a pretty significant issue and is relatively easy to avoid.

Do what you can. Don’t sweat the rest.

Don’t let social media make you so scared of every little chemical that you're causing more harm through your worry than a drop of benzene in your paraffin wax candle ever could.