Stress is one of the unavoidable realities of the holidays.
Chronic stress leads to imbalances in your body and mind. Unfortunately, your bones aren’t immune to these effects. Stress affects your bones by disrupting a natural process called bone remodeling. As you may know, bone remodeling occurs all the time. It involves two types of cells: osteoblasts and osteoclasts.
While osteoblasts are responsible for building your bones, osteoclasts help to break down old bone tissue. Bone remodeling takes a concerted effort from both cells, as they work together to maintain strong, healthy bones. When the process is disturbed, it can result in a loss of bone integrity. And unfortunately, stress does a great job of disturbing bone remodeling. There are several ways that stress carries out this task.
Here are three common ones: How does Holiday Stress Impacts Your Bones?
Spending time in crowded malls. Finding gifts. Hosting family. Travel. It can be enough to make you scream. But hold on! These 4 simple tricks can help you dissolve that Holiday stress.
Inflammatory chemicals. Chronic inflammation over-activates osteoclasts that remove your bone. In fact, recent studies show that chronic inflammation can elevate your osteoporosis risk by increasing your levels of inflammatory cytokines—proteins that control your bone cells’ activities.
Research shows that all three of these mechanisms can increase your risk of osteoporosis. This means that managing your stress response could impact your health far beyond your emotional well-being.
4 Simple Ways To Melt Stress–And Strengthen Bone!
You can use them any time to rejuvenate your body and soul:
1. Physical Activity. When you exercise, your body rewards you with the release of feel-good chemicals called endorphins. This triggers tiny sensors in our bones (osteocytes) to alert osteoblasts and osteoclasts to get working. (Among other things, osteocytes also manage your bones’ calcium reserves!)
2. Bone Breathing. Bone breathing involves focusing attention on various parts of your skeleton as you take slow, deep breaths. When you take these long, deep breaths you tell your body that you’re safe. And this triggers your “rest and digest” mode, also known as the parasympathetic nervous system.7 It also helps your body release built-up stress, which can reduce excess bone loss.
3. Meditation. Meditation, particularly mindfulness meditation, is simply a way to notice the activity of the mind, not turn it off altogether. When you notice the activity in your mind, it feels less personal than trying to tell your brain to “stop thinking!” After all, that’s not what meditation is about. With mindfulness meditation, you can more objectively view your own thought processes. Many people find that by doing this, their minds naturally quiet down anyway. Meditation is a great option for responding to stress, instead of letting your mind and body take you on the stress hormone roller coaster.
4. Laugh More. Everyone loves a good laugh, but most people don’t realize that laughing can actually have a profound effect on stress. In fact, research shows that laughing can decrease cortisol levels. Furthermore, the same neurotransmitters released during exercise (serotonin and dopamine) are also released when you laugh. So if you’re feeling stressed, call up your funniest friend. Or throw on one of your favorite Holiday comedies (National Lampoons’ Christmas Vacation and The Santa Clause work great!) to let the laughter do its work. And if you want to get insight into your bone health right now, be sure to schedule a DEXA bone scan for yourself. To find a clinic near you that offers DEXA scans, go to this helpful website and book there: www.dexascan.com Knowledge is power, and it’s always best to know the full story of your health so you can take care of it in a timely manner. Enjoy the holiday season, and if you find yourself getting overwhelmed, please revisit these four handy tricks for dissolving stress. You may be surprised by how well they work!
* Excess cortisol is a problem. Cortisol is a stress hormone. High levels of cortisol can impair your body’s use of calcium in two ways: First, your intestine’s ability to absorb calcium; and second, your kidneys’ ability to reabsorb calcium and place it in the bloodstream when needed.
• Suppression of hormones. Research shows that high stress can impact estrogen and progesterone, two sex hormones that are crucial for bone integrity.1 2 Furthermore, high-stress levels are associated with suppressed growth hormone, which plays a role in bone remodeling.
Knowledge is power, and it’s always best to know the full story of your health so you can take care of it in a timely manner. Enjoy the holiday season, and if you find yourself getting overwhelmed, please revisit these four handy tricks for dissolving stress. You may be surprised by how well they work!
Article contributed by: Bone Health Companion