It Is Not Age – It Is Stress

We all know too well that stress wears us down – it ages us. Simply put, we allocate our resources to what our bodies experience as survival. These resources could go to regeneration. Have you ever seen someone age over night from stress. Maybe their hair grayed quickly or their face lost its youth. Chronic stress is cumulative. The effects may not show for a few years, but after years of stress, you will be older than your twin who moved to that South Pacific island.

Long-term emotional stress causes the genes in our cells to shorten their life span. If our genes are not living as long as they could, neither will our cells. If there was a way to measure the qualitative age of our bodies, I suspect we would discover all of our cells are aging.

The closest measure of the relative age of our bodies may be the fascial (connective tissue) system – Hans Style, M.D., the father of stress research called fascia the organ of stress. Much like the rings of a tree, these thin sheets of collagen fiber exhibit the chronic strain of stress. Plastic surgeons and dermatologist inject collagen into tissue to temporally bring back youth.

We can not only slow down the aging process, we can reverse it to some extent.   We may not be like salamanders,  who can regenerate  lost legs, but we can reverse the accumulation of stress and how that manifests in our body. Once the chronic stress response subsides, the body will naturally begin to allocate its resources to healing. After survival, out next hard-wired behavior is regeneration, not unlike the salamander. Our bodies want to be young. The fountain of youth is not an external exilir, but rather the body’s inherent ability to heal itself.

Once you reduce your body’s stress response and it has begun its healing you can aid in its rejuvenation through the use of an array of holistic disciplines. There are many spa treatments that pamper and prepare you to look young. Don’t get me wrong, Hedonism has its value: there is great health value in receiving pleasure, let alone the pure enjoyment! What I am speaking of here are the treatment regimes that address restoring your deep vitality. In the last 25 years, everything from Rolfing to acupuncture has proven their efficiency for catalyzing healing.

Through my private practice, I see clients who remove their chronic stress, learn not to recreate it and then begin to support their body in rejuvenation – transforming their health and their appearance. Not only do we want to feel good and look good, but so does our cells. When given the choice they will choose health. Being vain is good – it can lead us to rejuvenation.

Further Reading:

1. Stress and Colds
2. Is Stress Real, Is Fibromyalgia Real?
3. Stress and TV
4. Cost of Stress
5. Stress Ages Our Skin