Podcast Episode 10: Stress Physiology Part 1 (with Transcription)
Jul 05, 2022
Welcome to our 10th episode of True Health Solutions Podcast with Dr. Lonnie Bagwell and Brigitte Spurgeon.
In this episode, we define stress and discuss the benefits of stress physiology on performance. Name it, take control of it and use it to your advantage to expand your capacity and comfort zone!
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Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:00):
And the, an optimal amount of stress will produce peak performance. Welcome to the True Health Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, stress, inflammation, and functional health
Brigitte Spurgeon (00:11):
Clinician. And I'm your co-host Bridget Spurgeon Metabolism and nutrition expert.
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:15):
This podcast is where we bring hope, truth, and inspiration for your holistic health
Brigitte Spurgeon (00:20):
Journey because the world needs the best version of you.
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:25):
Hello, True Health Family. Welcome to True Health Solutions podcast. And I am your host, Dr. Lonnie Bagwell here with
Brigitte Spurgeon (00:31):
Bridgets Virgin,
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:33):
The one and only, uh, out Mexico right now. And, uh, as always, uh, we start off every one of our episodes talking about how we're connected to the topic, um, that we're, that we're gonna be, um, recording. And today the topic is, as you already know, before you even clicked on it, to listen or watch is stress. And, uh, and there's no shortage of experiences that we have, right? When, when it comes to stress, cuz we're human. We're just like everybody else. Um, so I think we'll weave a little bit more of our experiences today into the podcast. Um, that way we can kind of talk it out and, and maybe kind of develop some ideas, um, in light of our own experiences. Sound good?
Brigitte Spurgeon (01:15):
Let's, I'm excited. Let's do this. Right
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (01:17):
On. Right on. So, um, so as we get into the, So, and I think when we were talking about this beforehand, I think, uh, I've taught, um, I don't, it's in the hundreds for sure, workshops on stress and or in all the workshops. At some point I end up talking about some aspect of how stress impacts heart disease, cancer, diabetes, you know, et cetera. Um, but I always start off, I think the most powerful thing. In fact, when people ask me, um, I, I tell them, they say, What's the most important thing that I need to know about stress? And everybody wants to know right away. And it's why I'm so, I get so excited about the stress workshop because it's the, it's the time I can give the solution to that question, right? And the question is what, you know, what's the most important thing?
(02:02):
And the answer is to even know what it is. And I think that, that, that is just the most important thing. And that's what we're gonna tackle today on today's podcast, is we're gonna talk about what, what even is this thing called stress. And, um, because how, as I perceive it, and after talking to thousands of patients and talking in front of thousands of people, is that people, it's, I I just call it the ominous unknown. It's just, it's just this thing called stress. It has no structure to it. It has, nobody has an idea of what it really is. It's an emotion. Maybe, you know, it's, it's kind of whatever you want to call it today. And it can be something totally different tomorrow, and it's something totally different for you and something totally different for me. And as long as we leave it like that, we have no power over it whatsoever. And it'll continue to be the thing that it's become, which is the underlying cause of all 21st century disease. It literally is the stress ORs in our life, whether it's physical, chemical, or emotional stress, are the underlying cause of all of the things that everybody wishes that they didn't have. But we've never taken the time to name it.
Brigitte Spurgeon (03:06):
And really on the next two episodes, we're gonna be talking about like, being the CEO of your life and of your stressors and how you can, in a sense, like delegate out to your stressors and nurture your stressors and support your stressors versus those control you and allowing them to wreck your life.
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (03:28):
Yeah. Amen. And, and that's, and then the name of the workshop that I teach is like, uh, is the key to performance at life, right? Is understanding what the stress thing is and getting a hold on it. And so, um, and so anyway, I think the first thing that we need to do is just go through and walk and talk through a little bit more about what stress is. And, um, and so very simply put, I guess stress can be broken into, um, four different categories, right? So you can have different types of stress. And then I want to actually go through a little bit of science. This might not be the easiest thing to do on podcasts, but I wanna walk through kind of the cascade of what's happening inside your body. Um, and then we'll talk about how amazing it really is and how much of a miracle you are.
(04:10):
That's really what today's episode's about, is just about how much of a miracle you are in context of how you're able to do and, uh, interact with life and experiences. And so, um, but there's four types of stress. There's, there's, uh, or four different kind of categories. There's good stress and bad stress, right? So, and, and, and most people don't realize, uh, you know, don't think a lot about good stress. Again, especially in the world today, The more negative stress and bad stress that we have, the more that's what we focus on. Um, but we're gonna actually talk about on today's podcasts about the other side of it, really more so, which is that good stress or what's called you stress, like EU stress. And then, um, and then there the other two categories are acute and chronic. So you can have good and bad, acute and chronic, and today's focus is more on good and acute stress.
(04:57):
That's kind of what we wanna focus on today. Um, and so, um, so I have this bell curve that we looked at beforehand, um, that I don't think I can perfectly share right now, but, um, that, uh, that really just kind of gives you this idea of how stress plays this role in our day-to-day living, right? Whatever aspect of our life. And so, and, and so the first thing I wanna say is, is just simply that stress is required, okay? It's required. If you're, if you want to get outta bed in the morning, there has to be a degree of a stress response to the day. So the light comes up, it activate, you know, shuts down the melatonin like we've talked about in past episodes, right? And other chemicals start to kick in so that we actually aren't totally lethargic laying in bed all day in the dark that we're actually gonna get up and we're gonna put our feet on the floor, right?
(05:45):
So we're talking, this is good stress. This is motivating stress, right? Cause the alternative is lame and bored and boring, right? We live a boring life, right? But as our feet get up on the floor and we start to take off on our day, now our, those chemicals are kicking in place. And now we're gonna start to perform at life. And so to varying degrees, we're gonna have, you know, that healthy tension in our life. There's gonna be, that's what we call motivation, right? We start to get focused and, and an optimal amount of stress will produce peak performance. And I know that's something that you wanted to talk a little bit about, Bridget.
Brigitte Spurgeon (06:22):
Yeah, I've, I've really seen that in my life and it's been really interesting how I have actually created it. How I have been intentional about stress for peak performance. And, you know, as I looked over my life, um, I, so I perform really well in stress that, you know, that's one of my superpowers. I do well with stress, I can navigate it well, and probably that comes from the dysfunctional side of stress of, you know, in my teenage years, really just having like so much stress, like uncontrolled stress around me that I operated in this survival mode. But that survival mode still made me a high performer. Which, you know, that in itself is a bit addicting, right? You get addicted to the, the awards and the, the achievements and recognition and things like that. And so then I went into my adult life and living in America where I no longer had the, like, the negative stressors.
(07:25):
And so I went down to that, to the bottom side of that bell curve, where then I didn't have the motivation. I like the stimulation. Like just, you know, those, those endorphins and those hormones weren't being released. And I, like, I was in a funk. I, you know, went towards the depression side. And so what did I do? I set big goals. Like I created my own stressors. And so I remember my first big goal was to do this ultra-marathon in Africa. And so I imposed stress. I imposed even a sense of struggle and even a sense of misery into my life. It was self-induced. And it was, and then, you know, years going on, years, I went to use that to become a high performer. And the, the athletic performance spilled over into, you know, business performance and relationship performance and, you know, my health and like habit creation and things like that. So that was just very interesting. Now to look at that in hindsight and see how I imposed stress on myself for high performance.
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (08:41):
I'm just kinda laughing on the inside right now because my story, like, you know, again, being a profor, same thing. I mean, we we're kind of cut from a similar cloth, um, growing up. Um, maybe some stressful environment that we didn't ask for. Um, but at the same time, time it's like, how do I get out of this environment? How do I do something different than those people around me? Um, and so, um, you go through like that stage of like lethargy, you know, where it's, cuz you don't know what to do. You're younger and you're like, I don't know. And then all of a sudden you get a dream, you get a vision, you get a kind of a path, right? And it's like, and I just remember, you know, with my family being so sick around me, I was like, I just made the decision, I'm gonna be a doctor.
(09:19):
Like I wanna be a doctor and help people, right? It's pretty noble, right? Um, how am I gonna do that? I can't afford college. No one, no one. My family can afford college. You know, like, so I better start, you know, playing sports, that's a pathway. I better get good grades. I know that, right? So I put tons of pressure on myself for good grades, right? And I'm gonna say healthy pressure cuz we, we'll talk on next episode. You know, you can definitely get unhealthy with these things. Um, and uh, and it's like I can't, so the, I was, I was like 13 years old. I was waking up at five o'clock in the morning to go lift weights. Like why would I do, why would a 13 year old ever do that? You know? And my mom would drop me off in the snow, you know, it'd be two feet of snow outside the weight room and I'd have to wait 30 minutes cuz she worked third shift.
(10:00):
So she'd wanna go home and sleep and I'd wait in the snow. And, and I like, who would do that? Somebody who is highly motivated. I set a goal, I wanna go to college, I wanna become a doctor. Um, and athletics and academics were the only two ways that I was gonna get there. And so that was it. So started getting good grades and started waking up at five o'clock in the morning. Um, and so, uh, and so I'm here today because of you stress, good stress, right? Um, and that self-imposed good stress. And um, and I was just ha I had this picture of you, like, I was thinking like, I've seen you here in the office, you know, regular days kind of, you know, like kind of chilling and, you know, doing day-to-day stuff or whatever. And then, but then I think about the athlete that turns it on, Like maybe I, I just pictured the starting line, although I imagine happens before that.
(10:48):
But you know, like when you're going into a race, cuz you were talking about a race, or for me it was in the locker room. It's like I show up to locker room, it's hugs and high fives, it's no big deal. But if you took a picture of me, you know, before going out on the football field or whatever, it's, it's not a, it's, it's a, it looks like a, you know, a bomb that's about to go off, right? Like, it's an intensity that just kind of, kind of wells up, you know, over time. So that by the time you walk out on that field, you're literally like a different person. Um, and my point in saying that is the, the physiological, it's, it's a picture of the shift in physiology on the inside, right? So we self induce, like I put myself in a different situation to get my physiology up, to get it to the physiology that's required to perform well, right? Getting into state, we might call it, but it, but it's not just a mental state. Yeah. It's a full physiological state. You wanna comment on that just for a second?
Brigitte Spurgeon (11:38):
It's exactly it. That paints a great picture of the difference between training and racing. So you will have better performance in a race due to the physiological effects of the, like the cortisol and the, you know, the adrenaline. And also because there's added pressure. So there's added stress on it because you have crowds cheering, you have a very specific goal and you only have one time to achieve it, which is very, you're a little bit more laid back when you're on a training day going out for a run. You, you know, your pace is lower, your heart rate's low, you know, just mm-hmm. <affirmative>, your environment is different. And race day, like, that's when you're going to break, make your personal best, you know, for your times and your, you know, strength, performance, things like that. And I think it's the same in life or in even work performance.
(12:34):
Let's say you're practicing a speech, but then you have to give it on tv, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and, and probably in that example, you know, we, we can see that go two directions because you can also be overwhelmed by the, by the stress and the pressure of that. And, um, I don't know have, have you ever like blacked out ont like gone blank on tv? I know I have <laugh>. Oh yeah. So, you know, we, oh yeah. You know, we, we can certainly shut down as well. And, and we see that hype, you know, we see that in the movies, you know, like golfers mm-hmm. <affirmative> or, you know, they, they crack under the pressure a little bit. So certainly you can go, they're two sides of that, but we definitely perform better with the pressure. Yeah,
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (13:16):
Absolutely. And so I wanna walk through and just go through, I just wanna go through as briefly as I can, what's really happening. I wanna name stress, like I wanna give it a name, I wanna give it an understanding. Um, because if we, if if you get it, then you could do something about it. Like you, than it's something you realize that is far more manageable than anybody ever gave themself permission to believe. And, and it doesn't have to be as ominous, unknown. And it, and it can be this amazingly good thing, like we don't wanna just all throw, throw all the whole concept of stress into the waste basket. And so the first thing that typically happens, right? So you're sitting there getting ready for a race, or I'm sitting there getting ready to go on the football field. The first thing that happens is we start to, you know, we're maybe we're visualizing or whatever we're thinking about the finish line, we're thinking about the battle that's about to happen, and cortisol and adrenaline start to go up, right?
(14:03):
Well, when that cortisol and adrenaline goes up, it starts to draw our heart rate up, right? So now the heart rate's beaten just a little bit quicker and, and order, and, and let me take a step back cuz I, I'm using the a, a a good example. But for people listening, maybe they can't relate to those exactly. But imagine someone breaks into your house, okay? Imagine that there's a bear in the woods, you know, on your hike and you walk around the corner and you see a bear, right? You need this response that I'm talking about right now. You need the cortisol in the adrenaline and the heart rate to go up in order to push blood to the areas that you're going to need it in order to be able to perform, right? So when, and, and here's, and, and to, to make that point clear, you don't need blood in your digestive system worrying about digesting breakfast as a means of survival during your ultramarathon, right?
(14:55):
If I'm going to war on the football field, I don't need to worry about, my body is not prioritizing digesting breakfast, it's putting blood to my extremities so I can grab and push and shove and whatever else might be going on out there, right? Um, same thing for, um, you know, for doing a performance, right? Or given a speech or something like that. Again, the body is amazingly, it's just innately intelligent and it knows what to do here. So it'll actually increase your heart rate, it'll vasoconstrict, which pumps up the blood pressure, right? So now you're ready to perform and your body's able to move things through your blood quicker as is necessary, whether that's energy that it needs to move through the blood or maybe repair substances in case you really are going to war, right? And it doesn't know the difference between the football field and the boardroom, right?
(15:42):
It only knows one amazing response to handle any of the stressors that are imposed. And then, uh, and then speaking of energy, um, your body will start to dump glucose into the bloodstream, right? Because that's our quick source of energy. And at the same time, it'll increase our blood fat levels or our blood lipid levels because it's going to be ready in case you, if you run outta glucose, you have to still have energy because the bear is still running after you, right? The, the person is still in your house, um, or you're only halfway through the race, et cetera. You get it? And so, um, and then at the same time, if you're, if you're gonna have blood sugar in the bloodstream and it's, and, and you're not using it fast enough, then your body's tendency then would be to wanna shuttle that sugar back into your cells, right?
(16:27):
And by using insulins, but your body will actually put you into an induced state of insulin resistance in this acute stress state. And you're thinking, well, insulin resistance is bad, right? But no, in this instance, and in the acute phase here we're talking about right now, it's perfect because you need that glucose in the bloodstream as much as possible and for as long as we can keep it there so you can have maximum performance, um, at the same level, you, you, again, your body is not prioritizing, um, you know, doing higher math or remembering short term, uh, you know, things and um, and concentrating. And so, and this is really funny cuz I, when, whenever I do this workshop out in the community and, and I, and I go through this slide, I'll say, Have you ever had anybody where you know, they're really stressed out?
(17:13):
Or maybe it was you, you were really stressed out and if someone came up and said, What's two plus two? You would literally look at 'em with cross eyes and say, Huh, you know what I mean? Like, cuz cuz when you're in that stress state, you're not doing, you're not thinking about two plus two, right? That the body just loses the ability to perform, um, some of those basic cognitive functions. Um, and then at the same time, again, your body's not worried in that moment about, you know, fighting a virus or a bacteria. So your immune system can actually, it might, it might acutely ramp up and then it starts to quickly right after that, it'll start to ramp down because immunity is not a priority if the threat is a bear running you down in the woods, right? And so it's incredible that in, in a split second and literally a nanosecond, your body can go into the state to help you be in the best possible position to survive. And what we're talking about, this is literally the formula for survival. There is nothing better out there. I mean, there's no, I mean, again, you are a miracle and this is the equation necessary to give you the best chance at surviving. Comments on that, Bridget?
Brigitte Spurgeon (18:21):
Yeah, it, it just reminded me too, like, you know, we obviously look at a lot of labs in the office and, and we looking at lipid numbers and we, you know, when we see though, you, you're just talking about, um, you know, mobilizing the lipids in the blood under stressful environments and you know, when when we see someone's ldl, it is up or, you know, certain blood lipids up or, or their blood sugar up, but it's, it, it can be just up temporarily because there's been a temporary state of, of stress and, and that's exactly what the body needed in, in that moment. But, um, so just understanding that also about your labs and about your physiology,
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (19:05):
That's so good. Yep. That's awesome. And again, that's what today's about is that like, if you understand what the stress thing is, you can harness it, right? You can use it for good and then you learn how to massage your physiology, you know, to recover properly so that you can come back at it again today. And all the whole idea of getting your physiology right, so you can come back at it again today, that's all about being resilient and being a high performer. Whether you're a stay-at-home mom, ceo, executive of the local power company, you know, elite athlete or you know, whatever, right? Or weekend hobbyist, it doesn't matter. We all want to perform well. And so whenever we're having the conversation around stress, we're always having a conversation around performance. And so the goal of today's podcast is to help people understand, like get excited about this thing called stress, right?
(19:54):
Get excited about, you know, get excited about how amazing the body is to be able to handle acute stress and how you stress or good stress, um, can actually help us achieve all of the things that God's put on our heart and our dreams. Um, and just, and everybody wants to end the day, you know, well, right? Well, understanding this and embracing it and feeding this process is how we do that, right? And so, and, and that's why I love stress workshops the most because it is truly foundational for optimal living, right? If we wanna see 10,000 families live extraordinary, we're gonna have to embrace this.
Brigitte Spurgeon (20:29):
Yeah. So it's, so it's identifying where you're at, right? If you want to perform, if, if you need more performance, if, if you have to up your level of performance, it's, you know, where are, where are you at in that, that spectrum, on that bell curve? And what do you need to put in place to get to the next level? And there are some situations where it just depends where you are on it. It's sometimes it's on the rest side of it. And then sometimes it's on, okay, I need to impose a structure, a goal, um, a new a new habit. I need to take myself to that next level.
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (21:07):
Amen. And that's what we want to help people do. Now, everybody, now I'm gonna say not everybody, but most people listening are saying, This sounds awesome, this sounds amazing. Um, but what about all the, all the bad stuff we hear about stress? Like what about all the, you know, what happens when, why am I on the other side? And that's what we've reserved to talk more about on our next episode, right? So we're gonna get to that here shortly. Um, but we wanna talk about that next. Um, so anything you wanna say parting, uh, this, this episode before we, uh, jump into the other side or what we call the dark side of stress?
Brigitte Spurgeon (21:42):
Yeah. Let, let me just add in a strategy that I talk about mm-hmm. <affirmative> a lot and something to be aware of. And it's the concept of hormesis, which is imposing small amounts of stress on your body to improve the way your body adapts to stress and the way your body performs. And so an example would be because we've, we've really created a state of comfort in our world. Like we think about that just with temperature regulation, right? You know, we have ac and we have heat in our buildings and our homes and our calves to, you know, to, so we stay at the state of comfort. We wear shoes so our our feet are not, um, you know, not hurt by, by the sticks or the rocks or the pavement, uh, you know, or the earth outside. And so we've, we've created such a sense of comfort that it actually dulls our survival instincts and um, and that strength that we have in our body.
(22:41):
And so the theory is that if you impose the small amount, so maybe that is taking a cold shower to help your body adapt to that stressor mm-hmm. <affirmative> or, or maybe that is, um, fasting, like going without food because that is a stressor on the body. So you're imposing it on a small amount that can be exposing yourself to, to dirt and to microbe. So your, your microdose it, so it teaches your body, your immune system to adapt to it. So it, it's a way that we adapt and we can also expand our comfort zone when it comes to stressors. My husband says all the time, like, you know, Bridget doesn't have a comfort zone. But part of that is because I grew up in, in large amounts of, of stress and, and then I've put a lot of stressors into my life where, where now I've expanded my capabilities, my, my skill sets, uh, my immune, you know, everything is just expanded because I've incorporated these small stressors in into my life. So it's being, being aware of those and applying those regularly,
Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (23:48):
I love it. And I just think in a, in a society that's becoming more and more avoidant, um, as a first line of defense against things, um, you can see why we're becoming less and less resilient, right? Um, but if we are willing to embrace, and I'm just remembering the stoic saying, you know, that I can't remember who it was cuz I don't study the stoics, but I know it's one of 'em. And they said that the path is through, you know, nobody ever said the path is around, right? The path is through. So if you want to be better over here, then you have to get from direct as directly as possible from point A to point B. Um, you know, the path is through. And so, um, so anyway, that's awesome. That's a great strategy. And, and really, and as we get into the next episode, all of the strategies that we would use to recover from the, the effects of chronic stress or bad stress, um, are gonna be the same strategies used to, uh, you know, to continue to do those things to support a healthy acute response to stress, as well as that good stress, which is what we're focusing on now.
(24:48):
So, um, so if that's something that anybody is interested in, you wanna learn more strategies, um, about how to overcome the effects of bad stress, but also fuel what we talked about today, which are the effects of good stress that make sure you stay tuned for our next episode. Thanks for joining us today on True Health Solutions Podcast. Make sure that you click to subscribe. Also go to our website, www.truehealthcharlotte.com, where you can download any resources related to today's show or any future shows. And lastly, if you search for True Health Center Group on Facebook, you'll be able to join our free health community. We look forward to seeing you there.
