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Stress, Hormones, and Energy

Page history last edited by rsb 2 years, 9 months ago

 

I'm working toward an understanding of the relationship between diet, stress, hormones, and energy levels.  "Energy levels" needs some explanation - by that I mean how much energy a person feels they have to devote to waking activities they want to engage in - this is fundamentally driven by diet, stress, and hormonal activity in the body, among other things. 

 

Diet and Energy:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index

http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm

http://www.wellsj.com/library/glucoseIntro.shtml - awesome explanation

http://pathways4health.org/category/foods-health-conditions/conditions/ - also a nice explanation with some nice graphs

 

Stress and Hormones:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/stress-and-anxiety/the-body's-response.html

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Demystifying_Depression/The_Stress_System

 

Observations:

 

I have noticed that unproductive days are typically linked to one of two causes:

 

1) I'm tired

 

or 

 

2) Some other chemical imbalance I can't put my finger on.

 

In the case of 1, I probably didn't get good sleep, for any one of hundreds of possible reasons, and I have a cure - SLEEP.  This was the case today.  I took a nap today, and now I'm productive again.

 

In the case of 2, there can be a lot of reasons, but I suspect it's often cortisol - something got me stressed and I'm useless for up to 12 hours.  There is no fighting it.  The day is lost.  I just have to go workout.

 

The best defense against both 1 and 2, for me, is to get some serious exercise in each day, and some serious meditation (or equivalent) in each day.  A long run or a long walk plus some hard exercise seems to cover both exercise and meditation.  

 

That defense deals with both cases 1 and 2, for me.  YMMV.

 

There are other causes of poor performance, of course.  If I have time, I'll dig into some research.

 

HALT

 

The way your psychologist will want you to remember this : If you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired, then you need to take care of that, first, if you want to perform.  The easy to remember acronym for that is: HALT

 

An article on this self help tool from 2014

 

More fun (and useful) explanation from Terry Crews in 2016

 

 

 

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