Allostasis occurs when stress takes us away from our homeostasis or set point. If we do anything that takes us away from that point the body works extra hard to bring us back to it. Think of this in a context of exercise. When we workout we push our bodies slightly (sometimes more!) beyond where it is used to being. The adaptation that comes from this gives us improved fitness in whatever it was we did. (Law of specificity)
Now look at this same phenomenem from a point of view of stress. We have the same set point and our bodies can tolerate so much before we either ‘explode’ or burnout or whatever it is our brains decide to do to stop us from doing real harm.
When we allow our bodies to keep being pushed beyond where it would happily rather be we drive change into the body for which there is always a cost.
What happens when we push to a new level or set point? (as shown in the graph above)
We can come unstuck. Many bodily functions can be thrown out of kilter. Here are some, not all:
- We speed up our use of micro nutirents often exahusting some supplies e.g. Vit B12
- We distrupt our hormone production favouring coritsol production over sex hormone production
- Our sleep patterns can change making it harder to recover back to our old set point
- Disrupted digestion and absorption gets worse as imflammation rises with this new ‘load’
- Blood sugar level control worsens as we go in and out of stressed states more often (blood sugars follow this pattern)
- Our brains start to rewire for this new ‘state’ making it increasingly more difficult to return to the ‘old’ state
The list goes on. Daily stressors are potentially having an impact on your health and these can manifest in so many different ways.
The test is…..do I feel how I felt 2-5 years ago or are things different?
Has my set point slowly crept away from me and now sits at a higher level than it did back then and does the graph above simulate how you are feeling?
Are you a long way off your orginial set point and really wanting to get back there?
What symptoms can you point to that may be new but you are tolerating in the name of ‘old age’ or just ‘daily stress?’
These feelings/symptoms are not normal. You are allowed to question these things and seek answers to them. When you find the key to returning to your old set point, symptoms should reduce. Energy should return and many of the bullet points above will start to correct themselves.
Where are you at? What do you want?