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The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane
Real Conversations about things that Matter
All things life and health - physical health, nutrition, mindset, mental health, connection plus society and culture with Fiona Kane, experienced and qualified Nutritionist, Holistic Counsellor and Mind Body Eating Coach
Frank discussions about how to achieve physical and mental well being.
I talk about all things wellness including nutrition, exercise, physical and mental health, relationships, connections, grief, success and failure and much more.
Some episodes are my expertise as a nutritionist and holistic counsellor and some are me chatting to other experts or people with interesting health or life stories. My goal is to give you practical and useful info to improve your health and tidbits that you may find inspiring and that may start discussions within your circle of friend/family.
The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane
How to Turn Stress Into Strength: Managing Stress the Healthy Way | EP 135
Stress isn’t always the enemy, it can actually help you grow. In this episode of The Wellness Connection, Fiona Kane explains how to harness stress so it works for you, not against you. Learn how your mindset can change the way your body responds to pressure, and how managing stress in healthy ways supports your heart and overall wellbeing.
In this video, you’ll learn:
Why stress isn’t always harmful
How your body and mind respond to pressure
Practical ways to manage and transform stress
How to create a balanced, resilient mindset
If you’ve ever felt anxious, overwhelmed, or stuck in a stress loop, this talk will help you see stress in a new light, and even turn it into a tool for resilience and heart health.
Subscribe for more wellness insights and guidance from Fiona Kane.
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Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I'm going to be talking about stress, and I'm going to be talking about a way of harnessing stress that works for you rather than being crippled by stress, a way of looking at it, a different approach to how you can look at stress. So, like all things I've talked about on here before, is everything is data. So it's important to look at everything as data. So if you're having signs and symptoms, like physical signs and symptoms, you know, you're looking at data, right? And the same is for emotional signs and symptoms, so it could be both. And with stress response, you may get both. So you'll get physical feelings, but you also may get emotional feelings. Everything is data, so it's not paying attention. What is what is that thing I'm feeling or experiencing? And then what does that mean? And stress is stress is no different to that. Stress is something where we, if we have starting to sort of have a stress response, we're going to be looking around to say, okay, what's going on? Now, what often happens is when we first start sort of having stress responses, or if we start having them a lot more, or having panic attacks, that kind of thing, is in our mind we kind of have this, we end up with this sort of almost this muscle memory of kind of saying, Oh, okay, when I feel this way, it's bad, it's all bad, it's only going to be bad, it's going to end badly. And sometimes, you know, we've had experience, right? We've had experience that proves that to us. And so what happens is every time we start to experience a stress response, we immediately think it's bad, it's terrible, it's all going to end badly, and of course it does. And so this is a case where sometimes we've got to reassess and kind of understand what the stress response is so that we have an appropriate response to it. And like I always joke about the fact that I have a stress response when I see a cockroach. It's ridiculous, but I do, right? So I, in that situation, I talk to myself and I say, all right, Fiona, it's just a cockroach. Might be hideous, but you are safe. So you don't really need to go into a full stress response. So I pick myself up on it. Like I notice what's going on. I notice that I'm responding in a way that's not appropriate for the situation. And I'll pretty much just laugh at myself and talk myself out of it, right? And when we have a stress response, so there's a few things that are going on. So I'll clarify, I have talked about some of this before, but you know, it's an important topic, so I just think it's worth revisiting. We have two main modes of our nervous system. There's more than that, but just for sometimes simplicity is good, even um even though it's not 100% simplicity is good. So we have fight or flight or rest and digest. Rest and digest is where we should be most of the time. And rest and digest is basically what it sounds like. It's when your body is able to replenish and uh digest and absorb nutrients and and pretty much where it rebuilds, you right. So resting and digesting is when your body's doing all the things that it needs to do just to sort of function normally and um and keep you well and uh and and and healthy. So rest and digest is where we should be, a mode that we should be in most of the time, because most of the time we're safe and everything's fine. Now, the other one is fight or flight. And fight or flight is where we should be sometimes, but not all of the time. Now, historically, our ancestors, when they were in fight or flight, it was for a really good reason, like it wasn't a cockroach, it was a bear or a lion, right? So if you are being chased by a bear, if you're about to become lunch, it does not matter if you digest your lunch. And that's exactly what's happening when you're in fight or flight. When you're in fight or flight, you get no circulation to your digestive system and no circulation to your reproductive system because your body kind of thinks, well, digesting, reproducing, they're kind of not really important right now. What we need to do is survive. So all of your circulation goes to your arms and legs and so to your heart, your arms, legs, and to your eyes. So the idea is that you can see better and you can run and you've got strength. And of course, that's fight or flight because if you're going to have to fight the bear or run from the bear or whatever it is, you need the strength and the physical ability to see it, run from it, that kind of thing, right? So that response is appropriate when there's a bear. It's less appropriate when there's a cockroach. But the other place that we have it in our lives is we have it in our lives in regards to things like it might be like a job interview or some other thing where there's a performance involved and we start going into a stress response. Now, a stress, we don't need to necessarily go into the full stress response for uh for a job interview, but in saying that, there's a way that you can harness this and understand what it is and make it work for you. So if you think, oh my god, I'm gonna have a panic attack and start talking yourself into the fact that this is a negative thing, that that what you're feeling is negative, then that's that you're talking yourself into that, right? You're talking yourself into that experience. But if you can understand that it's actually a positive thing, because it is your body trying to prepare you to deal with something difficult. And so if you understand that that's what your body is doing, if you sort of see this as data, so you're kind of getting ready to go for a job interview, and you can feel you know your heart's starting to flutter and and maybe your breathing's changing a bit, and and you know, you start feeling those uh that surge of stress hormones through your system. Now you can tell talk yourself into all sorts of stories about why that's a bad thing, or you can actually say, no, no, it's a good thing. My body's preparing me to uh to perform. And when you think about it, this is actually what happens to people who do perform. So if you're about to go out and do a big speech or you know, perform a concert or whatever it is, I think most people, if not all people, will let you know that they do have this kind of surge, this adrenaline surge, this sort of thing that happens before they go out on stage. Uh, because and they'll acknowledge, they'll tell you that it helps them perform. It does help you perform. That's so it's made to help that performance. So when you start to have those feelings, you can say to yourself, oh wow, okay, this is my body supporting me. This is my body helping me. I'm about to do something that's challenging. Uh, here we go. Now, if it's like my situation where I was a cockroach, then you can say to yourself, Look, I don't really need the stress response for this, I just need a can of mortine or whatever it is that I need. But if it is uh you're about to you do a performance and you need to perform, you're about to do an exam or a job interview or something like that, then it can be quite useful. So what you say is, okay, this is my body preparing me to deal with this. Isn't this great? Isn't it great that my body's doing this? So, first of all, just stay saying that sort of makes a difference. And you know, so you know, uh one of the things that um one of the things that uh that we know is there's been studies on this, and so what they did is they did studies of um, you know, the difference between thinking that you were sort of stress was a bad thing and the difference between believing it was helpful for you. And um, and they actually found that it is helpful, especially when you believe it's helpful, right? So they did that in a study, they conducted a study at Harvard University, and before they went through this social stress test, they were taught to reframe their stress response as helpful, right? Which is what exactly what I was just talking about, reframing the stress response. And, you know, so that pounding heart is preparing you for action and you're breathing faster. That's so you can get more oxygen to your brain. And you know, so they were they were sort of told to tell themselves these things about stress. And ultimately, what they found is the participants who learned to view the stress response as helpful for their performance were actually less stressed out, less anxious, and more confident. So the more they just saw it as a performance enhancer, the more it was and the calmer that they were. So the the hormones had their did that played their role, but they weren't sort of completely crippled by it. It was actually something that benefited them. And so, you know, it's explaining. I'm just sort of reading this sort of article, and this is based on um Kelly McGonagall's work, so it's uh it's worth checking her out. She's she's great. But in this, just she talks about, you know, how your blood vessels, you know, your heart rate goes up, your blood vessels constrict, uh, and this is why um this is why it can be associated with cardiovascular disease having um having stress response. And so it's important to understand this so that we can harness this the right way. So, anyway, so what they did is they, and I'll tell you more about that constricting vessels and what that means and whether or not you should worry about it or not. I'll tell you that coming up. But at this point, I'm just gonna tell you about this study. So, you know, the study that the participants who you know, essentially the people who viewed their stress response as helpful, well, what happened with them is their blood vessels stayed relaxed. So the people who thought it was helpful, their blood vessels stayed relaxed. So the way you think about stress is more important than the stress itself. What you think about it is really important. So they stayed relaxed. And so even though the heart was still pounding, it was a much healthier cardiovascular profile, right? So they were getting the benefit without the negative. Over a lifetime of stressful experiences, that single biological change could be the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at 50 and getting a letter from, well, she wrote the queen at this time, so it would be the king these days. So essentially, reframing the stress response can make a difference to your not only your emotional health and your ability to harness that stress and use that stress to help you, but it also is going to make a difference to your your physical health and your cardiovascular profile over the long term. Now, that's a really, really important information to have, wouldn't you think so? So essentially, uh what's happening is in these studies, they've proved that as long as you harness the stress and as long as you reframe it, and as long as you say, oh, okay, this stress response is here to help me perform, great, isn't that fabulous? My body is helping me do this. Woo-hoo! You know, it when you respond in that way, blood vessels uh relax, and but you still but you still get the benefit of the stress response in that it helps you perform. And this is what's really, really important to understand because I think so many of us who've had stress and anxiety and those sorts of issues, we perceive that stress response straight away. We get start getting that feeling, and we perceive it as being a negative thing, as being something that's going to cause us trouble, when in fact it's actually can be and is a positive thing, and it's all about your relationship to that, you know, you get those symptoms, and it's changing your response to that what it is, it's reframing it, saying, Oh, okay, it's here to help me, it's not here to harm me. That's a good thing. So, the other thing that they learned about uh in regards to the stress response and how it affects your cardiovascular system, is that you know, they learned about a lot of it's to do with a hormone called oxytocin. So many of you would know oxytocin. Oxytocin is often referred to as the cuddle hormone. It's essentially the hormone that um that mothers make in response to their babies, and you know, and it's not just mothers who do it, it's it's but this is an example, and that's why you know, this tiny little thing that drives you nuts, that makes sure you don't get any sleep, and that takes everything you have plus more. It's what keeps it alive, basically, because it sort of gives you the baby smiles and you get all that oxytocin, you have that cuddle with the baby, the breastfeeding, whatever it is, all this lovely oxytocin floods through your body, and you kind of all you want to do is cuddle the baby, look after the baby and care for it, and it's beautiful and wonderful, and that's how the how the human race survives. But that that's you know, the the oxytocin is uh a great hormone and it has that effect. But what they also know, so you know, it's it's involved in childbirth, it's involved in breastfeeding, but um, but it's also involved, so it's what they're saying here is oxytocin, the neuro hormone, it fine-tunes your brain's social instincts. So it primes you to do things that strengthen your close relationships, so it makes you uh crave physical contact with your friends and your family, and it enhances your empathy and makes you more willing to help and support the people you care about. So it's also a stress hormone. So your protrudy gland releases as part of the body's stress response, and it's as much a part of the stress response as the adrenaline, it makes your heart pound. Now, when oxytocin is released during a stress response, it motivates you to seek support and notice when someone in your life is struggling and you might need to support the others. And actually, this is actually when I was talking about the different modes, the different stress modes when I was talking about fight or flight and rest and digest, there is another one that's called tend and befriend, and that's what oxytocin does, and um and it's very common women uh do the tend and befriend response. And one, it's because they're probably releasing more oxytocin because they're the ones that's caring for babies, that sort of thing, historically. But also, uh, if you think about how a society was set up back in the day, your village gets attacked. Well, the the women would actually have to be caring for the babies, they'd have to be caring for the elderly, and maybe even the tending to the animals, right? So, because they're in a situation where they were very vulnerable because they were caring for the little ones, they couldn't do as much of the fight or flight like didn't work for them because they would do it, they had to do the tendon befriend, right? So they had to actually kind of you know get people to work with them. And also, if you when you think about it from a uh survival point of view for women, uh also because maybe we're not in the same situation where we could fight the same as men could, if we learn how to tend and befriend, we get people to help us, right? So it's a very common one in women to do this tendon befriend thing. But what they found is um is because this oxytocin, like I said before, it motivates you to seek support or to sort of help others and be part, you know, that community sort of thing. Um, so it's um oxytocin acts on the body, not just on the brain. So it's not just about the brain and it's not just about going, you know, being aware of helping others, that sort of thing. Uh, but its main role in the body is to protect your cardiovascular system from the effects of stress. So going back to what we were talking about before, so it's it's a natural anti-inflammatory, anti-inflammatory, and it also helps your blood vessels stay relaxed during stress. And um, and because it does that, you know, um, and I was just saying the heart actually has receptors for this hormone, and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate and heal from stress-induced damage. So, this hormone, this stress hormone actually strengthens your heart. This is one of the many reasons why having healthy relationships and connections to friends in your community is so powerful for good health, right? And and we know this when we look back at um, there was another Harvard study, uh, someone Waldinger, uh, what's his name? Uh I've talked about this Harvard study before, but there was a Harvard study about longevity, and I think it's the longest study on longevity that they've done. And this particular study looked at all of the things that um followed these people for many years and looked at, and I think now it's now looking at their children, grandchildren, but it was looking at what are the things that predict longevity and what are the things that predict uh keeping your marbles, basically, keeping your memory, not ending up with uh Alzheimer's, that kind of thing, dementia. And what they found is that they thought it was going to be about the cholesterol number or something like that, but what they actually found is it was about having connections. It was about and the connections in your life being really important. So it was that sort of if you have a partner, the partner in your life is someone that you feel uh that is has got your back, someone having your back was the most important thing, right? So if you were in a combatitive and and nasty relationship where someone's undermining you, you were more likely to end up dying young and more likely to end up losing your marbles, kind of getting that dementia earlier. Whereas if you had a partner that had your back, it made a big difference to your longevity and your brain function to a much older age. And you know, and it it's it's sort of um that it shows you that and it wasn't really about whether or not you would fight with your partner. I mean, all human beings disagree on stuff, right? And if you're going to be in a marriage with someone for 50, 60 years or whatever, you're going to have disagreements. It wasn't about that, it was about at the end of the day whether or not you that person had your back. So there's a difference between having disagreements and having a really combatitive, unsupportive relationship. And this sh just showed that there was a difference in that, right? So, you know, we know that, um, and that again, that's probably those relationships should produce a lot more oxytocin, don't you? If you're if you know that at the end of the day someone has your back. So, you know, there was another study that where they tracked about a thousand adults in the United States and they ranged in age from 34 to 93. And they started the study by asking how much stress have you experienced in the last year. They also asked, how much time have you spent helping friends and neighbors and people in your community? And then they used public records to look at what panned out for these people over the next five years. And what they found is for every major stressful life experience, um, whether it's like financial difficulties or family crisis, they increased the risk of dying by 30%. So, like a major life issue like that increased your risk of dying by 30%. But it was wasn't true for everyone. People who spent time caring for others showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying, zero. So they what they've found is that caring creates resilience, right? So when we care for other people, and you know, I think it's important, I think it's important to clarify this too, though, because what I see is I see sometimes people only care about other things and never other people and never care about themselves. And if all you do is give to other people and never care about yourself, especially when you're doing it in a resentful way where you don't really want to be doing this and you just feel like people are are um blackmailing you almost emotional blackmail, whatever it is into doing the thing, that doesn't end well. So I I think self-care is important, and I teach my clients all of the time to look after their health and practice self-care. And that whole, you know, oxy oxygen mask thing is true. You know, if you don't put your oxygen mask on first, you're not going to be to help people for long, are you? You're not gonna be much help. So that is true. At the same time, though, when we kind of live like as on an island and don't care for other people at all and only look after ourselves, that is not beneficial. And if we're going through stress and difficulties in life, then um I would encourage you to reach out to other people. And it might involve volunteering somewhere, or it might involve joining a group, joining a social group. I know in in this area there's been quite a few walk Penrith, um, Penrith, and because I'm in Sydney, in western, um northwestern Sydney I'm in, but places like Penrith and North Richmond and Springwood have, you know, they created men's walk and talk programs, and now they've got women's walk and talk where basically you can go and show up and go for a walk and have people to talk to. Uh, so there's all sorts of different groups, whether they be social groups, whether they be, you know, whether it's a craft group, a social group, a a whatever it is, a group that does dance or or singing or choirs, or there's a whole different types of groups that you can be part of, or there's all sorts of different volunteering you can be part of. And all of those things make a difference if you're just basically spending time with other people and doing something for other people. It might even be, even if you don't want to be involved in groups and things, but it could be, you know, random acts of kindness. So it could be going out in the street and smiling at someone and being kind, or paying for someone's coffee, or paying for someone's groceries, or like whatever it might be helping someone lift a pram or a wheelchair out of a car, or you know, whatever it is, there's a many, many ways that we can do acts of service, and acts of service are an important part of this because what we're doing is releasing that oxytocin. Now, we also know you can get oxytocin. One of the reasons why some certain YouTube videos are so popular is we get oxytocin from watching other people do kind acts of service. So I think there's a guy, I can't remember his name. Is it Mr. Mr. Beast? Is he the one? Anyway, there's a guy who you know gives away lots of money to people and um does lots of kind things on online. And you know, that sort of thing, what we know is even watching someone do acts of service as she can help release that oxytocin. And you know, if you've ever watched, you know, if you've ever got that good feeling and calmed down from watching those cute videos on YouTube where it's like someone doing something kind for someone or someone rescuing someone, something like that, um, then you know, that's oxytocin. So there's more than one way to create that, um, to release that oxytocin into your system. But one of those ways is actually to um, you know, acts of kindness, doing something kind for somebody else and um and having a connection, having a human connection because we are, we we do need a tribe, and that's actually one thing that uh Johan Hari uh describes in his book. He sort of says bees, uh he's got several books, but um, he wrote one about addiction, and you know, he says, like bees need a hive, humans need a tribe, and he's right with that. And uh, it is true that we we do need a tribe and we feel unsafe if we don't have that. Now, there's different sorts of people, and some people like to be alone more and have their own space, and other people really love being in it and amongst it all the time, and there's everything in between, but we still all do need to be to have a tribe and to feel like we're part of a tribe, and when we do, it helps us have that safety, but it also just helps, you know, sometimes you just need some support. Sometimes you sometimes you're not giving yourself the right information, or you're stuck in a situation where you need someone else's perspective or someone else's support, a helping hand, whatever it is, and we all need that sometimes, and so it's good to have that community, and you know, even just like you know, I've noticed like I worked from home for five years pretty much alone a lot of that time, and uh now I'm doing some other work outside of the home, and it's made a real difference for my mental health. We do need to be part of a tribe and part of something, and when we spend too much time alone, we it's not good for us necessarily to be stuck in our own thoughts. So we are human beings, we do need to be part of a tribe. Think Johan Hari says the opposite of um of addiction is connection. Uh, and and what he's talking about is that, you know, if we've got addictions, it's usually because we're disconnected, we don't have a connection to something. So think about that, uh, whether it be around, you know, whether it be what whatever type of addiction it is, whether it's related to food or alcohol or drugs or whatever, uh, that a big part of it is that we just not don't feel connected to something or someone or something bigger than ourselves. So uh so feeling connected is really, really important. And we know that it's really important for releasing that oxytocin, uh, which is really heart protective. So if you think about, you know, simple things you can do to support your stress levels, to help you perform, but also actually, this has turned out to be really an episode talking about heart health, right? Important things you can do to increase your longevity and increase, you know, improve your heart health and to reduce the effects of of um of stress physically on your body and on your heart, this is really important information. And the truth is that we're all going to have stress in our lives because life happens, like we all have stressful situations. So whether it's understanding how the stress connection and harnessing stress, you know, how you can use that to get through your job interview or an exam or or you know, some sort of performance, or whether it's understanding just like from a life point of view that how important oxytocin is to help us manage our lives and how and to manage our health and to keep a healthy heart while we're dealing with all the stresses of life. And you know, you can see that's why it happens so much when people deal with, you know, they they're caring for a partner or a sick child or a sick parent, and um, and then you know, they might pass away fairly early, like a few years after their parent or whatever it is. You can see how it happens, right? Because when we're in this chronic stress and we're not doing anything to sort of bring in that oxytocin and to sort of to support ourselves in that way, um and just not practicing self-care, then uh you can see how we end up having this, you know, like 30% of people had a you know high risk of dying after being in a stressful situation. So it shows you it's not necessarily about the stress itself. The truth is we are going to have stress. Stress happens, stress is part of life. It's actually about understanding what it is, like I said, data information and what it means that you need. So it's like, okay, I'm feeling really stressed. What do I need? Do I need just to have some protein to help me calm down? Do I need to slow down my breathing? Do I need to ask for help or support? Do I need to reframe what this stress is about and understand that it's actually can be here to help me? Um, do I need to do something community related to help me, you know, act of kindness, something just to get me out of my head, release that oxytocin? What is it that you need to do that will support your heart health and support your stress and help you harness that stress? And so I hope that this um hope this episode has helped you to think to sort of reframe stress and think about it in a different way, and also think in a different way about heart health and something really practical and really simple that you can do to support your heart health, learning all about the oxytocin hormone and how it really supports you with stress, but also um you know reducing your risk of um of heart issues, because that's exactly what I said I was going to refer to later, but I did jump back in and talk about it anyway, is essentially it stops that constriction of the vessels. So if you have all the vessels in in your body constrict, then you're more likely to have um damage to your heart and damage to periphery or damage to everything because you're not getting that circulation and that oxygen, that those uh the the blood and the oxygen around to all the important parts. So if you don't get that constriction, uh you still get all of that lovely blood flow and all of those lovely oxygen and nutrients around the body, right? So uh it's really, really important. And so the difference between having that constriction in blood vessels and not having them is about oxytocin, about the um the uh the the sort of hugging uh kind of hormone. Uh it's a beautiful thing, it's a lovely thing, and it's a good thing to learn about. Anyway, um I will leave it at that this week. I hope you uh enjoyed that and please share this with your friends. You never know. You might save your friend from uh from a heart-related issue if they learn how to manage their stress and harness their stress uh and um understand oxytocin. So uh so please like, subscribe, share, um, share this podcast, and uh please rate review all those things, and um, and I'll talk to you all again next week. Thanks so much. This is uh podcast about uh, you know, where I have real conversations about things that matter. Okay, bye-bye.
