Tag Archives: fight or flight

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HSW 63: Managing Stress with Dr Maria Zuschmann


Did you know that working 24/7 puts your body into a state of “biological stress?”  And that’s even before we set foot into a stressful workplace!

It’s for this exact reason, that I’ve invited Dr Maria Zuschmann, a Chiropractor and Personal Performance Coach based in Shell Harbour on the south coast of New South Wales to come in and chat to us on all things to do with stress.

Having been in the wellness industry for over 20 years, Maria also happens to be the voice (and face) behind the Queen of Stress podcast, along with having facilitated 100’s of wellness workshops over the past 14 years.

So if you’re currently feeling stressed, overwhelmed or just downright ‘tired and wired’, then this episode is for you.

In this informative and entertaining episode chatting with Maria, you’re going to learn:

  • What is stress, and why not all stress is bad for us.
  • The 3 main types of stress
  • What makes some people more resilient to stress
  • 3 tips to help you to reduce stress in your shift working life and much, much more!

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Dr Maria’ website – https://drmaria.com.au

Maria’s Queen of Stress Podcast – https://thequeenofstress.com

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HSW 51 – Sympathetic Dominance with Dr Wayne Todd.

Healthy Shift Worker Podcast:

Over the past 2 years or so of recording podcast episodes, I’ve occasionally mentioned the words ‘sympathetic dominance’, as it’s a condition that I quite often see in many of my patients who work 24/7, in particular those who struggle to get good quality sleep.

Otherwise known as the ‘fight or flight’ arm of our autonomic nervous system, sympathetic dominance is when our bodies become ‘stuck’ in this fight or flight stress response for long durations at a time.

Unfortunately for shift workers, ongoing sleep deprivation actually makes us quite prone to this overactive stimulation of our nervous system which can lead to a whole host of chronic health complaints from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and weight gain, along with the suppression of our reproductive and immune system.  In addition, it becomes a bit of a Catch-22, in that sympathetic dominance actually switches off our parasympathetic nervous system, which plays a fundamentally important role in our ability to rest and sleep.

To discuss this topic in greater detail, I’ve brought in Dr Wayne Todd who is a chiropractor based in Sale, Victoria, who has written an entire book on sympathetic dominance titled ‘SD Protocol – Achieve greater health by learning to balance your physical, chemical and emotional wellbeing‘.

Tune in to hear Dr Todd go into some of the physical, chemical and emotional causes behind sympathetic dominance, and what we can do as shift workers to help dampen down this stress response.  This will in turn, have a positive flow on effect of reducing some of our risks of developing these chronic health conditions, along with improving the quality of our sleep.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

http://www.sdprotocol.com.au

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HSW 48 – Sleep Nutrition with Dr Libby Weaver.

Healthy Shift Worker Podcast:

Both sleep and nutrition are two of the biggest challenges for anyone working 24/7 so this week we chat with one of Australasia’s leading nutritional biochemists, Dr Libby Weaver on this important but often neglected topic – that being Sleep Nutrition.

Dr Libby Weaver is a respected international speaker, author of multiple books, and founder of the plant-based supplement range, Bio Blends, who embraces a unique three-pillared approach that explores the interplay between nutrition, emotions and the biochemistry of the body.

In this episode, Dr Libby talks about sleep-enhancing foods (and practices) that can help to enhance sleep, along with some of the biggest disruptors of sleep and why they’re not great for our stress-producing adrenal glands – particularly when working 24/7!

Links mentioned on the podcast:

To learn more about Dr Libby, visit her website by Clicking Here

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HSW 41 – Social Media, Blue Light and Sleep.

Healthy Shift Worker Episode:

This week’s episode is all about things that can disrupt our sleep which is not great when we’re already running on a deficit thanks to a sleep-disrupted lifestyle – and they include social media and blue-light.

Whilst as a Nutritionist, a lot of my clinical focus when working with my patients is around food, nutrition and supplementation, when it comes to enhancing our sleep and trying to repay countless hours of sleep-debt, no amount of tryptophan and melatonin containing foods, along with micro-nutrient supplementation of magnesium, calcium and potassium can compete with the negative effects of blue-light.

In this episode, I discuss how the blue-light emitting from our electronic devices is a type of ‘zeitgeber’ which can severely disrupt our sleep onset, quality and quantity. It’s also an endocrine disruptor, as it suppresses the production of our sleepy hormone melatonin, and activates arousal-promoting orexin neurons, along with stimulating our sympathetic nervous system involved in the stress response.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Facebook Use Associated with Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study.

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Shift Work Overwhelm:

Have You Ever Experienced It?

310dba55-2e6c-4ea0-a785-6123b389c1a8I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a pretty crazy couple of weeks with multiple exams and assignments due all around the same time, plus a bit of family stuff going on, as well as madly writing for a book proposal which is due in a couple of months’ time. So to say that I’ve been feeling a teensy, weensy bit stressed and overwhelmed is an understatement!

Have you ever felt this way?  Where you’re at a point of overwhelm that it almost paralyses you?

Well if you work shift work then I’m sure you have at some point in time, because it’s kind of similar to that feeling of working a string of early shifts in a row and trying to function on 4-5 hours of sleep a night AND keep it together!

It’s what we called overwhelm with a capital “O”!

You see, I had reached a point where I felt as though I had burnt my adrenal glands to a crisp with so many things on my plate (in addition to my University commitments) that I felt as though my head was spinning out of control.

And it was.

I was in a state of sympathetic nervous system dominance, otherwise known as the “Fight or Flight” response which is essentially our body’s built in survival mechanism which thousands of years ago – came in handy whenever our ancestors were getting chased by a wild boar.

Luckily for us, we rarely get to see a wild boar let alone be chased by one however those feelings of stress can be somewhat similar, and our body doesn’t know the difference between a real boar and a fake one. (more…)