A Revealing Look at Stress-Related Physical Reactions After a Disaster

Welcome back everyone. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. We are going to continue in this video series and start discussing reactions to disaster and trauma and what we can do to mitigate those reactions. This video focuses specifically on your physical reactions to disaster. There are a lot of things that happen. But let's just start with our threat response system. If you look in the literature, it's called the HPA axis or the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. You don't need to know that. Just think of it as your stress response system. Well, that thing was activated like nobody's business last night and probably today and will be for a few days because of the tornado that went through, because of the disaster that's expected. That's your body's way of saying there was a threat. I'm not 100% sure all the threat has passed right now. And I want to keep you vigilant and I want to keep you safe. So to that extent you want to look at your reactions and notice your reactions as helpful. It's your body's way of trying to help you survive. Now, in some ways it can really suck because you may not feel great, but if you can embrace it as a survival mechanism, then you can figure out, okay, what do I need to do? Or how can I better understand these symptoms and address them? So things like tension. Tension is a feeling that we get when we're under stress. When I'm under stress, I grind my teeth. Some people have neck tension, some people have upper back tension. We tend to feel stress in our muscles when we are experiencing distress of some sort. Tension. If you think about it, I played tennis when I was young kid and if you stood flat footed on the baseline, then when that ball came towards you, it was a lot harder to launch and get to where it was. But if you kept bouncing on your toes, then you were primed and you were ready to go get that ball wherever it went in the court. Tension is sort of our body's way of helping us stay on our toes. That way we can respond when, when there is something going on. Tension doesn't have to stay. You can practice things and you can go online and search for videos on YouTube. I don't have any on my channel, but you can find videos on YouTube that walk you through progressive muscular relaxation. That's helpful. Yoga is very helpful. Just plain old stretching is helpful as well as massage. If you tend to grind your teeth like I do, I massage my jaw frequently in order to help Those muscles relax when we are tense. Our muscles are using energy to stay contracted, which is going to make us feel more tired, more quickly and it's going to keep us from sleeping as well because we are tense, you know, our body is, you know, still activated. It's important to try to figure out ways to help yourself relax. Fatigue is perfectly expected when you go through a stressful event. Your body dumps a whole bunch of blood glucose and dumps a whole bunch of energy to prepare you to fight or flee in order to help you survive. And after that, just like after you've run a 400 meter dash or a 10 mile run or whatever it is you do. I'm a runner, so those are the analogies I'm going to use. You are plumb exhausted because you pushed through and you used a whole lot of energy. Additionally, and I'm jumping down a little bit. When that HPA axis, when your threat response system is activated, it tells your brain to tell your body it is not time to go into a deep sleep. You need to be able to be roused very easily from your sleep depending on because there could be another threat. And this is especially true for this particular incident that happened to occur while most of us were sleeping. It is probably gonna cause some sleep problems for some people for quite a bit of time and they're going to have to work through those things. Recognizing that your sleep disturbances are a natural reaction to threat can help you address them, can help you recognize and look at the facts of the situation and really talk yourself down if you will. Talk to yourself, educate yourself about the facts. You know, this was a terrible thing that happened last night. I'm laying down to go to sleep tonight. What are the chances that this is going to happen again? Well, to the best of my knowledge, there isn't even rain in the forecast, so I should be able to sleep pretty well tonight because there's very little chance there's going to be another disaster in the middle of the night tonight. And it's going to be important for people to talk themselves through those thoughts and anxieties for the next few weeks. If those thoughts and anxieties come up when they start to lay down, some people will feel restless, they want to help, they want things to go back to normal. They're edgy, they're out of their routine. I know when I get out of my routine, I get super restless and irritable. And recognizing this is your body's anxiety reaction, when your threat response system is activated, it basically cranks up Your energy levels, if you will. It secretes cortisol and a hormone called norepinephrine, which is your, you know, get up and go. Along with glutamate, your get up and go brain chemicals. And those brain chemicals are saying, you know what, we got to do something. We got to make sure this doesn't happen again. We got to be on alert. That makes it difficult to sit still, to focus, to relax. And we're going to have to work on using some biofeedback to help calm our body and calm our reactions. Another technique that you can use is a very simple breathing technique. When you breathe more slowly, your heart rate slows down. When your heart rate slows down, your threat response system turns itself down because it says, well, if the heart's not beating fast and you're not breathing fast, there must not be a threat. How we can trick our brain this way, I don't know, but it works. So practice, and you can do this with kids. And it often helps children a lot to, you know, feel like they've got a little bit more control over their feelings and their reactions at the moment. Breathe in for four, hold for four, and then exhale for four. And do that once or twice with kids. Have them put their hand on their belly. And when they breathe in for four, have them imagine they're inflating their belly like a big balloon, and how big can they get that balloon? And then hold for four, and then have them imagine pushing the air out of the balloon as they're exhaling. This does two things. Number one, it slows their breathing and triggers what we call the rest and digest response. But number two, it gets them focusing on something other than what they're stressed about. They're focused on their belly, they're focused on their breathing, and that will allow their body and brain a time to disengage from the stressor and get into a less emotional state of mind. Aches and pains are very common. When that threat response system is activated, it alters some of the chemicals, like endogenous opioids and serotonin. You don't need to know that, but I'm just throwing it out there. It alters certain chemicals in our body that are responsible for our pain threshold. When those chemicals go down, our pain threshold, or our pain tolerance, whatever you want to call it, goes down. So you may feel more aches and pains. That's compounded by the fact that you might have a lot of tension in your body, which typically makes aches and pains worse. Recognize Them, don't get too fired up about them and start taking steps to figure out how to address them. Heat, ice, stretching, yoga, massage. There are a lot of things that you can do. And if you have one of the foam rollers at home, those are great to use for massage, you know, because it doesn't require another person to be there. So you can do it at any point in time. But even taking something like a tennis ball, most of us have a tennis ball around. And you can use that to rub on your shoulder or on your thighs or places where you're feeling tension. You can even put, I like using two because it makes it easier. But put them under your back and lay back on them and rub. Yes, you look like a bear rubbing against the tree, but ain't nobody there to see. And if it helps you feel better, then go for it. Hot baths can also help. For some people, you may experience appetite changes right now. If you are gravitating towards high sugar, high fat foods, those foods cause your brain to release pleasure chemicals. And that may be your way, your brain's way of saying, I really want to feel good right now. Other appetite changes. Some people won't have an appetite at all because when they're stressed, that threat response system says, it's not time to digest food. I need to focus my energy on fighting or fleeing. So your stomach and your GI system speeds up. So you may experience cramping and diarrhea and loss of appetite. And that is not abnormal. That is totally normal. Unfortunately for some people, what's important to recognize is you still need to get good nutrition. Your body makes the hormones and brain chemicals that are responsible for helping you feel happy and content as well as stressed. But for helping you feel and for helping you stay healthy, all of that stuff is made from the foods that you eat. So if you don't eat at all or you don't eat good foods, then your body's going to have a hard time balancing those hormones and helping you stay happy and healthy. I'm not talking about eating a crazy, super nutritious diet. I am talking about trying to be reasonable in what you eat. Eat colorfully and get enough water, please drink enough water. Dehydration can really make you feel sluggish and fatigued and irritable. Hypertension, racing heart and panic attacks. I'm just going to lump all those together. When that threat response system goes off, it dumps cortisol, it dumps norepinephrine. Those things basically speed you up, which will contribute to hypertension racing heart, and potentially panic attacks. Our thoughts can also contribute to turning that threat response system up. If we're constantly telling ourself that things are dangerous right now, then we may experience more threat response activation and we may experience these symptoms to a greater degree. It's important to recognize the impact that our thoughts and behaviors have on our body and the impact that our body and its health and functioning has on our ability to feel relaxed and the impact it has on our emotions. Some people may also have an exaggerated startle response right now, and that is normal when that threat response system is activated, recognizing it and being kind to yourself and being kind to others. We have four dogs on our farm, and they're all indoor dogs. And when they start barking at the neighbors or start barking at whatever, it gets loud. So it goes from being quiet to being to being complete chaos in no time at all. And that when I'm stressed, that makes me feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin. And instead of being irritable with them, you know, I take a breath and I recognize that I'm more sensitive right now. They're doing what they always do. I'm more sensitive right now, so I need to be compassionate with them as well as with myself and in this situation and start thinking about solutions such as closing the curtains so they can't see the neighbors walking down the road, or moving myself to a different part of the house, or putting on noise canceling headphones so I can't hear the cacophony that happens when the postal man shows up or whatever. And finally, headaches. Headaches kind of go along with everything else. Tension, fatigue, sleep disturbances. If you have migraines, you may experience more migraines because of the tension, but also because of the activated stress response system. It may throw a particular neurotransmitter called dopamine out of whack, which can contribute to the development of migraines. The good news is, as the threat passes, as we accommodate to it, a lot of these symptoms are going to go away. However, it's helpful if you write down each one of these symptoms and identify three ways you can deal with each one of them in a positive, hopeful way. What can you do when you feel restless? What can you do to help yourself get to sleep? What can you do to deal with whatever your particular aches and pains are? So you have a toolbox handy or tool list, menu of options, whatever you want to call it that you can look at. The more distressed you are, the more difficulty you're going to have coming up with options, thinking clearly, making decisions. So if you can sit down and brainstorm a list right now and then just look at it when you're starting to feel achy, you might look at it and go, oh, yeah, you know, I just need to go get a heating pad. That's right. Don't expect yourself to be on your A game right now, but be kind to yourself.