58. Why Stress Hits Women Harder—And How to Heal It

Foreign. Welcome to Rooted in Wellness with me, wellness advocate and holistic nutritionist Mona Sharma. Together we will take a journey to discover natural healing practices from imbalance to balance, guided by ancient wisdom and modern scientific insights. I was raised living summers on an ashram, so I learned early on that food, food is medicine and your kitchen is your greatest source of healthcare and prevention. After facing two heart surgeries, anxiety and weight challenges, I discovered that just because your symptoms are common doesn't mean that they are normal. Together with some incredible guests, we will explore the power of our mind, body and soul connection, returning to our roots to rediscover our greatest well being. Welcome back to Rooted in Wellness. Today's solo episode is about something that we are all experiencing whether we realize it or not. It's stress. But not just the word stress in the way that we casually throw the word around. This is about the deep physiological imprint that stress leaves on our body and on our mind and even on our long term health. It all adds heads up. I want you to walk away from this episode, not only understanding what stress is, but really feeling empowered to shift it. I used to say that stress and anxiety was my blueprint, but no more. And if you've ever wondered why does this stress seem to hit me harder than it should? I've created something special for you. I want you to go ahead and take my free stress quiz to discover your hidden stress pattern and learn how to finally calm your body and your mind. You can find that@monasharma.com stress quiz or just check the link in the show notes below. Okay, let's dive in. What is stress really? So let's start with the basics. Stress is your body's survival response. It's how your nervous system prepares to fight or flee or freeze in a response to a perceived threat. It's not that all stress is inherently bad. In fact, stress is actually designed to keep us alive. But in our modern world, we're activating that stress response constantly, over and over again, often without even realizing it. And here's the thing. Not all stress looks the same. There's so many types and each type of stress impacts us differently. Especially when it comes to chronic stress, when things get a little bit dangerous. So let's break these types down. The first type of stress is acute stress. This is short term immediate stress, like getting stuck in traffic or having a heated argument with someone. You might feel that your heart starts to raise, your breath starts to quicken, and your body kind of reacts to it. It feels intense, but it usually passes. Next is chronic stress. This is the stress that lingers. It might be from work, from financial uncertainty, from the world, from relationship strain, or simply doing too much for too long. This is the type of stress that is most damaging to our health because it keeps our body in this constant state of alert. Then we have anxiety stress. This is a more mental, emotional stress that's rooted in fear or worry or even overwhelm. And it often comes from our own internal dialogue. Ruminating over thoughts, overthinking or catastrophizing something. I've been there. Even if there is no immediate threat, your body's still reacting as though there is, of course, physical stress. This includes things like over exercising, cold exposure, undereating, or maybe not sleeping enough. These stressors can be hormetically beneficial, meaning that they build resilience within your body in small doses. But if overused and not recovering properly, they become harmful over time. Then there's environmental stress. Think loud noise pollution, EMF exposure, blue light at night. These are often invisible stressors that still affect our nervous system and our hormones. And then we have traumatic stress. This stems from past events, something that really overwhelmed our body's ability to cope. And it can be a big capital T trauma, like an accident or what they call a little T trauma, like years of emotional neglect. Trauma lives in the body until it's processed. Then we have eustress. This is a positive stress. It's like starting a new job or having a baby. It still activates the stress response, but it's rooted in excitement or growth. The key is recovery. Without it, good stress really becomes depleting. So yes, stress isn't always bad, but it's how frequently we experience it and how we recover from it that determines whether it's going to be supportive or harmful to our health long term. Here's what I want you to understand. Stress doesn't just live in our head, it lives in our body. And when your body's in a state of constant stress, it's not going to be able to prioritize things like healing or digestion or making the right hormones at the right time. It's honestly prioritizing survival. And, and that's why chronic stress is linked to so many imbalances within the body. Things like hormone imbalance, having high cortisol or insulin, or impacting your thyroid and your estrogen levels. Also digestive issues, things like bloating or gas or irritable bowel syndrome or constipation or even leaky gut also impacts poor sleep. This could be issues falling asleep or staying asleep. I definitely have noticed that could impact weight gain or even weight loss resistance. Maybe it's impacting your immune system, causing a weakened immune response. Brain fog, memory loss, mood disorders like anxiety and depression. You get it. It's a long list. But so many of us are suffering, especially for women, and especially in perimenopause and menopause. Chronic stress can absolutely amplify all of those symptoms. Why? Because when your adrenals are constantly pumping out cortisol, they're too busy supporting other hormones like progesterone and estrogen. You, you might be doing everything right. You're eating clean, you're exercising, you're getting fresh air, but you still feel off. And that's the power of stress. It's invisible, but it's really loud in our body, and it gets louder and louder over time if we ignore the symptoms. So how do you know if stress is quietly running the show on your health? Here are some signs. Maybe you're waking up feeling tired even after eight hours of sleep. Or you're feeling wired at night, like you can't wind down. You're feeling bloated after your meals or just uncomfortable after eating. Or you have frequent headaches or neck tension in your neck and shoulders. Your periods might be irregular or your PMS might feel worse at times. Maybe you're feeling anxious or easily overwhelmed or emotionally reactive. You might have lost your sex drive. Or you're feeling really tired but wired 24 7. Any of these sound familiar? This isn't a willpower issue. This is a nervous system issue. And for me, these were all symptoms that I ignored for far too long until I had a physical manifestation of actual heart palpitations. Right? My body had to send us a really loud signal for me to pay attention to my nervous system and everything that I was holding within me. I was a master at ignoring my symptoms. And I really hope that you start to tune in to the power of what your body's trying to communicate with you. In Ayurveda and Yogic traditions, we've known for a long time that stress lives in our nervous system and our gut. Stress is considered a key driver in imbalances across all of our doshas, especially our vata dosha. And from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective, or even indigenous practices, healing really required us to tune in and restore the balance between our mind and our body. They recognized that this was essential before throwing any modalities into the body. Science is now catching up to this ancient wisdom. In fact, studies show us that practicing deep breathing or meditation or gentle movement that we love, or spending time in nature grounding or even practicing gratitude actually shifts our nervous system from fight or flight into rest and digest. And these aren't just nice to have. They are essential to our health and how we live. They're essential and paramount to feeling our best every single day and for our body to function. Now let's talk about the solutions, because here's the truth. You don't need to change your entire life to become stress resilient. You just need to start weaving in small, consistent moments that tell your body, hey, you're safe. Now. You can start turning on all the cues that your body needs to function at its best. These little shifts throughout the day can really help your nervous system move from fight or flight into a parasympathetic mode, also known as rest and digest or repair and heal. And the best part is that these tools are really simple. They're accessible and they're proven to work. Here's some of my favorite ways to build stress resilience without adding more to your your very full plate. The first one is your morning reset. Start your day with the feeling of safety. Before you check your phone or dive into your day, just take one to two minutes of really deep belly breathing. You could Also try the 4, 7, 8 breath method. Can find this on my website. You're inhaling for the count of four, holding your breath for seven seconds, exhaling for the count of eight. This type of breath really calms your vagus nerve and lowers cortisol especially, you know, almost instantly. I would say the bonus tip is you're gonna put one hand over your belly and the other one over your chest. This simple gesture, this posture is gonna signal safety to your body. Tune in, feel your body, feel your heartbeat, the miracle that exists within you that typically will shut down the noise of everything around you so that you can tune into the sense of peace. So you're setting the tone for your day. Next is micro moments. For regulation, you don't need 30 minutes. You don't need to sit in stillness for 30 minutes. You just need these specific moments. So for example, let's say you're waiting in line, relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw, take a breath. Or maybe when you're driving, I like doing this one. You're inhaling for the count of four, exhaling for eight seconds. That exhalation that's longer than the inhale is going to cue the body to relax. Maybe you're making lunch or coffee in the morning you're going to play some really calming music or binaural beats, or you're going to go with your coffee outside and get barefoot on the ground. These are all really great modalities that I use with my clients, but my constitution is different than yours. So try to find some things that help you feel a sense of calm and peaceful. Then you can schedule them into your day. Or try habit stacking these things. The more that you build these into your day, you're cueing the sense of calm on repeat, and you're retraining the nervous system to come back into that restful state. That practice of shifting from one state to the other is going to build resilience in your body. And then your body becomes what you're seeking. The next one, of course, is how you eat. Make sure that you're eating in a calm state. Most of us eat while we're stressed, while we're multitasking or scrolling or on the go when we eat while we're stressed. You're shutting down digestion. Your body cannot digest food when you're stressed. So here's your cue. Before every single meal, I want you to pause, take three deep breaths, smell your food. Look at your food, look at the colors. The simple act of stopping to register to eat is cueing your body to release the digestive enzymes that are gonna support you when you start eating. Chew slowly, chew your food, taste all the flavors, acknowledge and let your body receive all the nourishment. Instead of eating mindlessly or throwing things down the hatch. Eating can be a really spiritual experience, and it's an act of self love, right? You're nourishing every cell in your body, so tune into that. These simple practices are going to help reduce your bloating, support your nutrient absorption, and tell your body that, oh, we're safe now, so let's digest all of our food properly. Next is moving with intention, not intensity. Intensity can feel good sometimes. But make sure that you have these gentle practices like yoga or walking or dancing, which helps to release the buildup of stress from our fascia or connective tissue, or even from your mind. Just 10 minutes of movement in between your meetings, maybe at the end of your workday, can really completely shift your state. Maybe after yoga, you've experienced wanting to cry. I've been there. That's your body telling you that it can let go of stored tension. It's beautiful. Let it move through you. Don't try to stop it if that feels like too much. If yoga's not Your thing. Get a rebounder. This is something that I ask my clients to do. Mini trampoline. In between your meetings, you're jumping up and down, maybe playing your favorite song, and you're shaking things out of your cells, out of your body and letting things go. I promise you, you're going to see your body's ability, your superpower to learn how to change your state with these simple practices every day. Next is anchoring your day with nervous system rituals. Yeah, not habits, rituals. So let's say you're experiencing an afternoon slump. Instead of reaching for caffeine, which I know is tempting, try to take a few rounds of box breathing. So inhaling, holding, exhaling, holding it out each for the count of four. Maybe you're noticing that you're feeling overwhelmed on some days. I've felt this a lot lately. Try humming or chanting. Maybe the sound om softly, it activates the vagus nerve. What's been feeling really good for me lately is inhaling. But as I exhale, this like, sigh, hum feeling. That alone makes me feel like I'm having a release. And it's becoming a bit of a ritual for me. Another great time for rituals is before you go to bed. Dim the lights in your house. Put one hand on your belly. Or maybe you're doing gentle breath work or journaling, purging everything onto paper. A lot of my clients will do a scribble exercise if it doesn't feel comfortable to journal. Literally, just think of everything that's bothering you, like the person that cut you off in traffic or the teacher from grade one. Whatever's coming up for you that day, just scribble it out onto paper. And then when you're done, you feel like you've got a release. Take that paper, crinkle it up, throw it in the trash, burn it if you want to. But finding a ritual throughout the day that you can add into your life to give yourself some release. What are some other practices that I love? Going for a walk with my family after dinners or between client calls. Shaking things off. Or maybe you're burning some incense or palo santo in your house. Or maybe every time you eat, you're setting a blessing not only for yourself, but for someone else. There are so many opportunities for you to adopt rituals in your life to shift your nervous system feel into them. I promise, with practice and consistency. Just like with feeling stress, you're retraining your body and how it functions so that you're waking up feeling better every single day, thinking and speaking about stress. I need you to recognize that you are not broken. If you feel tired consistently or overwhelmed or moody or inflamed, it's not just in your head. It's your body's way of communicating you that something is stuck. It might be stuck in survival mode, maybe from something that you don't even recognize, but you can shift it. The first step is being mindful and aware of it. So yes, stress isn't always bad, but it's how frequently we experience it and how we recover from it that determines whether we're going to support our health or whether it's going to harm our health long term. And here's the truth. Some of us are just more sensitive to stress than others. And that's not a flaw. It's just a pattern. It's a deeply rooted one. And this is where working with my clients healing becomes this spiritual journey for me. I would say that a lot of my health, like I said, was rooted in habits or beliefs or behaviors from my past. So if any of that is resonating with you, maybe now it's time to find a practitioner to work with, to really do the work in the timeline of your life, to recognize when's the first time that I felt this way. I notice that I'm reacting to stress, simple stresses, in ways that seem like it's too much so that you understand more about who you are and your constitution. I promise you, you can retrain your mind, you can retrain your body to heal, and it's the mindfulness and awareness that's going to get you there. So ask yourself, why does stress hit you harder than it should? Is there something you can change in your life to relieve your stress? I really hope that you go and take my free quiz on uncovering what your hidden stress pattern is and get personalized guidance to finally calm your mind and your body. You'll find the link in the show notes below or Simply go to monasharma.com stress quiz because the more that you understand about your stress type, the easier it becomes to heal. And maybe you'll even recognize that when your nervous system is regulated, when you relieve some of that stress and recognize your good stress versus the overwhelming consistent stress, you'll recognize that your body functions a little bit more optimally. You're waking up feeling a little bit happier and you're in alignment with the mind, the body, the spirit, and the life that you were meant to live. Namaste, my friends.