Stress is not a bad thing, in fact it is a very important response of our organism to face situations that our body interprets as life or death. The problem is that in our society we have a maladaptation towards this response, because as we no longer live in nature with "real" dangers, what our body understands to be a life or death situation, can be, looking at the bank account and seeing that we do not make ends meet, a breakup or moments of great demand at work. The organism reacts in the same way to these stimuli as if we were facing a real danger to our life.

Now, how does the organism react to these stimuli that it interprets as threats? The first thing that will be activated is our sympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system related to action and that will put our body in motion preparing for the fight or flight reaction. The other main actor are the adrenal glands, which are two little hats that we have on top of our kidneys that will be activated to deal with stress, first in its internal part, in the medulla, secreting in the first phase, the alarm phase: adrenaline and noradrenaline.

These hormones are responsible for making our heart pump harder and we have more vasodilation, so that blood is redirected to the muscles, to the heart and lungs and thus have the body ready to deal with the emergency situation. Then, if this stress continues over time, a second very important hormone enters the scene, which is glucocorticoids or cortisol. This is secreted in the adrenal capsule and is responsible for sustaining this stress activity over time. Cortisol has other effects on our organism; it has to do with a "war" immune system where inflammation predominates, a faster immune system but much less specific.

We will also have higher levels of glucose in our blood so that it reaches our brain, muscles and heart, and we will be more coagulated so that any eventual bleeding will be cut faster. Less "vital" functions such as digestion and repair are diminished to give up energy to functions more related to survival. And if the stress continues even longer, we will enter a third phase which is adrenal exhaustion.

Our organism is the fruit of millions of years of evolution, it is perfectly designed to survive in nature, but our current western life is maladapted to this system and leads us to sustain this action of fight, flight, or alarm for long periods of time. When we reach the exhaustion phase we can experience: generalized inflammation, a lower immune system so we can catch any cold or flu, a lot of tiredness and fatigue, combined with nervousness and very often also insomnia. In short, a very sustained stress over time has a great impact on many organic functions.

At a naturopathic level the proposal would be not to reach this point, for this the main thing is to have a good management of our stress through working also the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the one of relaxation, repair and regeneration. We can work it through yoga and meditation, and it is also very interesting to take short breaks during the day. Our body is not designed to be eight hours with full sympathetic nervous system or activation and then stop suddenly, we need to make an exchange between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system throughout the day, but we know that in our society this is sometimes complicated. There are periods that can come where we need to dedicate a season to some project or exams or other circumstances and we have to sustain that stress for a while.

For this, there is a very specific type of plants that are adaptogenic plants. As their name suggests, they are plants that help us to adapt to a situation of sustained stress over time and reduce all these harmful effects that stress can bring to our body. My favorite adaptogenic plant is rhodhiola, it is a plant that helps the action of the adrenal glands, gives us energy if we are already feeling tired, helps the nervous system and also helps regulate the function of the immune system.