Hi, this is Dr. Sandy helping you tame your sugar Gremlin using a little candy floss in the previous lesson, quite literally toasted your sugar Gremlin into submission. But you're toast if you allow the stresses and strains of life to fire you up. So in this lesson, the focus is on slow dancing. Now, we all know stress kills, and this is not just a clever saying stress really kills. If you're a baby dragon fly. Let me tell you the sad and fishy tale.

Once upon a time, the scientists bought a bunch of dragon fly babies and the fish together in an aquarium. Now dragon fly babies making hmm nice dinner for fish. So as a consequence of this, dragon fly babies are scared of fish. very scared. Under normal circumstances, they go to great lengths to avoid meeting any fishes. Now, in our story, the dragon fly babies were never in any danger of actually beans, fish dinner, because they were on one side of the aquarium and the fish was on the other.

A big thick glass plate, kept fish and fly separated. The dragon fly babies didn't know this constant fishy stares, sent them into a tizzy. They got so worked up, they stopped developing and eventually died. And what's true for dragonflies. Seems to hold for humans to. Although in our case, it takes several years to see the effects of stress.

It manifests with a diagnosis of heart disease, cancer, depression, but what is often forgotten is stress makes life worth living. This is why people jump out of planes. My taxi drivers shoot red robot. We all do it. The adrenaline rush, it feels good to live on the edge. Now, the first thing to understand about stress is alert feels like any emotion.

It's driven by chemistry. There are two big players in the stress response. Adrenaline which handles shorter or acute stress and cortisol which handles long term stress and stress, by its very nature creates an energy crisis. So your sugar Gremlin is going to be involved. Always from the get go. As far as your sugar Gremlin is concerned, it's not the fight and flight response.

It's actually the frightened flight response. He be stressful moment, we'll see your show Gremlin taking cover. Fortunately, adrenaline has your back. Adrenaline finds a way of reaching into the cookie jar so that the boys in the ark don't need to get involved. Now using the Break out your sugar Gremlin as a weapon on a consistent basis is challenging. You will need help.

But it can be done. If you want to take the Do It Yourself approach. Strongly strong coffee exploits this chemistry, which is why caffeine is a fabulous weapon to deploy against your sugar Gremlin. But for the most part, scaring the bejesus out of yourself on a consistent basis is not sustainable. Which is why bosses and traffic and the like, Don't send your sugar Gremlin scurrying. But bring it out to play.

These stressful moments leave you hanging For nice things, because long term stress brings out the big guns cortisol, and cortisol as a gun toting cowboy can be dangerous. Your caddy cat sugar Gremlin recognizes that cortisol means business and he's going to solve the energy crisis, even if it is by brute force. So it's happy to align itself with the trigger happy hormone. Cortisol is a take charge hormone. The bullets fly thick and fast in the arm, the bullets are aimed at the appetite suppression neuron to ensure that it doesn't dare hit the I am full switch. This is most a crisis.

The objective is to load up on supplies. While the opportunity still exists and to conserve what has already been stored up for the rainy day, Hello, this is a rainy day apart is under attack attack could mean the food supply could disappear at any moment. Cortisol wants your body to load up on quick calories, which is why you don't crave a piece of steak or a salad. You want sugar, lots of it to make sure your taste receptors don't object. Cortisol fires have a few bullets to remove them from the equation. So in a cruel twist of fate, your tongue loses its ability to detect sweet your eating sugar with out the full benefits.

Actually, the sweet receptors are not the only taste receptors that are victims have those flying bullets, which explains why stressed out people are not terribly fussy. You see something, anything is the first priority. Now in any crisis in the body who must be fade at all costs? The brain, of course. So cortisol takes to guarding the glucose gates, preventing insulin from getting near cortisol ramps up. Insulin resistance.

No. Cortisol is great to have around in real emergencies like starvation and infection, both of which can precipitate real energy crisis's, but the act now asked questions later impulsive reactions is over. Kill when the stress is because you're in traffic, which is why you need to slow dance. You need to manage your stress, too little stress and you won't achieve much. Too much will end in a meltdown sooner or later. Finding the sweet spot can be tricky.

Traditionally, stress management tends to focus on the obvious stress. The head heart troubles, typically referred to as psychosocial stress. There's lots of resources available to help manage the stress. Although knowing and doing not the same thing, go back to the non edible feel goods module. If you need a little help and talk about it, fine. A friend or a therapist talking about it can be huge therapeutic.

But the real stress is often hidden. The bad vibes from oxidative stress, oxidative stress is just code for an energy crisis. And you guessed it, your sugar Gremlin is often in the middle of these, because well, it really is trying to help. Join me in the next lesson as we explore the real trouble