Wired for Stress

Awakeness is tied to an arousal thermostat that directly senses the degree of stress in your environment. If you are under high stress or ongoing stress then this system may have its volume knob turned up so that you are more vigilant and prepared to deal with issues. Obviously, this is a survival mechanism.

Problems come about when the extra vigilance disturbs your sleep, in turn making you more tired and more susceptible to a poor stress response on the following day. 

Many individuals have experienced stress-related fetal programming or early childhood programming. This means that the stress felt while in the womb and/or the stress of early life, while nerves are in a developmental phase, has programmed the arousal thermostat to be too vigilant as a baseline. It is as if these early lessons thought that your body needed to be too on.

This will make it more difficult for you to handle stress as an adult, too easily flying off the handle or obsessing on details all part of a wired system for dealing with life. This often leads to cravings for food or behavior around other bad habits. The more healthy things you do in your life that you find relaxing and enjoyable directly help this issue.

It is interesting that you have to have a relaxed foundation in order to have normal energy. This relaxed foundation is like oil in your car engine. Any of the nutrients in the sections just before and after this one are likely to help by improving your brains ability to cope and by helping to rewire your arousal thermostat so that it is not set so high.

The single best product to take during the day, which produces relaxing alpha brain waves within 40 minutes, is Sleep Helper. Don't let the name fool you, this is also a great daytime stress management nutrient that can help you keep your composure while helping to focus your attention (it will not make you drowsy).