Different ways your body manifests stress, and there's different blood markers that you can check to see if you're stressed. I made a similar video talking about the perception of stress and how you want to be mindful of how you manage that because stress can affect whether or not you see progress.
We're going to talk and focus on stress mostly in the physique.
When you go to your annual check up at the doctor's office that you're paying your $250 a month on this, most of the time, not so good insurance - because insurance companies are secretly out to get your money. I used to work in insurance so I familiar with how it works - you're signing up for this insurance to see your doctor one time a year for them to read your blood work, and tell you everything's fine. Mind you doctors aren’t trained to read bloodwork.
That's why I'm writing this article, and made this video - to take control of your health, also called health optimization. When you're educated, you have the ability to make better decisions, to live long, healthy, and happily. So there's a couple different things that you can look at that will tell you if you're stressed out.
Technically you don't need to go through your insurance to get your blood work done. You can go and get it from Quest Labs, Labcorp, Marek Health, or Life Extension.
1. You can look at your thyroid hormones, look at your TSH, Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. It's secreted by the pituitary gland, it's what stimulates the production of T4, T3. Look at free T3, free T4, reverse T3, and TPOAB, Thyroid Peroxidase antibodies = These are good to check if you suspect you have an autoimmune disease like Hashimoto's, which seems to be a common thing for females. If it's positive, then you more than likely have Hashimoto's - not medical advice.
2. When you are stressed out your body shuts down sexually. You can look at DHEAS. S is for sulfur and that will help you find out if your adrenal glands are working. You can have what's called adrenal fatigue, uh, that's what I'm going to refer to, and that's when your adrenal glands are basically shot.
3. You also can look at free and total testosterone, and sex hormone binding globulin – this applies to women too. Women have testosterone too just in lower quantities. If you're checking to see if you’re fertile as a lady - you want to check your free testosterone. Free testosterone is what's roaming in your system.
4. Estradiol and Progesterone are another 2 you can look at. For women when they are stressed the Progesterone is low, and typically they stopped menstruating. Having the cycle ensures not only that her reproductive system is OK, but also helps the female with weight loss/physique maintenance believe it or not! If you are not getting your cycle you can ask your doctor to prescribe progesterone, however I would go the natural route first and get Chasterberry Tincture. This has a high success rate, and is SUPER for starting the menstrual cycle again. Most doctors are gonna prescribe you birth control to restart the cycle, however.
5. The next one that you can look at is cortisol levels, which is the stress hormone. So if it's high a good indication that you're stressed out; however, cortisol is not bad. You need cortisol, but excessively high levels is not good.
6. Check your insulin resistant markers (Fasted Insulin, Fasted A1C, and Fasted Glucose). It is totally possible to be skinny, and have abs and still be insulin resistant or you can be over overweight or have a lot of Adipose tissue or fat tissue in your body your insulin numbers are normal. So aesthetic nice body doesn’t mean they are insulin sensitive…
7. Another marker to check for is ferritin levels, which doctors actually typically don't typically check.
8. The main panel in which your doctor will provide you is the complete metabolic panel/complete blood count – CBC.
9. Another marker is your C reactive protein, that will tell you mostly inflammation. So, some people manifest stress in their body through systemic inflammation, meaning they start to experience inflammation, which is typically associate with not being able to absorb nutrients very well.
10. If you are a heavy drinker and are concerned with your liver health, check GGT. This gives you a window look inside your liver. Of course you can look at AST and ALT, but the GGT will really tell you if your liver is doing OK.
Those are some of the main blood markers aside from the traditional blood panels you get from the doctor. It’s easy to get into a routine in going to the doctor and getting routine bloodwork done, but I think it’s good to be educated on the markers and how they can be used to prevent health occurences from happening in the future.
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Be well.
Yelena
Identifying Stress in Blood Work