This Is How You Transform Your Body With Your Thoughts

When you are stressed, two glands on your kidneys increase the release of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that, among other things, regulates our alertness in day-night cycles and prepares our body to react when we perceive a threat. Note that I say when we "perceive," not when we have a "real" threat. More on this later.

The normal function of elevated cortisol in stressful situations is as follows: You encounter a threat, for example, the possibility of a car collision. Your amygdala sends a signal to your adrenal glands, which release extra cortisol into your bloodstream. Now, all your biology is directed towards saving your life: Your blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, and glucose production by your liver increase. Your body sends loads of energy to your muscles, preparing them to react. Half a second after you see the threat (1), you hit the brakes and resolve the situation. The danger is gone.

Depending on the severity of the threat, it may take minutes to hours to recover. Then, your cortisol level will return to normal, and you will be fine.

That's the stress response we are all biologically designed for. The problem arises when the stressor doesn't go away.

Modern life has eliminated most of the immediate dangers we experienced centuries ago. However, it has created new situations that we "perceive" as continuous threats: financial problems, bullying, work overload, or unstable work situations. In these cases, high levels of cortisol continue circulating in your system, generating a cascade of negative effects. Some of these are:

1. Accumulation of visceral fat (2): The wobbly mass you see under your belly button is subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat is different: It is located deeper, under your abdominal muscles, and is more difficult to detect. Not just obese people have it; slender people can also have unhealthy amounts of visceral fat. Under stress, the body activates this type of fat accumulation, which has been linked with a greater risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and certain cancers (3).

2. Loss of muscle mass and strength is a normal process of aging, but it can be accelerated by high levels of cortisol (4).

3. Hypertension, difficulty sleeping, a bad mood, and exhaustion are other consequences of chronic stress.

It doesn't matter if a threat is real or not. If you perceive it as real and it is sustained over time, your body chemistry will change, and as a consequence, your health and body appearance will change as well. That's why negative thoughts are so harmful.

Many clients come to me with elevated stress due to situations they perceive as threats: An unstable position in their company, for example. Negative thoughts like "They are going to fire me, and I will feel shame" start to build up. My work is to reframe those negative thoughts.

Perhaps my client's interpretation of the signals from their boss is wrong. Or perhaps it's true, and my client's star is starting to fade in the company. That doesn't mean, however, that there aren't other companies that will value their set of skills. We start to make a plan and turn fear into hope. Cortisol levels begin to drop, and the tunnel vision it provokes starts to fade. Suddenly, creativity is activated, and many possibilities lie before us. The perceived threat is dismantled, and your body can function normally again.

The effects of this psychological process can be quite dramatic. I have had clients whose stress affected not just their energy levels and body composition: Vision can be impaired due to burnout and recovered once stress levels are lowered.

This is the chain between negative thoughts and your body:

Negative thoughts over time -> Cortisol release -> Chronic stress -> Low Energy -> Visceral fat -> Muscle Mass Loss-> diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and certain cancers.

Be careful how you interpret the world around you. Erase your negative thoughts. They are much more powerful than you think.?

Carmen López

Business Psychologist

(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5061816/?

(2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14618117/

(3) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marilyn-Ader/publication/7138191_Why_Visceral_Fat_is_Bad_Mechanisms_of_the_Metabolic_Syndrome/links/5ad91af6aca272fdaf8201ad/Why-Visceral-Fat-is-Bad-Mechanisms-of-the-Metabolic-Syndrome.pdf

(4) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18248637/