The effect that energy drinks and high levels of caffeine have on our bodies, our health, our sleep, our stress levels, our mood, our anxiety levels and our hormones is much more than most people think.

When continued over time, these can have a very significant impact on our long-term health and our body’s ability to function at optimal levels, not to mention our ability to lose fat and gain muscle.

And considering many people who drink these are in their teens or twenties, when their bodies are still developing, the damage they do there can be far worse, leading to acute or even chronic health conditions in the future.

Stress, whether it’s physical, mental or emotional, can lead to:

Delayed healing responses in the body, a nervous system that is always “on,” worsened mood, inability to relax or fall asleep, decreased mental alertness or lowered ability to “think,” hormonal imbalances, cravings for sugary foods, and high cortisol levels which increase mental stress, lower our energy levels, and make it harder to lose weight, build muscle or recover fully from the daily load we put on our body

It doesn’t matter much “where” the stress comes from, as any point of stress triggers the same reactions in the body. And stress from any one of these three areas (physical, mental or emotional) raises stress in the other two areas.

But, just as stress in one area creates stress in another area, with each point of stress making the overall worse, it also works in the opposite direction.

Each point of stress we remove lightens the load overall and makes it easier to deal with the other points of stress.

It’s very simple. Let’s see where we’re at!

When our digestive ability is weak, we don’t get all of the nutrition from foods we eat. This is because food, including proteins and minerals, must be fully broken down by stomach acid in order for our body to be able to use it.

In fact, poor digestion of protein is one of the largest causes of muscle loss as we age: our digestive system isn’t working as well as it was when we were younger, and so not enough protein is being broken down for our body to use.

But it’s not just our cells that need this nutrition.

Specific bacteria in our colon are responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation of the neurotransmitters serotonin and GABA, the happy, calming neurotransmitters.

Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but also depression and even brain fog?

This can make thinking, problem-solving, and just coping with the everyday stresses of life, much harder.

With the rise in hormone-blocking toxins in our environment, processed foods and processed sugars, and the low amount of protein most of us consume, low thyroid is affecting more and more people, especially among women and the elderly.

In this article we dive into what thyroid is, how low thyroid occurs, how it affects our mood, mental alertness, and our ability to think and cope with the problems of everyday life and what we can do to raise it.

We know that toxins are harmful to our bodies.

They stress our nervous system, raise inflammation and cortisol in the body, mess up our hormones, damage or kill cells, contribute to many diseases including cancer, and even cause trouble for our unborn children, disrupting the process by which both their nervous systems and immune systems form.

But how do toxins stress the body? How do they raise inflammation? And how can we prevent this?

Electromagnetic Fields, or EMFs, are invisible electric and magnetic fields of force surrounding any flowing electricity or magnetic object.

They can be generated by natural things, like the Earth's magnetic field, or the Sun, which don’t cause us trouble. Or they can be generated by man-made devices: cell phone towers, cell phones, microwave ovens, kitchen appliances, and even electrical wiring in our homes.

And these can cause us trouble, depending on how much or many we’re exposed to, and how strong they are.

I wanted to talk a little about inflammation.

Because, outside of very obvious causes, such as an injury or infection, few people know what actually causes it in general.

And even fewer know what to do about it beyond taking a pain-killer.

When we’re talking about inflammation, we’re talking about a symptom, not a cause. A symptom that does have a cause.

The body is a complex contraption, full of very exact systems, and a thousand different factors influencing its overall health and performance in one way or another.

But how do we separate out the important factors that allow us to measure our overall health and spot potential health troubles before they become a real situation?

There is something called Heart Rate Variability, or HRV, and it is a literal measuring stick for our health that we can use monitor to ourselves.

Stress levels in our society have never been as high as they are right now. And, while there has been a lot of upheaval in the last few years, there's more here than meets the eye.

Depression and anxiety have never been higher, physical stress in the form of inflammation, auto-immune disease, heart disease and cortisol levels have never been higher.

But this isn’t a recent occurrence. Stress levels have been rising for decades.

And, while some stress is emotional or mental, and some physical, it's all tied together, each aspect affecting the other, pushing each other to new heights.

How do we lower physical stress levels and inflammation?

How do we achieve a more even-keeled mood, more able to calmly face the challenges life presents?

How do we become the most alert and competent we can be mentally, while at the same time being able to relax when we need or want to, or when it's time to sleep?

Over the next few weeks we're going to cover this from every angle, see how it all fits together, and find out what you can do to lower stress levels in your life.