Strategies for stress to optimize immune response

Photo Cred: Artem Beliaikin/Pexels

By Kim Furtado, ND

In today’s world, fears can become tangible, threatening, and are constantly evolving, and a person can exist predominantly in sympathetic overload. 

The autonomic nervous system is responsible for the reflexive and involuntary control of our bodies and consists of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves.  The sympathetic nervous system triggers a fight-or-flight response whenever there is perceived or real threat or trigger. It is a fast-acting system that activates a host of changes, including stimulation of the adrenal gland, which then releases hormones into the bloodstream. 

The effects of the sympathetic nervous system include an increase of heart rate and blood pressure, dilated bronchial tubes and pupils, and contracted muscles, as the body is designed to help prepare to fight or run. Important functions like digestion and the immune system are downregulated, and stress response is activated.

During crisis, it is critical to help patients promote a strong parasympathetic response, because this is the part of the autonomic nervous system that helps with rest, digest, and repair. The immune system functions most efficiently when there is a parasympathetic dominance. 

I use a simple imagery to help my clients understand that their reactions to stress and crisis are not driven by the cerebral cortex, or our capacity to think.  Instead, it is our primordial brain, what some might call our “lizard brain,” that drives the physiological response to stress. The brainstem reacts to triggers, whether real or perceived.  That reactive brainstem influences our entire endocrine system and dictates our body’s resources and activity.

Imagine a lizard laying out on a rock. She is breathing deeply, digesting beautifully, with relaxed muscles and a sense of calm. This is the parasympathetic state of bliss that allows rest, digest, and repair to occur.

Now, imagine that lizard sees a bird fly overhead. She reacts with the threat or fear of harm, and she runs into the crack. Her heart races, muscles activate, and breathing gets shallow and restricted to prepare for that sprint to safety. This is a momentary, potentially life-saving reaction.

The beauty of a lizard’s brain is that, once the threat has passed, she crawls back onto the rock, sunning herself in blissful state of rest and recovery.

Our human capacity for complex, chronic stress sometimes engages our thinking minds to signal our lizard brains that we are under constant duress.  Layer onto our collective existence, the high stress of a global pandemic, and the trauma of unemployment, infection, economic collapse, death of loved ones, and fear for self and family, the stress can become unbearable.  We live in the crack because of our reactions to stress and to our thoughts.

However, we can use our knowledge of the effects of stress to help engage our patients to heal even during crisis. My charge to my patients who are overwhelmed with life stresses is to “be the lizard on the rock.” Disengage the thinking cortex and soothe the reactive brainstem.  In other words, train your inner lizard.

Nerves fire along pathways that we promote. If you calculate a typical productive day is thirteen hours, about 91 hours per week is filled with activities. A simple investment of 10 percent of your life into your parasympathetic nervous system is critical to not only surviving high stress but thriving. 

I challenge my clients to spend nine hours per week being a lizard on the rock, not in the crack. These nine hours need to be logged and focused on as part of their daily self-care. It can be blocked in time that works for the client, but by the end of the week their investment should be made. It is doable while in quarantine, even if working from home.  It is also doable while working overtime in an essential job, even five hours per week is meaningful medicine for a person in crisis.

The activities that qualify as “lizard on the rock” behaviors are those that induce a strong parasympathetic response, such as that feeling you get when you lay out on a warm rock sunning yourself with a sense of peace. Each client gets to find the match for them, but I encourage a deep practice in the modality of choice. 

This is a partial list, not meant to be exhaustive of ways to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. If able, it is helpful to support the parasympathetic nerves with amino acids like gamma aminobutyric acid, L-theanine, and 5-hydroxytryptophan. Magnesium is a potent ally to the relaxation response, as are herbs like passionflower, kava-kava, and valerian root. Important adaptogens to help the adrenals can also be beneficial, such as magnolia, ashwaganda, and Siberian ginseng.

The key is to retrain the brainstem despite the ongoing triggers and be a lizard on the rock:   

• Walk in nature     
• Deep Breathing exercises    
• Warm baths
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Tai Chi
• Qigong
• Massage      
• Foot massage
• Reflexology
• Acupressure
• EFT (tapping)
• Guided imagery
• Hypnosis
• Energy balancing/chakra balancing
• Aromatherapy
• Physical/sexual pleasure