Читать книгу CBD For Dummies - Blair Lauren Brown - Страница 75

For the sake of eliminating confusion between stress and anxiety, I break them down separately here. Stress is a natural response to help address circumstances that require a level of heightened mental alertness and physical response. Anxiety is a reaction to stress. Anxiety is painfully persistent even when the triggers aren’t present.

I look at stress and anxiety in comic book terms. Think about stress as Spider-Man’s Spidey sense, which alerts him of impending danger. Now imagine that Spider-Man routinely feels his Spidey sense even in nonthreatening circumstances, with no underlying cause. That’s anxiety.

Stress experiences are caused by mental and physical situations that result in symptoms such as pain, sleeplessness, gastrointestinal (GI) issues, anger, frustration, skin issues (which I discuss later in the chapter), and general fatigue. The body reacts to stress by releasing stress hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline, that push the body into a state of emergency action. In this state, your body is basically in overdrive — pumping blood more quickly through your system, increasing your heart rate, tightening your muscles, heightening your senses, and so on. The most identifiable feelings of stress manifest as nervousness, exhausting thoughts, lack of focus, compromised judgment, and disorganization.

Constantly living in this stress state has been associated with a multitude of overall health problems, even heart attacks and death. Early studies have shown that CBD modifies the body’s chemical interaction with cortisol in a sedative way. It mitigates stress by preventing the overflow of cortisol.

Though anxiety can feel much like stress, it’s actually clinically diagnosable. Because CBD seems to be apt at relieving stress responses, it also seems to be beneficial in cases of anxiety.