The Heart Of Matters

Feeling ‘Stressed’? Dr Libby Weaver Suggests You Examine What That Really Means For You – And Start Talking About It

- Nicky Pellegrino

I’m so busy… so stressed out… so exhausted.’ That’s the modern-day mantra many of us continually chant – and Dr Libby Weaver believes it’s time to do something about it. The health guru and nutritional biochemist says the first step is to think much harder about what we actually mean when we say we’re ‘stressed’.

“It’s become a word that’s overused,” she says. “We have to start talking about stress differently and deepen the conversation so people can explore what stress really is for them. Life will never be completely stress-free, but we can spend less time with that stress response switched on.”

To be clear, Dr Libby isn’t talking about the stress that accompanies major life events or trauma, but the build-up of everyday stresses at home and work that lead to us feeling overwhelmed. She likens this to an invisible load, a metaphorical backpack full of rocks we carry around with us the whole time.

That heavy load is made up not of the many things we need to do and remember every day, but of our thoughts about those things and our beliefs about ourselves. This is what’s really behind the body’s stress response in a modern era, when we rarely need it to pump out cortisol and adrenaline to prime us to escape physical danger.

The heavy lifting

“The only real strategies out there for stress have been Band-Aids,” says Dr Libby. “For instance, we know when we increase the length of our exhalation, it decreases [stress] hormone production. And there’s research to show certain medicinal herbs, such as withania, can lower cortisol.”