That chilly bite in the air must mean that Halloween is around the corner!

To celebrate, this month’s specialty workshop will address an appropriately scary subject: Stress [creepy laughter echoes in the background].

It’s not just a good pitch for a horror movie… stress really is killing us.

I’ve talked a lot about stress on here before, as well as its effects on the body.

Most of us think of stress as an unpleasant feeling that we get when bills pile up, when we work late, or when that guy cuts us off in traffic. We think, worst case, it may give us a headache or a few stomach ulcers… but that’s about it, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Stress, and what it does to the body, causes a LOT more to go wrong than that!

If you have a decent understanding of exactly how stress works in your body, and the sheer number of conditions it causes (or worsens), you could make a strong argument that stress is the #1 killer in the United States.

Stress contributes to everything from heart disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, site-specific cancers, osteoporosis, muscle atrophy, and depression.

How did this happen?? Simple… we turned our own bodies against us.

For tens of thousands of years — way before the Pyramids or Roman Empire — we didn’t live in cozy homes that isolated us from the elements. We were just wild humans, living in the wilderness, among creatures wanting nothing more than to eat us for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack.

It’s hard for us to comprehend that kind of danger because we’re so removed from it. But our ancestors had to deal with these very real, very hungry problems every day of their lives.

To cope, their bodies developed what we know as the stress response. This allowed them to react to emergencies quickly without having to waste energy by constantly being on alert like some prairie dog. I’ve mentioned some of these responses before and they probably sound really familiar to you.

Fast forward a about 50,000 years: Zookeepers and German magicians aside, the daily threat of being chased by animals that want to eat us is now all but lost in our daily routines.

What’s NOT lost are those same primal, physiological responses to a stressor. As far as your body is concerned… your hectic job, your commute, and your debt are the biological equivalent of running from a tiger for 80 hours/week.

Or worse….

... running from this guy.

That’s because you and I experience these very same physiological responses our ancestors spent thousands of years fine-tuning for actual emergencies.

Only now, it’s happening in our bodies ALL THE TIME!

But here’s the BIG problem: Traditional medicine misses the mark because they look at these perfectly intelligent responses by our body as the problem. Wrong!

• Increased blood pressure is NOT the problem.
• High blood glucose is NOT the problem.
• Elevated stress hormones are NOT the problem.

The problem is the guy with the chainsaw!! When he comes after you, you want your blood pressure to increase, you need your blood sugar to increase, and you have to have more stress hormones in your blood!

The problem is that we are constantly being exposed to all kinds of stressors (be they physical, chemical or emotional) that our ancestors never had.

The solution is to eliminate as many causes of unnecessary stress as we can.

How do we do that? I’m glad you asked!

Come to the Stress Kills workshop next Thursday at 6:30pm.

Here’s what you’ll get:

• I’ll explain stress & stressors in a way you’ve never heard before
• You’ll see exactly what stress does to your body
• You’ll learn the 2 easiest ways to get stress out of your life
• Oh yeah… it’s catered with awesome food!