How movement can affect your stress

One of my favorite quotes from Einstein is “Nothing happens until something moves”. This quote is great from a body and health perspective, as movement is life. If you are not moving, you are not functioning well.  I recently came across an interesting article that described a new understanding of how movement controls our stress response.  This peaked my interest as, in general, most people have a fair amount of stress in their lives these days. We all know that prolonged stress is not good for our health, so if movement can help control our stress response, it makes moving even more important.  Continue reading to see how movement is linked to stress.

Peter Strick, a professor and chair of the department of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute, wanted to find out scientifically why you feel better after exercise.  He wanted proof as to why exercise like yoga works, rather than just knowing you can “feel better” and “less stressed” afterwards.  In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Strick and other neuroscientists showed that they have discovered an elaborate network in the cerebral cortex that controls the adrenal medulla.  Let’s explain what this means in simple terms.
 
The hormones and chemicals that control our stress response come from the adrenal glands which sit on top of our kidneys. It was previously thought that the adrenal glands were controlled from only a few areas of the cerebral cortex (the grey matter of the brain). This didn’t explain why body movement could play a part in decreasing stress. 

What they found in their research was that there is a very complex network in the brain that controls the stress response.  The key aspect of their findings was that the parts of the brain that control movement (the motor cortex in the brain picture above) and sensation (the somatosensory cortex in the brain picture above) are tied directly to our stress response.  Interestingly, the area that controls the core had a big connection to the adrenal glands and hence our stress response.
 
Strick had a great quote on this, “There’s all this evidence that core strengthening has an impact on stress. And when you see somebody that’s depressed or stressed out, you notice changes in their posture.  When you stand up straight, it has an effect on how you project yourself and how you feel.  Well, lo and behold, core muscles have an impact on stress. And I suspect that if you activate core muscles inappropriately with poor posture, that’s going to have an impact on stress”.
 
What to make of this
For a lot of people, exercise is a great way to de-stress. This research goes someway to explain why.  Since our world is inherently a high stress one, anything we can do to help destress is going to be beneficial. If exercising can help you destress, then not only will you get the benefits of having less stress in your body, but you will also get all of the other great benefits of exercise.  It's a win win.
 
So, if you are feeling particularly stressed, try doing some exercise and in particular some core work.  If you do, according to this research, your body will thank you for it.
 
References

• http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/cortical-adrenal-orchestra/496679/
• http://www.pnas.org/content/113/35/9922.full