ENDURE: 9/28/15 The Difference Between "Stress" and "Load"

Spoiler summary - it's really all about the dose.

Words can be incredibly powerful. They can excite us, like in an amazing speech; they can soothe us, like when someone who we know really cares says so; and they can influence us to take action by pulling on those "strings" that seem to connect our brain to our heart and heart to our muscles. So how does that whole thing work? And what does it have to do with our health?

The answer? Nothing and everything.

The cliff's notes version is that the brain determines if something is a threat which triggers an emotional response and sets a cascade into motion. Some call it the fight or flight response, some talk about the "Sympathetic nervous response" and others simply call it stress.  Certain words, like the word stress itself, tend to trigger this response....which can cause impacts on our health.  It seems a bit strange if you think about it, but it's real. 

Can there be good stress? Of course, we know the answer is yes because when it comes to the body, we adapt to the stress we are under. Take gravity for example. It helps us to maintain a strong and healthy skeletal system by keeping it under a steady amount of stress. This is one reason why astronauts have so much deconditioning when they return from a weightless environment.  They are quite literally chronically under-stressed. So, even though it's just a "thing" (and not inherently good or bad) most tend to still think of stress as a negative thing. 

In the world of injury prevention this concept is beginning to play out.  The word "load" has started to replace the word "stress".  People are starting to understand that dialing in the right amount (the right "dose") is what really matters: not too little, not too much, just right.

In the next few weeks, I'll revisit the concept of training load: how different body areas are impacted by different loads;how we can be sure we are positively adapting to the stress we face and how we can keep the brain-heart-body strings playing the right tune.

More to come...