About a month or so ago, I was feeling really strange.  I hadn’t really felt this way before in my entire life, so I decided to head to Urgent Care.  My body was feeling very uneasy, almost as if I wasn’t in complete control.  I was feeling very tired, with loss of appetite.  The most alarming issue I had felt was that my heart was beating so hard.  So, as I filled out the paperwork in the urgent care facility, it didn’t take but a minute for them to read what my symptoms were, and IMMEDIATELY take me back into a room to run an EKG.

All I kept telling myself was “everything should be fine”.  I exercise and do a lot of running, and generally eat healthy food.  But I knew the issue was my hectic schedule and most importantly, lack of sleep.  So as the nurses and doctors ran the EKG, I was relieved to hear from the doctor that everything was fine with my heart (the doc noticed how low my heart rate was, and told me that was typical with runners).  They had thought I was having a heart attack or stroke, and the thought had actually crossed my mind every now and then (which caused even a little more anxiety).  So as I gave the doctor a rundown on a typical day I’ve been having lately, and his response was simply “you need to chill out”.  I was having anxiety attacks due to the constant running around I was doing on just a few hours sleep each night.

Stress can kill.  I need to be as blunt about this as possible, because it’s something I need to hear for myself as a reminder.  I suggest you click on the picture above and read the details on how stress and anxiety affects your brain.  Just because you think you can do a million tasks in 24 hours doesn’t mean you’re supposed to.  I have been going into overdrive lately in my life, and no matter how well I eat, or how much exercise I partake in, that doesn’t compensate for resting my body.  I would say rest and sleep is just as important, if not MORE important, than how you manage your body throughout your active day.  Sleep repairs your body and refreshes you so that you can face the next day.  When you think about it, even though the human body is extremely complex, it still requires something as simple as rest and relaxation.

We all know exactly what stress feels like, as well the after-effects stress can cause you emotionally, so I’m not going to dive into those details.  The whole point of this post is to let you understand just how important it is to just STOP and make time for yourself to chill out.  We get so involved in the routine of everyday life that we forget to think taking good care of our own bodies.  Combine this thought process with other issues like eating a lot of junk food, then it becomes even more troubling.

I am making an effort to try to relax more often.  It’s gotten to the point where anxiety is making me lose motivation to go and workout.  My energy is shot when I’m stressed, so it makes it 10 times more difficult to motivate myself to hit the gym for a 6.2 mile run.   And anything that is holding me back from my running does not sit well with me, so something’s gotta change…now!

If you continue to find it difficult to relax throughout the day, then you have to at least make sure you get enough sleep.  I truly believe my lack of sleep is what made me have to go to Urgent Care.  Sleep recharges your brain in ways we don’t completely understand, but know that it’s needed.  All we really need to remember is this…GO TO SLEEP!