Rushing Woman's Syndrome: The Impact Of A Never-Ending To-Do List And How To Stay Healthy In Today's Busy World

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Immediately I related to the concept of the “Rushing Woman” and thought of numerous clients who have presented in my therapy room feeling overwhelmed by the demands of their daily lives. I thought of my friends that have spoken about their struggles in balancing their work/home lives and I considered my own journey where I have at times felt that I was trying to juggle a hundred different things and failing miserably. The Cause of Our Stress The long-term activation of the stress-response system — and the subsequent overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones — can disrupt almost all your body’s processes. This puts you at increased risk of numerous health problems, including: That, in a nutshell, is Rushing Woman’s Syndrome. And if you’ve thought while reading this, “Boy, I bet that’s got worse in the past decade,” you are bang on the money. Libby says one of the things she hears most often – and particularly during the pandemic years – is “Oh yes, I bought that book – it’s sitting beside my bed, I just haven’t had time to read it yet.” (The Rushing Woman’s curse).

Chances are, you might be at risk of this. “A really common scenario I see is iron deficiency, because that is the most common nutrient deficiency in New Zealand, particularly amongst women of menstruation age, pregnant women and young children. It’s significant. And we don’t just need iron for the transportation of oxygen around the body, which is hugely tied up with energy and metabolism; we also need good iron levels for thyroid hormone production.” There was a really big shift in the people who were walking through my door,” she says. “Before, people would normally turn up on time and the symptoms they were experiencing, for the majority, were less intense. And then I started to notice that the majority of people were running late for appointments – and that’s okay! – because they had tried to cram too much into the time before the appointment. So, then they ran late – because, if everything fell into place and they got a car park, it would be okay, but they had pushed it right to the edge of the time.” When we make estrogen, it’s got to cling onto an estrogen receptor to exert its effects. Once that unit of estrogen has run out of puff, it is sent to the liver for detoxification. The liver has to change the structure of estrogen before we can excrete it by going to the loo. Libby is keen for people not to underestimate the role of ovulation – and in particular, that flood of progesterone – even if you’re not trying for a baby. “Anxiety is such a multi-facetted experience for people, and there’s so much that’s behind it,” Libby says. “I’m not suggesting that good progesterone levels will be the answer for everyone but my goodness, they contribute. Recently grabbing my attention was a book written by nutritional biochemist Dr. Libby Weaver. What grabbed my attention about this book was its title “Rushing Woman’s Syndrome – The impact of a never ending to-do list on your health”. It is an excellent book that examines how constantly rushing and having a never ending to-do list has a substantial cost to our physical and mental health.

Positive quotes to make you smile

When we live on adrenalin we tend not to sleep restoratively. We also constantly cravesugar, because when the body wants to get out of danger, it burns glucose rather than stored body fat. And even though our body is begging for it, we chastise ourselves for succumbing to sweets.

Yournervous system doesn't know that the adrenalin pumping inside youis not from a physical threat to your life, but rather your body's response to the caffeine you drink, or your sense of everydaypressure. Your mood changes before your period, everything annoys you and/or you feel like crying but for no reason. One of the hormones driving this is adrenalin, which communicates to every cell in the body that your life is in danger. As I described in my TEDx talk science suggests humans have been on the planet for between 100,00 and 150,000 years and for the entirety of that history, that’s what adrenalin has meant to the body. The nervous system doesn’t know that the adrenalin amping you up is not from a physical threat to your life but rather your body’s response to the caffeine you drink and/or your perception of pressure. The pituitary is the master switch of the endocrine system which sends signals to other endocrine system glands (adrenals, ovaries, thyroid) instructing them to make hormones. For example the adrenal glands will make stress hormones, the ovaries make sex hormones and thyroid gland makes hormones that control temperature and metabolism. None of them work in isolation, they all influence each other. When we are stressed, adrenalin is released by the adrenal glands (to escape the perceived threat), blood sugar rises, to give us more energy and blood pressure and pulse rate increase to provide more energy to the muscles. But as a result reproductive functions are down regulated as the body prioritizes its need for survival rather than its need to reproduce. Not that long ago in human history women were given the opportunity to do what had traditionally been their father’s jobs, while maintaining what were traditionally their mother’s responsibilities and what has unfolded for too many women is a frantic double shift, of working day and night, with very little if any rest.Only, our human construct, or the way our body functions was not made to handle stress on this level. Rushing Woman’s Syndromedescribes what is scientifically known as Sympathetic Nervous System Dominance and the biochemical changes this drives in the body (see extended explanations of the science below). I wanted women to understand the significant way stress can impact the chemistry of their body, the many body systems it can affect, and offer them practical solutions to this. One of the biggest markers for how our hormonal system is handling our lives is our period shifting, and Libby says there are some clear things to look for. Do you constantly feel overwhelmed? Are you always looking for more time to get things done? Do you feel like you have no time for you anymore? Are you suffering from “Mum Stress” or Rushing Woman Syndrome? Why is it that so many mums are feeling increased levels of stress? Where is it coming from and, more importantly, what can we do about it? The Rushing Woman

The perceived need to rush is changing the face of women’s health in a detrimental way. From PMS to IBS, from losing our tempers to feeling like we can’t cope.Whether a woman displays it on the outside or keeps it under wraps, more are suffering. The perceived need to rush, whether a woman displays it on the outside or keeps it under wraps, is changing the face of women’s health as we know it in a detrimental way; from PMS to IBS, from losing our tempers to feeling like we can’t cope.

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But deeper than that is a story we made up about women a long time ago. A story we tell ourselves that sayswe aren't good enough the waywe are. That we aren't tall enough, slim enough, pretty enough, brainy enough, on time enough. Because who we are is not enough,we spend our lives trying to please everyone around us, putting their needs ahead of our own. It’s been over a decade since Dr Libby Weaver’s game-changing book Rushing Woman’s Syndrome first came out – and women have been rushing even faster in the years since. Libby talks to Capsule about how the past years have taken a greater toll on us, the messages our body keep trying to tell us and why her new course was designed with rushing women in mind. For the first half of the menstrual cycle, estrogen is the dominant hormone, laying down the lining of the uterus. Estrogen wants a menstruating female to get pregnant every month of her life, whether that is on her agenda or not! The nervous system plays a significant role in the stress response and it has a number of parts. The two branches related to this concept are the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), also known as the amped up “fight or flight” response, and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the calming “rest, digest, repair and reproduce” arm of the nervous system. The challenge for too many women today is that they live in SNS dominance and this can play havoc with weight management, food cravings, sleep quality, patience, moods, self-esteem, and overall quality of life. For too many women, estrogen is dominant (to progesterone) leading into the menstrual period and this is the typical hormonal imbalance that is the basis of PMS – heavy clotty painful periods, swollen tender breasts, and mood swings that can oscillate from intense irritability to immense sadness, sometimes in the same hour and often for reasons that cannot be identified! This can feel like chaos for a woman… and everyone around her.