STRESS & INFLAMMATION, THE VICIOUS LOOP

You can be eating all the right things, moving your body, drinking your water, and still feel stuck if you’re not addressing stress. Chronic stress is one of the biggest drivers of inflammation, and inflammation amplifies stress right back. It’s a vicious loop that keeps midlife women burned out, inflamed, gaining weight, and feeling like they’re constantly in survival mode. Because you are.

Here’s what most women don’t realize. Stress isn’t just an emotional state. It’s a full-body, biochemical reaction. When you’re stressed, whether it’s from deadlines, conflict, poor sleep, under-eating, over-exercising, or even gut issues, your body responds by raising cortisol, your main stress hormone. And when cortisol stays elevated, inflammation rises too.

In short bursts, cortisol is helpful. It helps you focus, get through a workout, respond to danger. But when it stays high over time, it starts breaking the body down. Muscle is lost, fat is stored, blood sugar spikes, sleep gets disrupted, and your immune system becomes dysregulated. Add menopause to the mix, when your estrogen and progesterone are already declining—, and you’ve got a recipe for hormonal chaos.

You start to see it in your skin, your sleep, your digestion, your mood. You’re more reactive, your tolerance is lower, and even small things feel like too much. The smallest stressor sends your system into overdrive, because your nervous system is already maxed out. That’s not a mindset problem. That’s biology. That’s cortisol and inflammation doing their thing just like your body was designed to do. It just wasn't designed to do it continuously.

Women often try to manage this with willpower, telling themselves to “just deal with it” or “power through,” but willpower is not a strategy. And it definitely doesn’t work when your body is running on empty and your nervous system is in overdrive. What you actually need is safety. Because your body won’t heal in a state of threat.

Chronic stress makes the body feel unsafe. And when your body feels unsafe, it protects you by slowing your metabolism, storing fat, and keeping your inflammation elevated, just in case. You could be doing everything “right,” but if stress is running the show, you’ll stay inflamed and stuck.

One of the least talked about sources of stress? Undereating. When you don’t eat enough, especially protein and healthy fat, your body perceives it as a threat to your survival. That triggers more cortisol, more blood sugar dysregulation, and more inflammation. And that, in turn, increases cravings, worsens mood swings, and fans those hot flash flames and keeps adding more fluff around your middle. Nothing thrives in a deficit. Especially not your stress response.

The other stressor most women overlook is internal. Gut dysbiosis, blood sugar swings, and poor sleep all create biological stress that your body can’t distinguish from emotional stress. Your body literally responds the same if a tiger were chaasing you or if you missed a deadline at work. If your gut is inflamed, if you’re sleep-deprived, if you’re nutrient-deficient, that’s chronic stress. And it affects your hormones and nervous system just as much as work, family overwhelm, or the tiger.

So what do you do when the stress can’t be avoided? You buffer it. You build resilience. You create an environment that tells your body, “you’re safe, you can heal.” That starts with nourishment. When you eat enough of what your body needs, when you stabilize blood sugar, when you hydrate and get minerals, your body starts trusting you again. The alarms turn off. The inflammation settles.

You also have to get out of fight-or-flight. That doesn’t mean taking a sabbatical or spending all day meditating. It means consistently practicing simple things that calm your nervous system. Deep breathing. Walking. Laughing. Connection. Journaling. Taking breaks before you snap. Lying on the floor for five minutes with your legs up the wall. None of these things are fancy, but they all work.

And let’s not forget boundaries. One of the most powerful anti-inflammatory actions you can take is to stop overcommitting. Say “No”, more often. Make rest non-negotiable. Take up space. Prioritize yourself like you matter, because you do. Your body is listening to how you treat it. If you’re constantly last on the list, don’t be surprised if it stops cooperating.

Stress is unavoidable. But chronic stress doesn’t have to be your default. You can train your body to feel safe again. You can downshift from constant survival mode. You can quiet the inflammation and calm the chaos, but only if you stop treating stress like a personality flaw and start treating it like the biochemical disruptor it is.

The women I work with always feel the biggest shift when they finally stop trying to push through and start allowing recovery. When they stop forcing and start flowing. That’s when the weight starts to move. The brain fog lifts. The energy comes back. Because their body is no longer trying to survive, it’s finally ready to thrive.

You don’t need to be more disciplined. You need to be more supported. You don’t need to stress less, you need to restore more. That’s the difference. And that’s how you finally break the inflammation-stress loop that’s been keeping you stuck.

Watch my free video to learn how to use food, movement, and stress support to reduce inflammation and rebalance your hormones—without burnout.