I haven’t talked much about stress this month, and I don’t want to give it short shrift. Yes, there’s a lot to take apart with food and exercise, both of which can feel more “actionable” at times. But stress can be a major roadblock to success. How we deal with emotional and physical stress will invariably impact our health, well-being and performance. Until we dial it in, we’ll compromise the results of all our other Primal efforts.

I’ve said in the past that stress has been one of the hardest aspects I’ve struggled with—and continue to now and then. Living Primally means I’m running on full rather than empty to be sure, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world always conforms to logic or sanity, let alone my preferences. And emotional tension aside, I like to push myself periodically in the gym or on an outdoor adventure, which means I’m dealing with physical stressors, too.

Here’s one thing I’ve done for twenty years to counter both emotional and physical stress.

Recently, I sat down with Brad Kearns to talk about one of the best kept secrets in performance nutrition—a potent anti-stress agent called Phosphatidylserine (PS).

PS is the lead ingredient in Adaptogenic Calm, a custom formulation that has been proven to help blunt the spike of cortisol in the bloodstream in response to stress. Old time endurance athletes like Brad and I have been using PS for over 20 years to help speed recovery from crazy training binges, but PS and the supportive ingredients in Adaptogenic Calm are also effective against routine modern life stressors like jet travel, hectic daily routines, compromised sleep, and so on.

 

We talk in the video about the physiology of stress and the best ways to use PS or Adaptogenic Calm—with more specific recommendations for bouts of heavy stress or training.

The goal isn’t to blunt the edge that can sharpen your focus or performance. It’s to achieve an evenness or, in some cases, a mellowness rather than the amped-up fight or flight response. I could easily write more, but check out my talk with Brad, and let me know what you think.

Thanks for stopping by today, everybody. Take care.

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