Stress, the Nervous System, and Why Your Back Pain Isn’t Just a Training Problem
If you’re a man in midlife dealing with persistent back pain, chances are you’ve asked some version of this question:
“What should I be doing in the gym to fix my back?”
It’s a fair question. You train. You care about your health. You want to solve the problem.
But after years of working with men in their 40s and 50s, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern:
Many of the men with ongoing back pain are wired.
They’re switched on from the moment they wake up. Anxious. Busy. Driven. Always thinking ahead. Always in "go mode."
And their nervous system never really gets a chance to stand down.
Recreational Athletes, Stress and Protein Intake
If you’re chronically stressed, your fat-free-mass literally start to break down. Stress researchers call this wear and tear allostatic load. The fat-free-mass breakdown is caused in part by collagen proteins being used faster than they can be replaced. More preliminary research suggests that chronic stress may also contribute to obesity through direct mechanisms (causing people to eat more unhealthy foods) or indirectly (decreasing sleep, decreased exercise tolerance, blood sugar management issues).