When you live with herpes, it's essential to understand that "everyday" stress isn't an HSV trigger. There's no need to worry that you will never be able to have a single emotion without breaking out in a rash of blisters, even though it may seem that way at times.
It's not going to work every day, picking kids up from practice, and having to buy milk in the middle of the night, that triggers an outbreak. No. It's traumatic or underlying chronic ongoing stress that triggers emotions long after the situation has come and gone, that reactivates the virus. It's underlying, chronic stress. When you're stressed, chemical reactions in the body trigger changes that affect various systems.
For example, one of these chemicals is cortisol, which is a natural steroid hormone released during stressful events. Cortisol affects nearly every organ and tissue in your body. It regulates metabolism, controls blood sugar levels, aids memory, influences the sleep-wake cycle, and helps maintain salt, water, and blood pressure balance. It even helps to reduce inflammation. This is beneficial unless you're chronically stressed, as cortisol begins to cause inflammation. When this happens, the gastrointestinal, immune, neurological, and musculoskeletal systems are disrupted, which can lead to more frequent and severe herpes infections (and other viral infections, such as colds, flu, and COVID-19). Why?
The nervous system and the immune system work together. Because chronic stress induces Nervous System Dysregulation, it also compromises immunity. When your immune system isn't functioning optimally because your nervous system is dysregulated, herpes senses this and takes advantage of opportune moments to reactivate. How so? Poor immunity causes inflammation.
Chronic stress also promotes the loss of minerals that generally manage the body's acid load. When minerals are unavailable to neutralize acids in the body, the pH balance becomes more acidic, leading to inflammation. Why? Because low pH causes toxicity, which in turn causes inflammation, an HSV trigger.
By now, you might be thinking that an anti-inflammatory diet, herbs, or supplements might be the answer to putting HSV in remission. These things may work if chronic stress isn't the problem. But they won't work on their own to put herpes in remission when inflammation is caused by chronic stress. In that case, you have to "fix" the source of the problem, which is Nervous System Dysregulation. The Anti-HSV Cauldron: The 4-Week Plan for HSV Remission shows you how.
I just want to say, while going to work every day and picking kids up from practice, or buying milk for a screaming baby in the middle of the night, aren't usually things that trigger an outbreak; they can when they are perceived as stressful, and you have no outlet for calming and relaxing your nervous system. In other words, even little things can become too stressful if you let them. Still, it's not so much the daily stresses that are the problem. It's all the things we have in our bucket that we aren't dealing with or don't know how to solve (that job we hate, the bad marriage, the death of a loved one, poor health, etc.) that cause chronic, ongoing stress and an unbalanced nervous system.
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