If you’ve been watching BBC2’s ‘Special Forces – Ultimate Hell Week’ this might sound familiar: You’re tired, you can’t think straight, you mess up more, things take longer, and you get more and more frustrated. When you’re exhausted and put in a high-stress situation it can be very tough to execute tasks effectively. You reach a point when you just want to hide away and sleep, then wake up to a fresh start.
Unfortunately, in some situations, such as ‘Special Forces – Ultimate Hell Week’, you can’t do that, so the only option is to soldier on and get the job done. This is something we’ve seen recruits face each week, and a skill the Special Forces are trained to develop over time, so that stress doesn’t lead to an inability to perform.
BMF Nutritionist, Ben Coomber, has shared some insights to overcome the symptoms of exhaustion and malnutrition, in order to perform as best you can under these circumstances.
The following symptoms will become apparent when faced with high stress factors, including exhaustion and malnutrition:
Not everyone will experience all of these, but they are just some of the symptoms Clare is going through right now. And it makes everything harder, just when you have to perform at your best. Identifying the issue is the easy part, we can all spot that in ourselves, but what to do about it can be harder.
1. Eat more
This is often easier said than done, but the feeling of exhaustion will likely come initially from lack of food. This will result in reduced brain and body energy levels; amplified in stressful situations where you are often burning a lot of calories and depleting your body of its reserves.
Eating more is a simple fix. If you get a food stop, take it, fuel up. But do be wary of a good feed if you are not going to go to sleep. Eating a large amount of food will force a lot of the body’s blood flow to move to the stomach to aid in digestion, leaving less blood for other vital tasks.
At times of extreme exhaustion, your body weight shouldn’t be a concern, so get whatever food you can in you - the higher calorie the better. Graze where possible on all you can get your hands on.
2. Sleep more
This is another tough one. Your body is likely screaming out for sleep but a comfy 8-9 hours kip is the last thing you’re going to get. So, if you can, grab a power nap. The ideal time to power nap is either 15-20 minutes or over one hour. Falling asleep for 20-50 minutes is the danger zone, when your body drops into its deep sleep ‘REM’ phase. When you wake during your REM phase you are often left feeling very groggy and thus feel worse than when you went to sleep. So nap tactically.
3. Grab some caffeine
Caffeine is known to reduce the feelings of tiredness as it blocks receptors in the brain, allowing us to feel more awake.
If coffee leaves you feeling wired and jittery, try strong tea instead. Tea contains theanine and balances the harsh caffeine effect in coffee. You can also try taking caffeine in its pure form in a drink like red bull, or as a tablet like pro plus. It’s been shown in the research that pure caffeine, not found in coffee, has a greater effect as it is not inhibited by other compounds, giving you a ‘cleaner high’, so to speak.
4. Don’t multi-task
You are struggling to think straight so reduce everything that’s on your plate.
Fundamentally, you cannot multi-task in a high-concentration situation. The brain can only focus on one thing at a time (although the more alert you are, the quicker you can switch quickly between tasks), so help your brain out by just focusing on the one important thing right there and then, utilizing your limited energy most efficiently on one single task at a time.
5. Stay hydrated
The fastest way to lose brain and body performance is by becoming dehydrated, and in a hot and sweaty environment this will happen a lot faster. Keep sipping water, even if it means you have to pee more, at least your body will be firing on all cylinders.
Now along with these feelings of stress, the body will also be stressed. It will be starting to show signs of under recovery via malnutrition. Both from a macronutrient perspective, and a micronutrient perspective. Hopefully this stress is short term, so we can accept this, do the best we can do, then go into a ‘rehab’ phase afterwards with lots of good food and sleep. Alongside getting as many calories in as possible, do your best to make these calories from whole natural foods, including nuts, chocolate, avocados, butter, dried fruit, fatty meat, starches like bread and other high calorie foods. Do this while ensuring you get adequate (or as much as possible) starchy carbohydrates to continually top up your muscles with glucose, the fuel they need to work.
So while we might not be able to control all the stress put in front of us, now we know there might be 1-2 things we can control, and this will at least help in times of extreme stress.
Otherwise, grind it out.
It will be worth it.
