Hi my name is Jukka. I’m a Finnish engineer in my thirties and that’s about all the personal information I’m willing to give to the internet at the moment to keep my identity concealed. As you might have guessed I’m kind of a private person and I don’t think I would add any value to this blog by handing out all my personal info to the whole world to see. I don’t want to brand my persona – I just write this blog to share my experiences and knowledge to help stressed people out. I don’t believe you should blindly believe anything or anyone  you read in the internet so it doesn’t really matter if I truly am who I say I am. What matters is that all the information on this blog is based on peer reviewed studies and / or expert approved articles and papers or authority sites by government officials and the medical community. Of course I will share some of my own experiences on many subjects but what weight you decide to give to my opinions is totally up to you. I will also share some experiences with supplements that I have found beneficial and that have the science to back them up. Now I can’t stress (pun intended 🙂 this enough: I am not a doctor, I am just some random dude on the web – so whatever you decide to do with any health related information on this site is totally up to you. I am not telling you to use any supplements or to change your diet. You make those decisions on your own. Capiche? If you do decide to follow my instructions do not hesitate to consult a doctor if you have any concerns about your health. And please never ask me for personal advice concerning supplements, medications or anything that is clearly a medical issue – I will ignore such questions for obvious legal reasons. Alright enough with the tinfoil hats and disclaimers, next I will share my story about stress and how this blog came to be.

My story

So I was stressed. Really stressed. I’m not sure when it all began but I guess it safe to say it’s part of my personality so I’d say I’ve been more or less stressed out since elementary school. I don’t remember being stressed before that but as soon as I had to assume the typical work week schedule and fit the social norm I started to feel somewhat anxious. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t bullied (well not above the average at least) nor was I lonely yet I wasn’t very popular either. I was pretty much the average kid. Average height, average weight, average grades – so nothing special or traumatic that would cause me to hate going to school. What I remember being stressed about are two things, homework deadlines and social competition, pretty much the same things most work stress sufferers would point out. What I have come to realize in the recent years is that I am probably more sensitive to stress than the average person and more sensitive emotionally than the average male at least – they just don’t teach you this stuff in school (well maybe to psych majors…) so you have to learn to live with your emotions and reactions. Being sensitive is not an issue – not knowing how to handle it is. One of my greatest epiphanies was the realization that I don’t have to compete with anyone (although I choose to compete with myself) if I don’t want to. We are raised to an competitive society where winning is praised. I felt very early this is simply a wrong way to look at the world and had no competitive drive and absolutely hated sports for this reason. Later in life I have come to appreciate many sports as a social and cultural thing and I lead a very active life style and absolutely love strength training – where I only compete with myself. I enjoy a game of soccer or basketball as long as it’s for fun and exercise – start competing seriously and I’m out.

Moving on a few years to my teens. That’s when I first remember starting to have feelings of anxiety and  depression which were likely caused by chronic stress. It’s a shame I just didn’t realize what I was going through back then so I didn’t get help. I manage to complete junior high and high school with decent numbers but the whole period of my life is kind of a haze. I had some good times on my free time hanging out with friends but a lot of that time was spent sitting in front of the computer playing. I also slept way too little for a growing teenager and suffered from insomnia at time. At the end of high school alcohol came to picture and I used it to self medicate. With booze I became the social person that I and everyone else wanted me to be and weekend partying became pretty much my main hobby for the next few years. This of course did nothing but increased my week day anxiety, stress and fatigue. Somewhere at this point of my life I began suffering from chronic and serious insomnia. I might go two nights in row without a second of shut eye and then sleep a couple hours on the third. At the same time I had somehow managed to complete my army service, do couple years of temp jobs and get in to a engineer program of applied environmental sciences.  During my studies I began working out and got medical help for my insomnia. The alcohol was still in the picture and even though I was getting some medicated sleep I felt like crap most of the time – I was overweight, weak, tired, anxious and had a bad temper. A really bad temper – at this point all the stress had accumulated and I lashed out all the time to objects and people close to me. I smashed things, yelled my lungs out, beat my fist to the wall etc. thank god I never hurt anyone. As I am writing this I’m just realizing what a train wreck I was in my early twenties – I can actually be happy and content that the past me managed to accomplish what he did regarding education and work. Things could have turned out hell of a lot worse.

In my late twenties I was near graduating and had finally started to lower my alcohol consumption. A few years of gym work and low-carb dieting had made my body composition better but I still barely looked like I lifted.  At this point I started to become more serious about my training and I started to research anything and everything health and fitness related. I started lifting heavy three times a week while being in a big caloric deficit in hopes to lose fat and build muscle. Later on I have realized doing this sent my cortisol levels through the roof and made my chronic stress issue even worse. At this point a I had extensive medical exams done due to constant fatigue, the only alarming thing was that I had borderline low testosterone otherwise I was very healthy according to the doctors. Even though I learned that I basically had the testosterone levels of a 90 year old man the doctors didn’t think much since I was otherwise healthy and young.  Later on I have found out this had all to do with chronic mental stress and overtraining which I talk about extensively in this blog – if you suffer from low testosterone without a clear medical cause you should read around here, I bet I can help you.

So once I graduated I soon got sucked in to the working life full time. I started a demanding job with a high learning curve. This combined with my previous issues that were still unattended, lead me to became depressed and I started having panic attacks and constant anxiety. I also avoided social situations like the plague, which made my job even more challenging. I was heading for a nervous breakdown. At this point I thankfully realized I needed help and went to the doctor. I was diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety disorder and got some meds and saw a psychologist for a while. The medication was an SSRI drug called escitalopram (Lexapro in the US). I was VERY skeptic about using it but to my surprise it helped tremendously with the anxiety and depression. After the initial side effects I became more relaxed and social and got a hold of my work stress. Unfortunately the drug had one nasty side effect, it basically chemically neutered me. Essentially it fucked up my sex drive, passion and physical sensation – the effect was psychological and physical. This combined with my already low testosterone levels really started to get to me after a while and I got of the drug after being on it for a year. I thought I was cured and that after the drug wore off my life would finally return to normal. Well it didn’t, the anxiety and depression returned full force within a couple months and nothing positive happened to my libido.  So I went back to the drug and soon the anxiety subsided – I was likely still in withdrawal after 4 months of not using. As of writing this I’m still on the drug but tapering down, I’ll likely post about the effects in the near future. I’m having some great success with the SSRI induced sexual dysfunction through natural supplements that I’ll talk about a lot on this blog.

During the past few years I have constantly researched and studied everything relating to health, fitness, training and nutrition. Recently I decided I need to get a hold of the last of my health issues – stress. During the last decade I have managed to cure my insomnia, some chronic and nasty digestion issues, severe lower back pain, obesity, constant sweating and my bad temper and irritability. I have also turned from weak, fat and out of shape to strong, lean and fit.  Stress, low libido, daytime fatigue and low testosterone are all on the to do list and I now know through my research they are all intertwined. I have made some great progress recently and that’s why I decided to make this blog. To help others and to keep track of my own progress and research. One thing is for sure – I will not give up until I have solved all my health issues. It has become my passion and I hope to share my success and knowledge with anyone willing to listen.

P.S. This page became a lot longer than intended. I left out a lot but this really cleared my mind about my own situation. Thanks to anyone who had the patience and interest to read it through. Drop a comment if you want to ask me anything.