Is Stress harming your health

Are you feeling stressed right now? If you are, it’s not surprising, as stress is everywhere in modern life, particularly at this time of the year.

However, stress, if unmanaged, can cause many adverse health issues. In this article, you’ll learn about how stress affects your body’s chemistry.

But by the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll have some actionable strategies to empower you to respond to and deal with stress.

What is Stress?

Stress is anything your body perceives as potentially being harmful. This includes both real and imagined threats. And there’s a pretty long list of such situations. Typical stressors include traffic jams, work and relationship conflicts, money worries, grief, loneliness, deadlines, health worries, and lack of time.

Even internal conditions in your body can cause stress, like rollercoaster blood sugar and toxic load from pollution or chemicals in food. And don’t forget environmental issues you might not suspect, like EMFs. These are invisible electromagnetic fields emitted by electrical devices and some forms of lighting. Their cumulative effect on your body’s cells can overstimulate, sparking off the stress response.

Your Stress Response – Keeping You Safe

Your body releases chemical messengers called hormones to help you deal with stress. These chemicals cause physiological changes in your cells and tissues, designed to keep you safe.

One example often given is being in a field with an angry bull. You’d need to escape from this dangerous situation, and quickly. Therefore, your body rapidly releases hormones to mobilise extra energy so you can escape. It’s a pretty effective mechanism which has protected humans for millennia.

However, most people nowadays aren’t stuck in fields with angry bulls. Those physiological reactions to stress don’t serve as well for stressors which – unlike the angry bull scenario – are ongoing rather than over quickly. Much as you might be tempted to, it wouldn’t do you much good to sprint out of the office when your boss is on the prowl. Quitting your job would replace that particular stress with others, like money worries or relationship issues. In today’s world, stressors tend to pile up one after another and rumble on and on over time.

Let’s have a closer look at your stress hormones now.

Your Stress Hormones

Adrenaline is the hormone triggering your fight/flight response. It diverts blood to your heart, lungs, and muscles so you can run away from the bull; and your brain, so you can act quickly. The jolt of energy you feel when almost tripping up over a kerbstone is adrenaline doing its job.

The other major stress hormone is cortisol. It’s produced by your adrenal glands, often nicknamed your stress glands. Actually, your adrenals are part of a collaboration between your brain’s hypothalamus and pituitary gland, called the HPA axis. The HPA axis is activated to help your body deal with stress after the initial burst of adrenaline, with cortisol helping you to stay alert.

However, these hormones are only intended to be released to get you out of a short-lived dangerous situation. The mismatch between modern life and the one humans evolved to live creates a condition where stress hormones are continually released. And your body was not designed to exist constantly in fight/flight mode.

If your HPA axis is permanently revved up by long-term stress, energy is diverted away from other important functions such as digestion and the repair process. This can damage cells, mess up blood sugar control, and depress your immune system. It can also interfere with sleep and hormone balance and push up blood pressure.

How to Avoid Stress Controlling You

Breathing Exercises

When you breathe deeply and evenly – think of a dog at rest – this signals your brain that you’re not in any danger. Rapid shallow breaths, on the other hand, tell your brain you‘re stressed. Dialling down stress by breathing as you would in a calm situation is a simple yet incredibly effective technique. It can be done anywhere and is totally free.

Breathe deeply into your belly rather than your chest. If you’re pressed for time, try it the next time you’re in the supermarket checkout queue or waiting for an elevator. Meditation and yoga can help, too, and they both include breathwork.

Sleep

Stress and sleep are a vicious circle with each affecting the other. Adopting supportive sleep strategies is a good start. This includes setting a consistent bedtime, even at weekends. Every cell in your body has a circadian rhythm which can be knocked out by irregular bedtimes.

Avoid caffeine and food late into the evening. Your body needs to rest at night, not digest a late-night snack or dinner. A supplement of magnesium at bedtime can also help (1). Chamomile and lemon balm teas are both relaxing drinks. Put your phone to bed, in another room, a few hours before you go yourself.

The Healing Power of Nature

Getting out and about in nature, especially if you’re also moving your body, encourages you to slow down and be mindful. Nature is full of calming patterns, odours and sounds which have been found to dial down stress (2). If you’re in a city, seek out a tree-lined street or a park.

Nutrition

Your stress glands use a lot of vitamin C. So, if they’re overworked, you’ll need plenty, as you can’t store it in your body. The same goes for B vitamins, which aren’t called anti-stress nutrients for nothing. On the other hand, magnesium is an essential mineral involved in the relaxation of muscles and nerves. A Functional Nutritionist can advise on suitable dietary modifications and supplements to help your body deal with stress.

It can also be useful to test your levels of stress hormones to see how stress is affecting your physiology. As an example, your cortisol should naturally rise shortly after you wake up. A Comprehensive Adrenal Stress Test uses a sample of your saliva to reveal your cortisol levels at different times of the day, in turn determining whether your HPA axis is reacting as it should. The test can also detect whether stress is affecting your immune system by looking at inflammatory markers.

Emotional Freedom Technique

This therapy combines cognitive behavioural therapy with acupressure techniques to restore energy flow and release tension. EFT views distress as caused by the relationship between the mind and the body. The body’s tendency to hold onto emotional responses can disrupt energy.

EFT has been shown to significantly reduce cortisol (3), improving nervous system regulation. Many people experience immediate relief from EFT as well as finding it supportive through challenging times.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

ACT can help reduce perceived stress, particularly for people in situations they cannot change, or they have no control over. It’s based on the idea that psychological inflexibility can be a cause of stress. ACT involves learning how to step back from your thoughts, a process known as cognitive defusion. It also teaches how to allow unwanted thoughts and feelings to come and go without trying to prevent them.

Felt Sense Polyvagel Model

This therapy recognises that stress and trauma can leave the body in constant fight/flight mode. By combining neuroscience and somatic therapy (felt sense), nervous system balance can be restored. As a result, you naturally become more grounded and calmer. This therapy is ideal if you are experiencing chronic stress and burnout.

Personalised Support for Stress Management

In today’s time-poor world, it’s hard to prioritise self-care strategies. The last thing you need is for failure to do them to become yet another source of stress. If this feels like you, or you think the effects of stress are damaging your physical or mental health, then our therapists are here to help you.

Here at the Forbes Clinic of Integrative Medicine we offer a broad range of therapies. An Integrative Health Assessment will determine the particular route most appropriate for your personal circumstances. We will take away the guesswork and help you take the first step to overcoming the negative effects of stress.