How does stress affect your body?
Stress affects the body in so many ways. Our body is a complex and clever machine with the ability to rebalance itself every moment of the day. Here’s a quick snapshot of how stress can affect you.
Stress has been my silent companion for 20+ years so I know first hand🖐 how it’s supported me, as well as worked against me. Some of it I had not control over…the rest I believed I had not control over. It took me a long to time to realise I was wrong about that. First I had to reset my priorities to get a grip on my stressed life. Easy said than done - but not impossible. Then I had to started making changes. It took time.
Ongoing stress can cause people to become desensitised to the degree of stress they're under - trust me I know. Stressed people who have been enduring it for a while and appear to be coping but there are some signs that give suggest they under a lot of stress. They can:
talk fast
think fast
do fast - are always on the go
achieve a lot - but make frequent mistakes
find it difficult to sit and relax for lengthy periods of time
multi-task to the extreme
get sick regularly
sleep badly
be prone to accidents (big and small)
be forgetful
have high achiever or Type A personality traits
often have scattered focus
think they’re not stressed or think they coping ok
have difficulty recalling facts quickly
And that's not even the physical symptoms....
Stress is unpredictable and unavoidable — so the best thing you can do for yourself is to develop a healthy response or strategy to stress.
Here’s what happens when you’re faced with a stressor. Your brain signals your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline and cortisol to ready you for ‘fight or flight’. Your muscles tighten, heart rate goes up, breathing quickens and all energy is diverted from digestion to power your heart and muscles. It’s an instant biological response designed to keep you alive. We are designed to cope quickly with acute stress very effectively and then reset, but chronic (long term) can have a very damaging affect on your body.
Ongoing stress equals excess cortisol production which can have a negative affect on your efforts to stay happy and healthy. Cortisol is a stress hormone that helps to regulate functions like your sleep/wake cycle, but if left to roam the body day and night it can stimulate fat deposition, increase blood pressure, increase protein breakdown, cause bone demineralisation, suppress immunity function, cause memory loss and mood fluctuations (e.g. depression), and impact blood sugar balance. Let’s take a look.
Cortisol affects metabolism, in other words how your body changes food into energy. Increased production of this hormone messes with normal cortisol patterns and encourages fat deposition - commonly around the abdomen as dangerous visceral fat. You might have also noticed you want to eat more sweet, high fat and salty foods when you’re stressed as well, increasing your calorie intake which can equal more unwanted weight gain.
Ongoing stress puts added pressure on your heart. Some people can develop heart palpitations, pounding heart beat, irregular heart rate, chest pain, breathlessness, dizziness, and high blood pressure. Raised blood pressure is a natural reaction to stress and a necessary part of the fight or flight response - it becomes a problem if it's left to continue can compromise your cardiovascular system health. Your heart is a muscle designed to run 24hrs for 80 years or more - no mean feat. For great health in your latter years you need this bad boy in peak condition, so keeping your cardiovascular system healthy is an important piece of the puzzle.
Stress increases muscle tension so that your muscles are primed and ready to help you evade danger, but long term muscle tension causes decreased blood flow, muscle rigidity, and stiffness. Symptoms include pain and reduced flexibility, as well as increasing the risk of injury. Stress also causes the breakdown of proteins for energy, and long term muscles may be used as a protein source, making it harder to maintain muscle mass and reducing physical strength.
High levels of stress chemicals have been linked to loss of bone cells. It’s also thought that your body draws on alkaline minerals stores like calcium, magnesium and potassium from your bones to combat stress. In chronic stress this can lead to mineral deficiency and low BMD (bone mineral density). Gentle impact exercise and resistant training is beneficial, not only do they help with stress levels but also support bone cell formation.
Cortisol causes the body to prioritise blood flow the heart, muscles, and lungs in the face of stress. It also de-prioritises digestion, reproduction and immunity. That’s not to say you don’t have any immunity when you’re stressed, but the production of inflammatory mediators by the immune system is inhibited to conserve and deliver energy to where it is most needed. When stress is prolonged your immune system continues to be de-prioritised. Once stress lifts, your immune system is no longer held back and is free to function fully and do its job.
Your delicately malleable brain is also vulnerable to the effects of stress. At these times you might have noticed it difficult to quiet the mind, organise thoughts and remember things. That’s because areas of the brain that affect behaviour and cognition get bypassed so energy can be supplied to the amygdala - the part of the brain involved in survival. Things like memory, judging, planning, decision making, orientation, speech and language get affected. Stress is also thought to damage neural pathways between different areas of the brain, and cause cells damage and loss, reducing brain size. Younger brains are more able to reverse the damaging effects of stress compared to an ageing brain which is less capable of regaining or creating new neural pathways.
Stress causes your cells to release sugar molecules into the blood to be used for instant energy. Another clever survival technique built into your biology. Your pancreas helps keep your blood sugar in balance by producing insulin, which supports the re-uptake of sugars (by cells) from the blood stream. This is how insulin helps regulate blood sugar balance so it doesn’t get too high but making sure you still have energy. If stress goes on for too long cells start to become less receptive to insulin (aka insulin resistant) forcing the pancreas to work harder and tirelessly until your blood sugars levels have stabilised. If this continues for too long the pancreas will tire and be unable to produce insulin well - which can increase the risk of diabetes.
Avoid sugar and high carb cravings, as well as meal skipping to help take the load off your pancreas, especially when stressed.
Stress can cause fatigue, and eventual lead to adrenal fatigue. So many other things can also cause general fatigue so it can be difficult sometimes to recognise that stress might be the cause. That’s because cortisol and adrenaline can keep you fired up and going for quite some time…that is until you burn out. Burn out can show up in many ways, here a few things:
Physically
Exhaustion
Irritability
Frequent illness
Unresolved health issues
Sleep problems
Low libido
Emotionally
Mental exhaustion
Tearfulness
Mood swings
Sense of hopelessness or defeat
Anger
Irritability
Basically your body will endure stress pretty well, for months, years or even decades, and then…..it won’t. You'll feel fatigued, and so will your organs. You can also feel you've aged before your time, and who wants that?! Take you adrenals for example, when they become overused and exhausted, they call for backup, so your thyroid starts to take up some of the load, but it will eventually exhaust all its resources too if nothing changes. Add this to the other effects of stress on your body I’ve already mentioned, like your bones, weight, heart, immunity, muscles etc and you’re going to need a pretty big paddle for the creek you’ve found yourself up.
If stress has become embedded in your day to day life, now is the time to find ways to adapt and eliminate it where you can, don't leave it too late.
Here's a couple of ideas to help you break any stress-cycles happening in you life to help you let go of stress...
🎈Steer clear of drama
🎈Stay out of other peoples stress - give them space to help themselves
🎈Detach from people that bring stress into your life
🎈Find ways to stimulate you vagus nerve to ‘calm your farm’ like breath work (check out YouTube)
🎈Consider a different perspective on a stressful situation to turn it around
🎈Ask yourself “How is my stress serving me?” and consider ways to reduce it
🎈Detox social media and the news for a week - use the time to do something relaxing and fun
🎈Ask for help when you need it - it’s a sign of strength
🎈Try a de-stressing technique like Body Scanning or Progressive Relaxation (check out YouTube)
