YI woke up later than planned, so I’m in a hurry to get everything sorted before the school run. Stupidly, you check your phone while waiting for the toaster. Something has happened and your timeline is in scorching chaos in the worst possible situation imaginable. One of your kids leaves his shoes in the wrong place, and there’s an envelope on the doormat reprimanding him for driving in the bus lane.
There’s no doubt that you’re feeling stressed, and your body is likely to respond by strengthening the same biological systems that evolved to deal with intertribal conflict or mammoth attacks. But is there a downside to feeling constantly stressed and having these systems switched on? Let’s calm down, breathe, and dig into the science.
Professor Kavita Vedara, an expert in stress and behavioral medicine at Cardiff University, said: “The most immediate effect of stressful situations is a surge of adrenaline, which causes an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and breathing.” “This is your fight-or-flight response, designed to prepare you to meet the challenges you face.”
Within about 30 minutes of this rapid response, we also often (somewhat reductively) experience a rise in cortisol, known as the stress hormone. “Again, this is very helpful in supporting the fight-or-flight response because it regulates blood pressure, reduces inflammation, and increases the availability of blood sugar for more energy,” says Vedara.
All this was very useful centuries ago, when most of what life threw at us were physical difficulties. But now it’s pretty rare that I need to literally run away from or physically fight a source of stress, and it’s very easy to start worrying that someone is being mean to me on the internet or spend hours ruminating about an argument with your partner. The problem with this is that, roughly speaking, your body is putting all of its resources into action when it directs them to fight or flight. away From areas such as digestion, repair, and the immune system (sometimes called the rest and digest system). It’s fine if it happens once in a while, but that’s how we evolved. But when you’re chronically stressed, your body doesn’t have time to catch up.
“Perhaps the most well-known problem associated with chronic stress is a decline in immune function, which can increase the risk of infections, reduce the effectiveness of vaccines, and impair wound healing,” says Vedara. “However, we also know that chronic stress increases the risk of obesity, depression, and the progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.”
Another problem is that all of this can create unhealthy feedback loops. “The physiological nature of the stress response is complex, so we often experience a variety of changes in our bodies,” says Dr Jo Daniels, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Bath. “This in itself can be alarming for some people: Why is my heart beating so fast? This increases our attention to what are essentially normal body changes, effectively amplifying our physiological sensations and further heightening our stress and anxiety.”
“When we’re in a stress response, we’re hyper-vigilant and therefore more likely to think of normal changes in our body sensations as threats. And because we’re flooded with stress hormones and using old parts of our brains programmed to survive, our decision-making is also likely to be impaired, causing us to react in unhelpful ways.”
“For example, if you’re feeling a little irritable, you might not go outside because you feel like your body is saying, ‘There’s something going on here and I need to protect myself.'”
How badly do you have to be stressed, and how often do you have to be stressed, for all of this to be a concern? This is a question scientists are still grappling with. “This is a resilient system, designed to respond and recover,” Vedhara says. “How bad is it really? It’s certainly true that the experience of stress can have far-reaching effects on our physiology and can have very profound effects on our health and well-being. But that’s only true for long-term, persistent stressors.”
What is almost certain is that as lifestyle factors become more difficult, stress becomes more of a threat. For example, in a landmark study in the 1990s, researchers recruited about 400 healthy volunteers, exposed them to colds, and found that stress was highly correlated with their propensity to get sick. Older adults, who are already dealing with weakened immune systems, are more likely to experience the negative effects of chronic stress than middle-aged people. However, a complicating factor is that people’s ability to tolerate stress appears to vary widely. “A lot depends on your life experience,” says Daniels. “People affected by trauma may have a lower stress response threshold, while others seek out and thrive in stressful jobs. This is also influenced by their learned resilience and ability to manage and respond to stress. However, in the long term, as we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone has limits.”
so what can Is there anything you do to better manage stress? One of the most evidence-backed options, perhaps surprisingly, is actually to learn to stop, take a moment, and slow your breathing. “When people feel stressed or anxious, they tend to breathe more shallowly and quickly, which strengthens their threat response and maintains a physiological loop,” says Daniels. “Breathing slowly gives the brain a message that everything is okay and safe, essentially triggering a relaxation response. So something as simple as regulating your breathing can really make a difference and reduce stress on your head on mountain passes. The same goes for exercise, which helps reduce the buildup of excess adrenaline caused by a high stress response.”
It is important to understand that this is most effective in acute (i.e. temporary) stress situations. Severe, life-disrupting stress cannot be resolved simply by breathing. If stress occurs more frequently over a longer period of time, evidence-based psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may also be an option. “When we feel stressed or overwhelmed, we often jump to the idea, ‘I can’t handle this,'” Daniels says. “But is this true? Thoughts are not facts. A helpful strategy is to sit back and evaluate the evidence. Have you ever dealt with it before? Have you dealt with something worse? You can survive the worst-case scenario of being late for school drop-off time and forgetting to feed the cat Is it also helpful to discontinue or phase out coping strategies that are not helpful and contribute to the problem? For example, some people tend to work longer or harder in an attempt to resolve work-related problems, which can lead to increased stress over time.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques have a different focus. You will be taught skills that will help you move away from unhelpful thoughts rather than challenging them.
One option is to try both, depending on the nature of the stressor. While negative thought patterns and unhelpful coping strategies are often best addressed with CBT, mindfulness-based stress reduction may be better suited to deal with the inevitable.
avoidance of stress completely, of course, It’s not a realistic option. Even the 6% of people in the UK who say they have never experienced stress are probably just better able to cope with difficult situations than the rest of the population. If you are worried that you are suffering from consistently high levels of stress, the best thing to do is to understand the cause and address it. This can be as simple as not using social media first thing in the morning, or as difficult as changing jobs or having difficult conversations with your family.
“The earlier you catch your stress response, the more likely you are to reverse it using simpler strategies. However, in the case of chronic stress, it’s important to modify your lifestyle, access social support, and develop helpful coping skills,” says Daniels. “If you feel stressed most of the time, or all the time, or if you’re concerned about your own stress levels, it’s a good idea to get help.” And remember. You can’t always control the giant animals that charge towards you, but you can control how you react to them.
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