Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. Stress can be defined as the brain's response to any demand. Many things can trigger this response, including change. Changes can be positive or negative, as well as real or perceived. They may be recurring, short-term, or long-term and may include things like school or every day work, or moving to another home. Changes can be mild and relatively harmless, such as winning a race, watching a scary movie, or riding a roller coaster. Some changes are major, such as marriage or divorce, serious illness, extreme work or a car accident.
When you sense danger whether it’s real or imagined the body's defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight or flight or freeze” reaction, or the stress response. When you perceive a threat, your nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones rouse the body for emergency action. Your heart pounds faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure rises, breath quickens, and your senses become sharper. These physical changes increase your strength and stamina, speed your reaction time, and enhance your focus preparing you to fight from the danger at hand.
The stress response is the body’s way of protecting you. When working properly, it helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. In emergency situations, stress can save your life giving you extra strength to defend yourself, like spurring you to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident. The stress response also helps you rise to meet challenges. Stress is what keeps you on your toes during a presentation at work, and it sharpens your concentration like, drives you to study for an exam.
But beyond a certain point, stress stops being helpful and starts causing major damage to your health, your mood, your productivity, your relationships, and your quality of life. It's important to learn how to recognize when your stress levels are out of control. The most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feel familiar, even normal. You don't notice how much it's affecting you. The signs and symptoms of stress overload can be almost anything. Stress affects the mind, body, and behavior in many ways, and everyone experiences stress differently. Stress leads to serious mental and physical health problems, it can also take a toll on your relationships at home, work, and school.
Signs and symptoms of stress
The diagram below shows the warning signs and symptoms of stress. The more signs and symptoms you notice in yourself, the closer you may be to stress overload.
Keep in mind that the signs and symptoms of stress can also be caused by other psychological or medical problems. Prolonged exposure to the warning signs of stress leads to numerous health problems or illness.
Illnesses caused by stress
You may think that health problems are the result of bacteria or viruses. What we do not realize is that stress can also disable the body’s immune system to make you more susceptible to germs in the environment. As a result your immune system fails to function properly. There are many kinds of illnesses caused by stress involving both the body and the mind. Here are some of the health problems and diseases caused by uncontrolled stress.
1. Heart disease
- Acute stress causes an increase in heart rate and blood flow, and causes the release of cholesterol and triglycerides into the bloodstream.
- Blood vessels that direct blood to large muscles and to heart dilate and increasing the amount of blood pumped to these parts of the body.
- Repeated episodes of acute stress can cause inflammation in the coronary arteries and finally it leads to heart attack.
2. Depression, Anxiety and panic attacks
- Unresolved stress can make a person feel angry or hopeless, both of which can lead to depression.
- If you feel chronically sad, have trouble thinking clearly, feeling alone or unloved, chances are you are battling a serious case of depression related to stress. Illnesses caused by stress may appear unrelated, but when doctors, counselors, take a closer look, often there is a cause and effect relationship between stress and conditions like depression.
- Like depression, anxiety disorders and panic attacks frequently have a stress-related connection. Stress can make you breathe harder and cause rapid breathing or hyperventilation, which can bring on panic attacks in some people.
- Stress may prompt you to eat much more or much less than you usually eat. If you eat more or different foods or increase your intake of tobacco or alcohol, you may experience heartburn or acid reflux.
- Your stomach may experience butterflies or nausea and pain. You may even vomit if you are under severe stress.
- Stress can affect your digestion and important nutrients your intestine absorbs. It can also affect how quickly food moves through your body. So you may find that you have constipation or diarrhea.
- In men the excess amounts of cortisol produced under stress can affect the normal functioning of the reproductive system. Chronic stress can impair testosterone, sperm production and cause impotence.
- In women, stress can cause absent or irregular menstrual cycles or more painful periods. It can also reduce sexual desire.
- Stress can worsen diabetes in two ways. First, it increases the likelihood of bad behaviors, such as unhealthy eating and excessive drinking. Second, stress seems to raise the glucose levels of people with type 2 diabetes directly.
- When the body is stressed, the brain sends signals from the hypothalamus (it is a section of the brain responsible for hormone production) causing the adrenal glands to produce stress hormones, cortisol and epinephrine. When these stress hormones are released, the liver produces more glucose and the blood sugar levels increases.
- Stress is considered one of the most common triggers for headaches not just tension headaches, but migraines as well.
- Under stress, muscles tense up. The contraction of muscles for extended periods can trigger tension headaches, migraines and various musculoskeletal conditions.
- Stress keeps people awake at night due to worry and anxiety. Some people worry about their jobs, while others are concerned over family issues or health problems. Many things in life can be stressful and stress if left unmanaged, can interrupt or delay sleep (Insomnia).
- Because of lack of sleep you will be mentally or emotionally stressed out. This can even delay, physical healing of local infections, like a bug bite or systemic infections, like food poisoning.
- Stress drains the positive energy of the body as it strives to cope up with stress-related issues. This leaves inadequate energy to sustain bodily immune functions that heal infectious illnesses and injuries.
- Many people react to stress by feeding an eating pattern that typically reaches for sweets or carbohydrate or fats-laden foods for a quick sugar rush. While your blood sugar and body fat increases, often leaving you feeling worse than before.
- Stress releases higher levels of the hormone cortisol, and that increases the amount of fat that's deposited in the abdomen. Excess fat in the belly seems to pose greater health risks than fat on the legs or hips and unfortunately, that's just where people with high stress seems to store it.
- Stress can make your body’s arteries and veins tighten up in response to the fight or flight complex. This compression can reduce blood flow throughout the body and create problems like blood clots, poor circulation, or even strokes.
- People who are stressed often have immune systems that are not functioning properly. Consequently, they can get sick faster and easier than they otherwise might. They might get easily infected with cold or viral infections.
It may seem that there’s nothing you can do about stress. In fact, the simple realization that you’re in control of your life is the foundation of stress management. Managing stress is all about taking charge of your thoughts, emotions, schedule, and the way you deal with problems. Stress management starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Your true sources of stress aren’t always obvious, and it’s all too easy to overlook your own stress-inducing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. There are many healthy ways to manage and cope with stress, but they all require change. You can either change the situation or change your reaction. When deciding which option to choose, it’s helpful to think of the four As: avoid, alter, adapt, or accept. The healthiest ways to manage stress includes relaxation techniques and adopting a healthier lifestyle.
1. Avoid unnecessary strain and stress
- Set your limits and stick to them. Whether in your personal or professional life, taking on more than you can handle is always more stressful.
- Avoid people who stress you out. If someone consistently causes stress in your life and you can’t turn the relationship around, limit the amount of time you spend with that person or end the relationship entirely.
- If you get upset over religion or politics or any other topic, cross them off your conversation list. If you repeatedly argue about the same subject with the same people, stop bringing it up or excuse yourself when it’s the topic of discussion.
- Analyze your schedule, responsibilities, and daily tasks. If you’ve got too much on your plate, distinguish between the “should” and the “musts.” Drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the list or eliminate them entirely.
- If you can’t avoid a stressful situation, try to alter it. Figure out what you can do to change things so the problem doesn’t present itself in the future. Often, this involves changing the way you communicate and operate in your daily life.
- Express your feelings instead of bottling them up. If something or someone is bothering you, communicate your concerns in an open and respectful way. If you don’t voice your feelings, resentment will build and the situation will likely remain the same.
- Manage your time better. Poor time management can cause a lot of stress. When you’re stretched too thin and running behind, it’s hard to stay calm and focused. But if you plan ahead and make sure you don’t overextend yourself, you can alter the amount of stress you’re under.
- Be more assertive. Don’t take a backseat in your own life. Deal with problems head on, doing your best to anticipate and prevent them.
- You can adapt to stressful situations and regain your sense of control by changing your expectations and attitude.
- Try to view stressful situations from a more positive perspective. When stress is getting you down, take a moment to reflect on all the things you appreciate in your life, including your own positive qualities and gifts. This simple strategy can help you keep things in perspective.
- Perfectionism is a major source of avoidable stress. Stop setting yourself up for failure by demanding perfection. Set reasonable standards for yourself and others, and learn to be okay with “good enough.”
- The best way to cope with stress is to accept things as they are. Acceptance may be difficult, but in the long run, it’s easier than railing against a situation you can’t change.
- Don’t try to control the uncontrollable. Many things in life are beyond our control, particularly the behavior of other people. Rather than stressing out over them, focus on the things you can control such as the way you choose to react to problems.
- Beyond a positive attitude, you can reduce stress in your life by nurturing yourself. If you regularly make time for fun and relaxation, you’ll be in a better place to handle life’s stresses. Don’t get so caught up in the whirlpool of life that you forget to take care of your own needs. Nurturing yourself is a necessity, not a luxury.
- Set aside relaxation time. Include rest and relaxation in your daily schedule. Don’t allow other obligations to intervene. This is your time to take a break from all responsibilities and recharge your batteries.
- Spend time with positive people who enhance your life. A strong support system will buffer you from the negative effects of stress.
- Make time for leisure activities that brings you joy like playing some musical instrument, spending time in nature, taking a long bath, playing with pet, working in the garden, watching a comedy movie, etc.
- Music is an extremely effective stress management tool. Listening to music can have a tremendously relaxing effect on our mind and body. Music can have a beneficial effect on our physiological functions, slowing the pulse and heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and decreasing the levels of stress hormones. Singing along can be a great release of tension, and calming music before bedtime promotes peace and relaxation and helps to induce sleep.
- Meditation is commonly used for relaxation and stress reduction. Meditation is considered a type of mind-body complementary medicine. During meditation, you focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that benefits both your emotional well-being and your overall health.
- Reading can be a wonderful way to escape the stress of everyday life. Simply by opening a book, you allow yourself to be invited into a literary world that distracts you from your daily stresses. Reading can even relax your body by lowering your heart rate and easing the tension in your muscles. A 2009 study at the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress by up to 68%. It works better and faster than other relaxation methods, such as drinking a hot cup of tea or watching a comedy, etc.
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You can increase your resistance to stress by strengthening your physical health.
- Exercise regularly. Physical activity plays a key role in reducing and preventing the effects of stress. Make time for at least 30 minutes of exercise, three times per week. Nothing can beat exercises like aerobics, yoga, swimming, brisk walking for releasing pent-up stress and tension.
- Eat a healthy diet. Well-nourished bodies are better prepared to cope with stress, so be mindful of what you eat. Start your day right with breakfast, and keep your energy up and your mind clear with balanced, nutritious meals throughout the day.
- Reduce caffeine in your diet. By reducing the amount of coffee, soft drinks, chocolate, and sugar snacks in your diet, you’ll feel more relaxed and you’ll sleep better.
- Avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Self-medicating with alcohol or drugs may provide an easy escape from stress, but the relief is only temporary.
- Get enough sleep. Adequate sleep fuels your mind, as well as your body. Feeling tired will increase your stress because it may cause you to think irrationally.
- To combat sleeplessness caused by stress, try drinking a glass of milk before bedtime, avoid caffeine, do not exercise at least four hours before going to bed and keep your bedroom cool, dimly lit and comfortable.
- Do not think about stress-related problems when you get ready for bed. Instead, fill your mind with peaceful or happy thoughts to prepare for a good night’s rest.
Stress can be harder on the body than harsh physical labor. If you are concerned about contracting these illnesses caused by stress, take time to evaluate the factors that may be contributing anxiety to your life. If you experience symptoms of these or other illnesses, make an appointment with your doctor to get a complete examination and medical assessment. Although it is helpful to get health information by reading and talking with friends, make sure you consult your doctor first before trying any new treatment or changing your diet. You can even try out the relaxation techniques to manage stress, it might take some time, but it will help you in the long run. Learn how to take steps to manage stressful factors in your life before stress takes control of you.
