Stress! it’s a word a lot of us are all too familiar with. Most of us will experience it at some point in our lives, some on a daily basis. The severity will depend on a few different circumstances, but nonetheless, no one is immune to it.
Whilst we all may be familiar with how stress feels, we need to take a deeper look to find out what’s going on at a physiological level. Keep reading to find out what stress actually is, what causes it and how it affects our bodies.
What is stress?
Simply put, stress has become a term used to describe how our bodies react to something that poses a threat to our survival. Whether that be perceived or real. It is an intrinsic part of our neurobiology and is inherent to all mammals. Our brains have evolved with the development of a ‘stress response’ in order to protect us from harm, and to ensure the survival of our species.
It is the most primitive part of our neurobiology and is imperative to our survival. Without this stress response humans, among other mammals, would not have survived as long as we have.
So what’s the problem? This all sounds pretty positive, and it is! It literally is a system that has meticulously evolved to keep us alive! It’s when this stress response gets ‘stuck’ that problems start to arise for us. Let’s take a deeper look at the stress response, and what happens when it becomes overactive.
The Stress Response A.K.A Fight or Flight
The stress response is often more commonly known as the ‘Fight or Flight’ response. As stated previously, it is a carefully designed process that helps us to ‘fight’ or ‘flee’ a situation that poses a threat to us. During this process a number of reactions happen within the body to increase our energy and alertness.
Stress hormones are released into the blood stream. This causes our blood pressure to spike, heart rate and breathing to quicken and our muscles to become tense in preparation to fight or flee from a potentially dangerous situation.
Healthy Stress VS Chronic Stress
So far the stress response is looking pretty positive. It’s something we literally couldn’t live without. But here’s the catch. Our bodies are only designed to be able to deal with a CERTAIN amount of stress. ‘Healthy stress’ is when our stress response reacts to a real threat to our survival in order to protect us. It is usually short-lived and our bodies return to our ‘rest and digest’ response once the threat has been eliminated.
When this stress response overstays it’s welcome, our bodies soon start to malfunction and a whole host of negative physiological and psychological reactions arise. This type of stress is known as ‘Chronic Stress’. So what happens to our bodies when this type of stress persists?
Overtime our bodies get stuck in fight or flight and high levels of cortisol lead to a number of imbalances within the body. The long-term activation of the stress response and the overexposure to stress hormones like cortisol can disrupt almost all your body’s processes. This puts you at increased risk of many health problems, including: Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, cardiovascular disease and inflammatory disease such as Chron’s disease.
What causes chronic stress
So now it is important to look at what causes this chronic stress so that we can help prevent it and find solutions to it. Chronic stress happens when our bodies feel threatened too frequently over a prolonged period of time. You might think how can we feel threatened that regularly if we are not exposed to that many dangerous situations? The funny thing about our neurobiology is is that it has not yet evolved to recognise and categorize different threats based on their level of risk.
Basically, our brains cannot tell the difference between an imagined threat and a real one. It will react to both in the exact same way. Therefore an angry email may evoke the same stress response we would get when being chased by a bear! Logically we know that we are not actually in any physical harm, but our brain disagrees!
When our brains are exposed to certain stressors over a prolonged period of time a process called ‘Negative Plasticity’ takes place. Brain plasticity refers to the process of brain cells becoming wired together as a result of repeated action. Hebbs law states that “Neurons that fire together, wire together”. This can be very beneficial when learning a new skill. However, it can also lead to us learning negative thinking patterns and behaviours.
When we are overexposed to certain stressors, neurological pathways that respond to these stressors become stronger and faster, whilst pathways responsible for feelings of calm, safety and contentment become weaker and slower. This means that overtime it takes much less to trigger the stress response the more we’re exposed to these stressors. Our bodies literally get ‘stuck’ in survival mode and the result is chronic physiological and emotional stress on our bodies.
How to deactivate chronic stress
The first step to reducing chronic stress is awareness. Many people do not even know when they are stressed. They feel the physical symptoms, such as muscle tension, IBS, chronic fatigue, and weakened immunity, and seek medical help to treat these symptoms without realising that stress is the cause.
Once we are aware we can then notice what triggers our stress response. If we can eliminate these triggers that will certainly help, however oftentimes our triggers are unavoidable aspects of our lives, therefore we need to adopt coping strategies to help reduce stress.
Things to try:
Here are a few ways in which we can deactivate our stress response and bring our bodies back into rest and digest:
- Awareness – pay attention to your body, behaviours, emotional reactions and negative thought patterns.
- Physical activity – get your blood pumping. Exercise has been shown to decrease cortisol levels whilst boosting the happy hormones endorphins, serotonin and dopamine.
- Hobbies – if possible, do things you enjoy, no matter how simple or small, this will also increase happy hormones and reduce cortisol.
- Breathwork – try 5-5-5 breathing. Inhale slowly and deeply into your abdomen for 5 seconds. Hold for 5 seconds. Exhale slowly for 5 seconds. This tells your brain that the body is not under threat and will deactivate the fight or flight response.
- The Vagus Nerve – the Vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body that innervates all areas of the body. It is responsible for the rest and digest response. When stimulated it will help to deactivate the fight or flight response, bringing our body back into calm and balance. There are a number of ways to activate the Vagus nerve, such as massaging the neck and shoulders, singing, humming, placing an ice-pack on the chest, splashing the face with cold water, cold showers, yawning, and chewing gum.
- Meditate – meditation is great for rewiring the brain. Observe negative thought patterns and focus on breathing.
- Diet – reduce sugar, caffeine and alcohol to lower cortisol levels. Also you can try stress-busting herbal supplements such as Ashwagandha and Valerian (check with GP before use). These are adaptogen herbs that reduce cortisol and help our bodies adapt to stressful situations.
- Sleep – if possible, try to get at least 8 hours of sleep most nights. Sleep deprivation has been shown to increase cortisol levels leading to increased stress, anxiety, depression and lowered immunity.
- Seek help – you can seek help from psychologist and psychiatrists. CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) is a great tool that many psychotherapists use to help us rewire our negative thinking patterns and cope with stress.
- Talk it out – a problem shared is a problem halved. Talking to a loved one can help reduce cortisol and ease stress. Also the act of hugging will also decrease cortisol and boost oxytocin ‘the cuddle hormone’.
- Let it out – don’t suppress your emotions. If you need to cry, let it out. Crying has been proven to reduce stress by the process of our tears eliminating cortisol. Along with this oxytocin and endorphins are also released.
- Medicate – If stress is severe and impacting your quality of life along with your health, it may be worth seeking help in the form of medication. (Again, always discuss with your GP).
The takeaway
Stress is a somewhat unavoidable in the society we live in. It’s how we react to these stressors that matters. Awareness, support and adaptability are the key factors to keep chronic stress at bay.
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