The Effect of Stress on Our Body
The line where stress starts to become detrimental to our health is kind of shady. We need stress in our life to keep us alert, active, and healthy, but at what point does it become too much?
Luckily, our body will give us signs if it is undergoing too much stress. These signs can show in the form of physical, mental, or emotional responses. Here are some of the signs that you may be experiencing too much stress according to webmd.com.
Physical responses to stress
If your body is undergoing too much stress, odds are it is going to have some sort of physical response. The problem is we are usually too busy going, going, going that we ignore the signs.
The physical response can be everything from a headache to a heart attack. It can come in the form of pain or tension in your head, chest, stomach, or muscles. You may be involuntarily tensing all the time which can lead to headaches or musculoskeletal problems.
The stress can also appear as digestive issues – diarrhea, constipation, nausea, and vomiting. According to WebMD, “stress can affect how quickly food moves through your system and the way your intestines absorb nutrients.”
Reproductively, stress can affect your sex drive, cause irregular periods, impotence, and inhibit sperm production.
One of the more dangerous effects that stress has on your body is that it can raise your heart rate and blood pressure. Flight or fight mode is activated. Your adrenal glands release cortisol and adrenaline which cause your heart to beat faster and your blood pressure to rise.¹ Although it seems to only last a moment, if it happens over and over again, there is an increased risk of having a heart attack.
According to a Harvard Business Law article,
“High blood pressure affects about 60 million Americans. Related diseases of the heart and brain account for about 50% of the deaths each year in the United States.”²
Mental and emotional responses to stress
If not physical, you may experience mental or emotional responses to stress. Many of these symptoms are treated as individual problems but if you look at the larger picture, they may all originate from excessive stress.
WebMD lists the mental and emotional responses to stress as:¹
Depression or anxiety
Anger, irritability, or restlessness
Feeling overwhelmed, unmotivated, or unfocused
Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
Racing thoughts or constant worry
Problems with your memory or concentration
Making bad decisions
A study in the International Journal of Stress Management concluded that cognitive responses were the main sign of stress. They called it cognitive disruption (CD). This included losing focus, having difficulty making decisions, memory loss, etc.
They said, “When looking at behavioral signs of stress overload, cognitive disturbances appear much more likely to occur in people dealing with stress overload than moodiness or nervous habits.”³
Some other signs are less of an appetite or eating more, turning to stimulants like drugs or alcohol, withdrawing from family and friends, and a lack of motivation to work out.
The Yerkes-Dodson law
Drs. Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson discovered the Yerkes-Dodson law in 1908. They determined that efficiency and performance increased as stress increased. The problem was that it plateaued and efficiency and performance began to decrease as stress continued to increase.²
Stress is just fine and a positive thing for us to experience until it becomes too much. It’s a problem when our body cannot recover from the stress anymore. Hans Selye says that “feelings of stress occur when our sense of homeostasis is disrupted and our body needs to draw on inner resources to restore the balance.”³
When the inner resources are no longer available is when the physical, mental, and emotional responses start to occur.
Ways to Counterattack Stress
One way to counterattack stress is through exercise. When you experience the fight or flight response, your body holds on to the tension it creates. Exercising helps to burn off the physiological changes that happen during the fight or flight response.²
Another way to counterattack stress that seems obvious, yet difficult to do – is to relax. A study was done on two groups of people. One group was told to continue working as normal while the other group took breaks to relax. The second group was found to have lower blood pressure after just 8 weeks and were performing better than the group that didn’t take any breaks.²
To properly practice the relaxation response, you need “a quiet environment; a comfortable position; the repetition of a word (for instance, the number one), phrase, or prayer; and the adoption of a passive attitude when other thoughts come into consciousness.”²
It has been proven that while relaxing, the body’s metabolism and blood pressure drop. The relaxation response “has been established as an effective therapy for high blood pressure, many forms of irregular heartbeat, and symptoms associated both with tension headaches and anxiety.”²
There is a fine line between not enough stress and stress overload. The important thing is to not ignore the signs when your body is starting to get burnt out and to take breaks periodically to rest and recharge.
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