Posted On 26 Jan 2021

For many years now, medical doctors have been warning people of the dangers of poor stress management due to the harm it does to the body and the mind.  Many people still believe that stress doesn’t affect the body and it’s “just a state of mind.”

But this is wrong…

The Science of Stress

Stress is a whole-body experience. So the thinking that “it” is really harmless because it is in some way restrained to our imagination is clearly a dangerous belief. An individual who is under constant stress for many years is at a higher risk of having serious health conditions…one of them being high blood pressure.

So if you want to be physically healthier, you have to understand how stress actually affects the body – starts with the mental and emotional, followed by the psychological, and ends with the physiological or “fight and flight” response.

When the instinctual “fight or flight” response comes into play, a person immediately feels a surge of adrenaline, which temporarily increases a person’s speed, strength, and stamina. A person’s breathing rate and pulse rate also increase in preparation for sudden, intense physical activity. Stress normally lessens when the perceived threat or danger finally passes but the additional demand placed on the body organs and hormones has already been done and the body needs to recover.

Thousands of years ago, the instinctual “fight or flight” response was extremely beneficial since we had to be ready to fight or run away from wild animals and other dangers encountered in daily living and food gathering but it’s not an ideal physical or mental state to have active most if not all of the time. It wears the body down.

Below are some common physical symptoms that a person is experiencing stress:

1. Inexplicable exhaustion or fatigue
2. Acute headaches that have a tendency to disrupt work or chores at home
3. Shallow chest breathing
4. Increased heart rate even when the person is not performing strenuous or challenging physical activities
5. Minor muscular pain
6. Twitches
7. Facial tics
8. Hand and arm tremors
9. A general feeling of nervousness and anxiety
10. Insomnia
11. Oversleeping
12. Inexplicable perspiring of the hands and feet
13. Turning to different substances such as caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and even recreational drugs

The list of symptoms doesn’t stop there. Here is a breakdown of the mental symptoms associated with moderate to extreme stress:

1. Short temper
2. Feeling angry all the time
3. Inexplicable mood swings
4. Feeling of isolation and helplessness
5. Short term memory problems
6. Decrease in work productivity
7. Lowered sexual desire
8. Distracted thinking

The psychological signs often manifest when a person has been under stress for a long period of time. These signs come about because the brain is trying to escape the stressful situation however it can. Remember that the brain’s number one job is to keep you alive now.  It doesn’t worry about later…just now. If you are stressed now, it will try to find a solution and in doing so, it will not be active in making you productive at work, just an example.

Often in our Stress Management Workshops, while the attendants are learning the techniques to de-stress, someone will say that they were feeling pain in the hips, shoulders, etc but now it’s gone. Keep in mind that if you don’t release the stress somehow, you store it in your body as a feeling or an emotion. It then later shows up as pain in the body.  We are really good at doing this and then wonder why a certain part(s) of our body aches.

Did you know that in the United States alone, it is estimated that 90% of all physician visits are associated with symptoms related to chronic stress? It has also been estimated that on a monthly basis, 400 million people take medication to ease these symptoms. Of course, we know now that medicating a stress-related symptom is a futile effort because you’re not addressing the main/root cause of the symptom – you’re just padding the symptom itself.

Now, it should be noted that the symptoms we discussed earlier may also be genuine signs of other health conditions (and not just stress). Consulting with your physician is still your best option if you experience symptoms such as a racing heart rate or persistent headaches.