We’re always hearing about stress these days. It’s nothing new. People have always lived with things that worry them. But it could be argued that the pace and competitiveness of living today adds a new dimension to stress, and it affects more people.
We’ve always known that worries and emotional upsets can affect our physical well-being. A cut finger that you forget about when you’re busy or enjoying yourself will start to throb when you get into bed and start worrying about meeting your mortgage repayments, and a quarrel can play havoc with your appetite and digestion.
Why stress makes you feel ill
Our emotions affect our physical health through our unconscious nervous systems and reflex responses, which control everything that happens in our bodies except voluntary movement and conscious thought. The unconscious nervous system has two parts, the sympathetic system that prepares us to escape from threats (the ‘fight or flight’ response) and the parasympathetic system, which keeps things like breathing, circulation and digestion chugging away while we get on with other things. In health these two systems work in harmony and balance.
Everyone knows the ‘fight or flight’ reaction: you see a bus bearing down on you and you feel a rush of adrenalin that makes your heart and breathing rates quicken, your mouth go dry, your muscles tense for action, your skin go pale and cold because most of its blood flow is diverted to muscles, digestion just about stops and all your attention is focused on escaping the danger. As soon as you’ve dashed to safety, the adrenalin subsides and balance returns. The purpose of the ‘fight or flight’ reaction is to protect you from immediate physical dangers. When the reaction is prolonged because the threat (physical or emotional) continues and there’s no safe ending in sight, constant excess adrenalin in the blood really upsets the balance of your unconscious nervous system and plays havoc with your health.
Not all stress is bad
Being under pressure isn’t necessarily ‘bad’ stress. Pressure can be stimulating and exciting, motivating us to think clearly and creatively and to achieve things quickly and effectively. If pressure works in this way, it is a useful and healthy form of stress. But when pressure goes on and on and you can’t handle it, it makes you feel terrible. You become overwhelmed with worries; you can’t think clearly or act decisively, you lose confidence and hope and you feel ill. This is a type of anxiety, which broadly speaking is fear and uncertainty about how things will turn out.
Anxiety is the most common stressful emotion. Chronic anxiety keeps you in a state of mini-’fight or flight’ that can lead to physical symptoms such as palpitations, overbreathing, muscle tension that can bring on headaches and aching back and limbs, faulty posture that can cause joint and muscle pain, excessive sweating and digestive problems. You’re ‘worried sick’. Other stressful emotions such as anger, grief, depression, disappointment and resentment can disturb our health in similar ways.
As well as making us feel wretched, prolonged stress can be seriously damaging to our bodies.
• Blood pressure is increased and fats are released into the bloodstream.
• The immune system is suppressed.
• We’re at greater risk of infection and other physical illness.
• Highly stressed people are more likely to have accidents.
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