Stress and Physical Health

Stress doesn’t only live in your mind. You might notice it when your shoulders tighten, your heart races, or your stomach feels off. These small signs are your body’s way of showing that it’s under pressure.

Our stress response also includes our bodily reactions to the experience of stress. These physical reactions can have lasting effects on our overall health.

Have you ever wondered why it always seems to be around exams or that big presentation at work that you get the flu or your skin breaks out? Have you ever noticed that when you are under a lot of stress, it starts to take its toll on your body? The body and mind are closely connected, and when we face challenging events, they affect not only our thoughts and feelings but also our physical state.

A key feature of your stress response is the impact it has on your physical state. When you find yourself facing a threatening situation such as being fired from work or going through a divorce, your body mobilises resources in order for you to manage the situation either by escaping (flight) or standing your ground (fight). This primitive bodily reaction of fight or flight is your body’s attempt to maximise your chances of survival. When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, the body releases higher levels of the hormones cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline, creating heightened alertness and slowing down non-essential bodily functions. For the person experiencing this fight or flight response, the physical results may include heightened alertness, tensed muscles, faster breathing, an increased heart rate and perspiration. On the other hand, the digestive system slows down and one’s immune response is reduced. In this state, your body is focused entirely on getting through the threat.

While this response may be useful to get you through a challenging time, staying in this heightened mode for extended periods has harmful effects on your health and wellbeing. Ideally, we want to return to a state of balance where a relaxed heart rate and breathing are restored. Sometimes, though, we become caught in a stress-driven cycle and struggle to escape this heightened state. Our bodily and behavioural (as well as emotional and cognitive) responses to stress feed into each other, maintaining the stress response. This is especially so when we are faced with intense, multiple or cumulative stressors. For instance, caring for a chronically ill spouse, moving house, losing your job, and getting divorced within a short time can push you into a space where it’s difficult to return to calm.

This can have a long-term impact on health. The cumulative effects of stress on the body include back pain, cramps and muscle spasms, sexual dysfunction, headaches, reduced immunity, sleep disturbance, stomach problems, high blood pressure and heart disease. In addition, ongoing stress has a behavioural impact as well. Heightened stress is associated with over- or undereating, anger management problems, substance abuse and social withdrawal, which may in turn exacerbate the experience of stress and affect bodily functioning. Research has also shown a link between stress and chromosomal damage. Chronic emotional stress has been linked to a shortening of the ends of chromosomes called telomeres. While these ends naturally shorten with age, stress appears to affect telomere length too, increasing the risk of diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and strokes.

While we might think of stress as a relatively minor part of daily life that we just have to deal with, if ignored, the long-term effects on our physical health can be significant. So start to notice your exposure to stressful circumstances and your particular physical and behavioural responses to stress. Just like you watch what you eat or make sure to get enough exercise, paying attention to how you experience and manage stress is an essential part of maintaining good health.