Chronic stress can be particularly damaging to your overall health and well-being especially as you age. Some studies show that 43 percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress and 75 to 90 percent of all doctor’s office visits are said to be for stress-related ailments and complaints. Learn to recognize the symptoms of chronic stress and try some recommended techniques to reduce stress.
Stress generally falls into one of two categories:
Stress can be lifesaving; it activates the reactions that result in your jumping out of the way of a speeding car or grabbing onto a tree branch if you’re falling.
However, if your stress reactions are activated too often, stress can become chronic. Instead of leveling off after the crisis passes, your stress hormones, heart rate, and blood pressure remain elevated. Extended or repeated activation of the stress response takes a heavy toll on your body and accelerates the aging process.
Your Body’s Built-In Response System: How it’s Supposed to Work
Human bodies were designed for stress. The autonomic nervous system, consisting of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, continually attempts to balance your physical and emotional reactions to stress. Both distress and eustress cause physical and mental adaptations, such as an increase in your heart rate, dilation of your pupils, and a rise in your blood sugar. These responses are orchestrated by your sympathetic nervous system, and allow you to respond quickly to any changes in your world by helping you move faster, see better, and think quickly.
Each time your body experiences stress, the same biological and physiological responses are set off in a chain reaction known as the stress syndrome.
But stress isn’t meant to be a chronic condition. After the perceived “danger” has passed, the parasympathetic nervous system normally takes over, allowing your body to revert back to its normal “non-stressed” state.
Observing the Tolls or Chronic Stress
In today’s fast-paced world, many events can initiate a stress reaction. If your life lurches from perceived crisis to crisis, your ability to wind down after the immediate danger has passed becomes damaged. This reaction happens quite often with today’s busy lifestyles. Chronic stress occurs when acute stress responses keep your body on alert continuously, not allowing it to return to a state of homeostasis, the balanced state of health. If you’re faced with continuous stressors, over time, the sympathetic system becomes overwhelmed. When that happens, stress can cause serious mental and physical health issues. Chronic stress can be especially damaging as you age.
Recognizing chronic stress is the first step to combating its negative effects on your life. After you identify the symptoms, you can develop techniques to cope with it without being overwhelmed by it.
The physical effects
Chronic stress can take a heavy physical toll. The ongoing stress response causes the hypothalamus and pituitary gland to release a chemical known as ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone). ACTH, known as the “stress hormone,” stimulates the adrenal gland to produce and release cortisol and stress can keep cortisol at an increased level. Cortisol is responsible for helping with many of the body’s functions, but the functions are different when cortisol is released in response to stress than when it’s released in normal situations. Normally, cortisol helps with glucose metabolism, controlling inflammation, boosting the immune system, and regulating blood pressure. Cortisol released under stress can give you an extra burst of energy and can depress your response to pain. However, when cortisol release is prolonged due to chronic stress, it can have adverse effects on your body. Cortisol levels are typically lowest during the night and highest in the morning, with a peak level at around 7:00 a.m.
Stress can contribute to many physical problems:
Continual stress response and the hormonal influences can produce inflammation and are most commonly associated with worsening of autoimmune or inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, and inflammatory bowel disease. Some hormones, including the glucocorticoids, are known to be immunosuppressive, meaning they suppress your immune system—not something you want when you’re trying to heal.
The mental and psychological effects
Too much stress can upset your mental health. For example, the persistent stress-induced elevations of cortisol, which affects hormone neurotransmitters and the formation of free radicals, can contribute to age-related disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and late-life depression.
The following are some general mental and psychological effects of chronic stress:
Paying attention to your stress response
Staying in tune with your body and becoming more aware of stress symptoms when they first appear can help you begin to relax before your stress levels are out of control. Watch for the following signs of increased stress:
Making Personal Strides to Reduce Stress
Learning to manage and reduce your stress load may improve the quality of your life, and give you a better chance to live a long and healthier one. Lots of tools, tips, and techniques can help you reduce stress and figure out how to relax. Recognizing stress is the first and hardest thing for many people to do. Finding and focusing on sources of stress is helpful, because you’re concentrating on what you can do to change rather than letting stress continue to grow until it’s out of control.
If you need professional help with stress, it’s most likely because you let the unrecognized stress build for too long. If you’re ready to start reducing stress on your own, think about your life, find the stressors, and then develop a way to manage them.
Consider trying one of these stress busters.
Researchers say that people with more positive attitudes may deal with stress better and have a stronger will to live. People who feel good about themselves as they get older live about seven and a half years longer than the bitter, negative types.
How can you keep a positive attitude? Two things that help are:
Part of staying positive is being able to see humor in situations, including those that may normally stress you out. Laughter really is the best medicine when it comes to reducing your stress. Laughing reduces the production of cortisol (which accelerates aging) and increases the level of health-enhancing hormones like endorphins and neurotransmitters. Laughter also increases the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T cells. What that boils down to is a stronger immune system and fewer physical effects from stress.
It’s easy to say “Just relax” when your stress levels are building, but it’s easier to do if you’ve developed some relaxation techniques. Try the following methods of self-relaxation:
During meditation, you clear your mind of any focus or distraction which enables you to detach from stressors and restores your body to a state of calm, essentially giving your body time to repair itself. Breathing returns to normal, so you use oxygen more efficiently. Your heart rate slows down, your blood pressure comes down, and anxiety levels decrease so you sweat less.
A tremendous benefit of meditation for anti-aging is that your adrenal glands produce less cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, which have been associated with negative effects on aging. By relaxing the body in this manner, you prevent damage from the physical effects of stress. You also can make additional positive hormones and your immune function improves.
Repeat Steps 1 and 2 with your neck, followed by your shoulders, and so on, all the way down to your toes.
You can do this exercise anywhere and as you practice, you’ll notice that you can relax more quickly and easily, reducing tension as quickly as it starts.
Exercising away your stress
Exercise is one of your body’s best natural cures for stress. It leads to the release of endorphins, which has a healing effect on the body and mind and protects against some of the harmful effects of stress. Researchers have found that those who exercise have fewer stress-related health problems, which provides a positive impact on healthy aging.
Exercise can be as simple as a walk around your neighborhood every evening or a complicated as working out with a personal trainer. Find the type of exercise that works for you and your body and be consistent!
Yoga for example, is an excellent way to reduce stress through exercise. Yoga is a series of personal stretches and exercises that bring together your physical, mental and spiritual aspects of life. Yoga teaches you a series of stationary and moving poses, breathing and concentration techniques to help you get in tune with your body, your mind, and your emotions in the present moment. Yoga is designed to balance the different systems of your body by taking your mind off the causes of stress, and having you gently stretch your body in ways that massage your internal organs.
Tossing out poor habits
When you’re feeling stressed, it’s natural to look for ways to cope. However, some of the things you turn to when stressed may actually be more destructive or create more stress on your body than you’re relieving, creating a vicious cycle. Three coping mechanisms that fall into this category are caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol.
*Agin, B., & Perkins, S. (2008). Healthy aging for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub.
We often recommend Trim® Calm or Migraine IV Therapy for many people suffering with anxiety, migraines or muscle tension.
Our wellness staff is ready to assist you. Call (727) 230-1438 or CLICK HERE to contact us for an appointment in our office located at 26212 US Hwy 19, in Clearwater, Florida.
About Priority You MD
Priority You MD provides personalized, integrative healthcare for general wellness, anti-aging, athletic performance and weight management as well as more complex medical issues. In addition, our facility also provides aesthetic services and fitness training. Combining diet, nutrition and exercise with evidence based medicine and preventative therapies, our goal is to help our patients achieve and maintain a healthy, active lifestyle.
Priority You MD utilizes IV therapy protocols from Trim® Nutrition. These proprietary nutrient injections are formulated by doctors and compounding pharmacists who use the highest quality materials and follow strict manufacturing protocols in a class 10,000 compounding facility.
Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, Trim® Nutrition and Priority You MD’s clinical staff of physicians, pharmacists, registered nurses, and research and development specialists are dedicated to the mission of Making Bodies Better™.
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