There are two types of stress. The first type is acute stress. That’s the kind where your body senses danger and adapts to threat by making physical changes that allow you to quickly get out of danger. This occurs because your body secretes chemicals and stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. These chemicals are released in response to your thoughts and make your body prepare to “fight or flight.” For example, let’s say you are crossing the street and you notice a car approaching quickly. You see the car that makes you feel scared and anxious. Your body then adapts to the stress by secreting chemicals and hormones that send messages to your heart, lungs, and organs to prepare them to handle your crisis. Your heart rate increases, blood flow is diverted to your muscles, allowing rapid movement, your pupils dilate, and more oxygen flows through your lungs for an extra burst of energy. These changes allow you to react quickly, allowing you to jump onto the sidewalk to safety. In a short period of time, your body calms down and things are back to normal. This protection mechanism is crucial to your safety and is designed to protect you against hazards.
The other type of stress is called chronic stress. With chronic stress, chemicals and hormones are continuously released that were only meant to be secreted for a short period of time. The stress response kicks in and never shuts down. Acorns that secrete these chemicals do not have a chance to replenish or recover to pre-stress levels. Your body remains in a state of hyperarousal and the hormones that are meant to help and protect you are over-secreted and eventually depleted. It’s like turning on the shower with full force and leaving it on. Eventually, you will run out of hot water.
Stress and the immune system are closely related. Your immune system maintains internal harmony within your body. When healthy and strong, it is in fighting form to protect you from unwanted invasion. One of the greatest dangers of chronic stress is that excessive chemical secretion suppresses the immune system. When this happens, your body doesn’t have the ability to fight invaders as effectively, so you have less protection against disease, stress-related conditions, and disease. The immune system is directly affected by the way we handle stress. If it is strong, it offers us protection, if it is weak, it cannot fight for us. (Have you ever noticed how you can get a respiratory infection when you are under a lot of stress – a release of stress hormones that weakened your immune system and failed to protect you against the invader.)
Stress hormones and chemicals are released according to the way we think, feel, and act. The way we think, feel, and act is based on our ideas, beliefs, value system, religious upbringing, personality, culture, and past conditioning. All of these variables determine how stress affects us because they create how we see the world around us. An event can be viewed differently by two people depending on their perspective. For example, have you ever noticed how two people can see traffic? The person can once be seen hitting the steering wheel, cursing, and flooding a sea of stress-induced hormones. The other person can be seen catching up on phone calls, listening to music, and enjoying a quiet moment. It is the same event for both, but the way the event is considered is completely different and is based on the way each interprets the event. While stress affects us all differently, the people who are best equipped to handle the stressors in their lives are the ones who enjoy the greatest health and wellness benefits. Their bodies are not continually releasing stress hormones that are causing immune system damage along with other body wear and tear.
When these chemicals are constantly secreted, over time they can also cause stress-induced conditions, illness and disease by altering your cell chemistry while weakening your immune system. When hormones like cortisol are depleted, autoimmune diseases can occur and conditions like arthritis are common. When the levels are abnormal, other problems arise. Sleep quality, skin disorders, infertility, anxiety, and delayed healing are common when stress hormones are out of balance.
Stress also affects the nervous system which is directly related to the digestive system. Have you ever noticed how many feel gassy, bloated, or like you haven’t fully digested when you swallow lunch? His body interpreted the stress he was feeling and decided that preparing for the perceived battle was more important than actually digesting his food. Digestive disorders are so widespread that they are now the biggest complaint in the emergency room. Conditions like reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, and ulcers are very common and can be linked to stress.
If things weren’t bad enough, stress also makes us age faster. This happens when cortisol is secreted in excess, there is not enough, and more needs to be produced. Levels recover by borrowing chemicals from your estrogen stores that are necessary to help retain youth and vitality. Have you ever noticed someone and thought “Wow, that person seems to have had a difficult life”? The way they have handled their stress is written on them.
When you thought things couldn’t get worse, stress can also cause you to be overweight! This is what is happening. When you’re stressed, stress hormones are released, increasing your appetite for high-fat, high-calorie foods. Then you eat those foods and those are the foods that stimulate the release of stress hormones! It is a never-ending cycle that leads to excessive secretion of stress hormones, weight gain, and frustration. These hormones also encourage fat to be stored in the abdominal region, increase the amount of glucose that floats in the blood, and lay the foundation for insulin resistance, diabetes, high cholesterol, and hypertension. So the stress you interpret encourages you to eat foods that make you heavier, which causes the release of more chemicals. If you are an emotional eater, you are in even bigger trouble. Now he’s added extra eating as a way to self-medicate to feel better about stress. You can choose foods that are high in fat and carbohydrates that give you a boost of the feel-good chemical serotonin. This lifts you up but then drops you down hard and you are left with less energy than before. At this point, you are left with your original stress, feelings regarding your eating habits, excess weight, a starting point for illness or disease, and stress hormones in an uproar.
It is important to realize that the stress response was designed to be effective when used for short-term safety. Unfortunately, those same chemicals that protect you from immediate danger hurt you when they continue to be released. To make matters worse, the body doesn’t know if the stress is real or just imagined. You will secrete stress hormones whether you are grieving the death of a loved one, reacting to your children driving you crazy, or repeating the pain, grief, or argument you had with your mother ten years ago.
We often do not realize how the stress we feel can elicit a physical response. It may be easier to accept that a physical response is due to a physical cause. For example, you stub your toe, you scream in pain. But think about this. You hear something embarrassing or something that angers you. The message is heard and interpreted by you according to the way you have learned to think, feel and act. As a result, you turn beet red or blush! If you are nervous about something, you may feel “butterflies” or your hands may get wet. If you are angry, you may feel “blood boiling,” you may have a “sour stomach,” or you may feel heat coming from you. All of these examples are physical reactions to emotions. The message was heard, it was interpreted, chemicals were secreted, and there was a physical reaction to the message. That is just one issue! Now imagine the stress of motherhood, trying to be a good wife, coworker, daughter, sister, friend, or neighbor. Add the need to be perfect, loved, approved, admired, and respected. Mix it with the stress, tension, and anxiety of past hurts, complaints, and negative feelings that arise from a perspective or perspective that doesn’t serve you well. What do you have? A recipe for stress-related conditions, diseases, and conditions. While this may seem scary, the beauty is that you are in a wonderful position to stop the stress response. Remember, your stress may not change. However, what can change is the way you choose to react.