The term psychological stress is misleading, because no
stress is solely psychological… it’s not all in your head
Chronic stress interferes with your immune system, causes
epigenetic changes, and triggers systemic inflammation that
can cause numerous chronic diseases
By Dr. Mercola
Anxiety over a project at work… a marital spat… financial
trouble… health problems… the list of potential stressors is
endless, but wherever your stress is coming from, it likely
starts in your head.
An inkling of worry might soon grow into an avalanche of anxiety.
It might keep you up at night, your mind racing with potential “what
ifs” and worst-case scenarios. Worse still, if the problem is
ongoing, your stressed-out state may become your new normal -- extra
stress hormones, inflammation, and all.
While beneficial if you’re actually in imminent danger,
that heightened state of stress – the one that makes your survival
more likely in the event of an attack, for instance – is damaging
over time.
The thoughts in your head are only the beginning or, perhaps more
aptly, are the wheels that set the harmful mechanism known as
chronic stress into motion – and, once spinning, it’s very easy to
spiral out of control. As reported in Science News:1
“Stress research gained traction with a master stroke of
health science called the Whitehall Study, in which British
researchers showed that stressed workers were suffering ill
effects.
Scientists have since described how a stressed brain
triggers rampant hormone release, which leads to imbalanced
immunity and long-term physical wear and tear.
Those effects take a toll quite apart from the anxiety and other
psychological challenges that stressed individuals deal with day
to day.”
Stress: It’s Not Just in Your Head
You know the saying “when it rains, it pours”? This is a good
description of
chronic stress in your body, because it makes virtually
everything harder. The term psychological stress is, in fact,
misleading, because no stress is solely psychological… it’s not
all in your head.
Let’s say you lose your job or are struggling from post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) from abuse you suffered as a child. Excess
stress hormones are released, including cortisol, epinephrine, and
norepinephrine. Your stress response becomes imbalanced; it’s not
shutting off.
Your immune system suffers as a result, and epigenetic changes
are rapidly occurring. The stress is triggering systemic low-grade
inflammation, and suddenly your blood pressure is up, your asthma is
flaring, and you keep getting colds.
That cut on your leg just doesn’t seem to want to heal, and your
skin is a mess. You’re having trouble sleeping and, on an emotional
level, you feel like you’re nearing burnout.
Stress is very much like a snowball rolling down a mountain,
gaining momentum, gaining speed and growing until suddenly it
crashes. That crash, unfortunately, is often at the expense of your
health.
Stress Increases Heart Attack Risk by 21-Fold
Police officers clearly face amplified stress on the job, and
researchers found they were 21 times more likely to die of a heart
attack during an altercation than during routine activities.2
This isn’t entirely surprising until you compare it to heart-attack
risk during physical training, which increased only seven fold.
The difference in physical exertion between the two circumstances
likely doesn’t account for the increased risk… it’s the level of
stress being experienced that sends heart attack risk through
the roof.
More heart attacks and other cardiovascular events also occur on
Mondays than any other day of the week.3
This “Monday cardiac phenomenon” has been recognized for some time,
and has long been believed to be related to work stress.
During moments of high stress, your body releases hormones such
as norepinephrine, which the researchers believe can cause the
dispersal of bacterial biofilms from the walls of your arteries.4
This dispersal can allow plaque deposits to suddenly break loose,
thereby triggering a heart attack.
Stress contributes to
heart disease in other ways as well. Besides norepinephrine,
your body also releases other stress hormones that prepare your body
to either fight or flee. One such stress hormone is cortisol.
When stress becomes chronic, your immune system becomes
increasingly desensitized to cortisol, and since inflammation is
partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity
heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation to
get out of control.5
Chronic inflammation is a hallmark not only of heart disease but
many chronic diseases.
Stress Linked to Diabetes and a Dozen Other Serious Consequences
People who grow up in poor socioeconomic conditions have higher
levels of inflammatory markers, including interleukin-6 (IL-6) and
C-reactive protein (CRP). They’re also twice as likely to develop
type 2 diabetes
as adults, a risk researchers say is partly due to the elevated
inflammation.6
People who suffered child abuse also tend to have higher levels
of chronic inflammation, as do those who act as caregivers for loved
ones. As reported in Science News:7
“Scientists are now digging deeper, sorting through
changes in gene activity that underlie inflammation and receptor
shutdown. For example, childhood stress might get embedded in
immune cells called macrophages through epigenetic changes —
alterations that affect the activity levels of genes without
changing the underlying DNA.
Psychologist Gregory Miller of Northwestern University in
Evanston, Ill., suggests that these changes can endow the
macrophages with pro-inflammatory tendencies that later foster
chronic diseases.”
Prolonged stress can also damage your brain cells and make you
lose the capacity to remember things. The brain cells of stressed
rats are dramatically smaller, especially in the area of their
hippocampus, which is the seat of learning and memory.
Stress disrupts your neuroendocrine and immune systems and
appears to trigger a degenerative process in your brain that can
result in
Alzheimer's disease. Stress-induced weight gain is also real
and typically involves an increase in belly fat, which is the most
dangerous fat for your body to accumulate, and increases your
cardiovascular risk.
Stress alters the way fat is deposited because of the specific
hormones and other chemicals your body produces when you're
stressed. Stress clearly affects virtually your whole body, but
according to neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky in the documentary
Stress: Portrait of a Killer, the following are the most common
health conditions that are caused by or worsened by stress:
Digestive problems made Dr. Sapolsky’s list above, which makes
sense because the stress response causes a number of detrimental
events in your gut, including:
Decreased nutrient absorption
Decreased oxygenation to your gut
As much as four times less blood flow to your digestive
system, which leads to decreased metabolism
Decreased enzymatic output in your gut – as much as
20,000-fold!
To put it simply, chronic stress (and other negative emotions
like anger, anxiety and sadness) can trigger symptoms and full-blown
disease in your gut. As Harvard researchers explain:8
"Psychology combines with physical factors to cause pain
and other bowel symptoms. Psychosocial factors influence the
actual physiology of the gut, as well as symptoms. In other
words, stress (or depression or other psychological factors) can
affect movement and contractions of the GI tract, cause
inflammation, or make you more susceptible to infection. In
addition, research suggests that some people with functional GI
disorders perceive pain more acutely than other people do
because their brains do not properly regulate pain signals from
the GI tract. Stress can make the existing pain seem even
worse.”
Interestingly, the connection works both ways, meaning that while
stress can cause gut problems, gut problems can also wreak havoc on
your emotions. The Harvard researchers continue:
"This connection goes both ways. A troubled intestine can
send signals to the brain, just as a troubled brain can send
signals to the gut. Therefore, a person's stomach or intestinal
distress can be the cause or the product of anxiety, stress, or
depression. That's because the brain and the gastrointestinal
(GI) system are intimately connected — so intimately that they
should be viewed as one system."
Stress Changes Immune Response and Cell Behavior
Stress is implicated in cancer, not so much as a cause
of cancer but because it seems to fuel its growth (or interfere with
processes that might otherwise slow it down). For instance, the
stress hormones norepinephrine and epinephrine encourage the growth
of blood vessels that help prostate tumors to grow. Meanwhile, in
women with pelvic growths (who were awaiting tests to see if the
growths were cancerous or benign), those with good social support
(and presumably therefore less stress) had more immune attack cells
directed at the masses, Science News reported.9
Stress has also been shown to increase the likelihood of cancer
spreading, or metastasis, which is a major cause of cancer death, by
30-fold.10
Chronic stress also leads to disrupted cortisol signaling. In the
case of excess cortisol exposure, some cell receptors become muted,
including receptors on immune cells. This is one reason why people
under stress are about twice as likely to develop a cold after
exposure to a cold virus, compared to non-stressed people.
11,12
Factors That Make Stress Worse
Dr. Sapolsky explains that you are more vulnerable to stress if
the following factors are true:
You feel like you have no control
You're not getting any predictive information (how bad the
challenge is going to be, how long it will go on, etc.)
You feel you have no way out
You interpret things as getting worse
You have no "shoulder to cry on" (e.g., lack of social
affiliation or support)
People at the top of the social pyramid feel a greater sense of
control because they are the ones who call the shots, as well as
typically having more social connections and resources at their
disposal. This results in less stress, which over the long run
translates to lower rates of disease. Stress is also closely related
to the experience of pleasure, related to the binding of dopamine to
pleasure receptors in your brain. People of lower socioeconomic
status appear to derive less pleasure from their lives. Perhaps this
is why laughter therapy is so effective at relieving stress.13
On the brighter side, positive emotions like happiness, hope, and
optimism also prompt changes in your body's cells, even
triggering the release of feel-good brain chemicals. While you can
create happiness artificially (and temporarily) by taking drugs or
drinking alcohol, for instance, the same endorphin and dopamine high
can be achieved via healthy habits like exercise, laughter,
hugging and kissing, sex, or bonding with your child. If you're
wondering just how powerful and effective this can be, a 10-second
hug a day can lead to biochemical and physiological reactions in
your body that can significantly improve your health. According to
one study, this includes:14
Lower risk of heart disease
Stress reduction
Fight fatigue
Boost your immune system
Fight infections
Ease depression
EFT Is Incredible for Stress Relief
Regular stress management is crucial for just about everyone. For
some, this might include staying away from negative or overly
stressed individuals, or at the very least turning off the nightly
news if it is too upsetting, to avoid feeling
empathic stress. Ultimately, however, what you do for stress
relief is a personal choice, as your stress-management techniques
must appeal to you and, more importantly, work for you. If
a round of kickboxing helps you get out your frustration, then do
it. If meditation is more your speed, that's fine too.
Even having a good cry now and then may be beneficial, as tears
that are shed due to an emotional response, such as sadness or
extreme happiness, contain a high concentration of
adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) — a chemical linked to stress.
One theory of why you cry when you're sad is that it helps your body
release some of these excess stress chemicals, thereby helping you
feel more calm and relaxed. Energy psychology techniques such as the
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
can be very effective as well, by helping you to actually
reprogram your body's reactions to the unavoidable stressors of
everyday life. This is important as, generally speaking, a stressor
becomes a problem when:
Your response to it is negative
Your feelings and emotions are inappropriate for the
circumstances
Your response lasts an excessively long time
You're feeling continuously overwhelmed, overpowered, or
overworked
When you use EFT, simple tapping with the fingertips is used to
input kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and chest
while you think about your specific problem -- whether it is a
traumatic event, an addiction, pain, etc. -- and voice positive
affirmations. This combination of tapping the energy meridians and
voicing positive affirmation works to clear the "short-circuit" --
the emotional block -- from your body's bioenergy system, thus
restoring your mind and body's balance, which is essential for
optimal health and the healing of chronic stress. You can view a
demonstration below.
While the video above will easily teach you how to do EFT, it is
VERY important to realize that self-treatment for serious issues is
NOT recommended. It can be dangerous, because it will allow you to
falsely conclude that EFT does not work when nothing could be
further from the truth. For serious or complex issues, you need
someone to guide you through the process as there is an incredible
art to this process and it typically takes years of training to
develop the skill to tap on deep-seated, significant issues.
Copyright 1997- 2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.