How Stress Can Impact the Body
We all know what stress feels like and for most of us we know that stress comes from several different sources. These stressors include anything from social relationships, environmental factors, and personal perception, among many others. These are different for all of us but understanding how something works and impacts our body can help us better handle it.
This is so important to us now, since it is now believed that 80-90% of all disease processes are stress related. Overall, management of stress is important. Finding the balance that is not too much, but also just enough to help us grow.
Stress isn’t always bad, as it is what causes adaptation to happen. We can break down the human experience into a few basic elements and from those elements we can further divide those down to better understand. Then we can highlight where stress impacts each of us the most. Two of the biggest pieces are mental and physical. The physical part of us is impacted by a few things; primarily nutrition and movement. Our mental health, which connects to our mental stress, includes a wide variety of things; from perception, beliefs, values, identity, spirituality, and many others.
Whatever your stress is, whether physical or mental, the impact to the body is important. No matter the stress, throughout evolution our body still responds the same. This response is important, as it is what our body is constantly going through and having a better understanding of this can help us better understand how to manage both the stressor and the response. From an increase in stress hormones, the function and activity of many systems change. For example, our heart rate and blood pressure increase, our digestive system slows down and our body tries to store more energy.
Not only are the direct responses important, but how we respond to those responses impact how we manage stress. Many times, stress responses contribute to many other habits that impact our health. From smoking, eating, or avoiding exercise, many times these habits contribute just as much or more than the initial stress response.
These responses and habits are what contribute to the negative outcomes of stress, from weight gain, decreased functionality of important systems, such as the digestive system, to increase in blood pressure and heart rate, or even acne. All of these can impact our health and quality of life. These can increase the risk of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, obesity, and many other diseases. Now we can see how stress can be so bad for us!
Now that we understand a bit more, we can talk about how to reduce negative stress and encourage growth of the individual.
From our physical health we can first look at nutrition and movement. We need to eat according to our unique physiology. There is no one size fits all nutritional approach, so finding help in this area with someone who understands all the differences is important. In addition, proper movement is essential for proper health and it has been shown that proper movement prolongs the cellular life of individual cells perhaps leading to longer, happier, more fulfilled lives. Creating a healthier body can help your body better take on and handle stress.
Similar to physical health, our mental health can also help us better manage stress. Managing all aspects of our mental health can be important. Everyone may have different ways of managing these aspects, but having a mental support system, discovering ourselves and our values, or spiritual gatherings can help with management of your mental health. Others commonly using journaling, counseling, or social support networks.
Finding the balance of good stress and bad stress, along with managing stressors can help our body better cope with stress. Giving your body more good stress (i.e. physical activity) can help your body build and better handle the bad stress (i.e. work stress or financial stress).
It is important to find a health care provider that can help you with how to balance and manage your physical and mental health, as well as manage stress. From how to move and eat correctly, how to eliminate pain and stay pain free, how to strive forward with stress management and stress relievers.
Let us know how we can help you!
