WHAT IS IT?
Stress is your reaction to anything-good or bad-that upsets your body’s balance. When you’re under stress, your body goes through a number of changes. This is the so-called fight or flight response, a reaction to danger or excitement that dates back millions of years. Our ancestors had to fight for their food and flee or defend themselves against enemies. This response, which provides quick bursts of oxygen and energy, helped them survive.These days, we don’t face the same dangers that our ancestors did. But our bodies sometimes react to an everyday challenge as if it were a physical threat: A deadline at work, an illness, an upcoming wedding, or even shopping for the holidays can all provoke the fight or flight response. Then your muscles tighten, your blood pressure and heart rate increase, and your breathing speeds up.
This reaction to stress isn’t always bad. It helps you focus your mind and readies you for the task at hand. But the hormone surges, if sparked again and again, can deplete your body’s ability to bounce back and affect physical and mental health, leading to sleep problems, headaches and backaches, high blood pressure, and even heart disease and depression.
Long-term stress also disrupts your body’s immune system, raising your chances for colds or flu and other illnesses, and can even cause infertility and contribute to osteoporosis, a breakdown of the bones. Symptoms caused by stress-such as tension, short temper, fatigue, sleep problems, eating disorders, and drug or alcohol abuse-now account for between 75 and 90 percent of all doctor’s office visits.
If you change the way you react to stressful events, you can shift the balance so that stress works for you rather than against you. Such change can improve your overall health and quality of life.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
During a moment that demands some action, your brain instructs your body to release a number of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, into your blood. These make your heart pump faster and raise your blood pressure. Extra sugar, oxygen, and fat enter the bloodstream to provide a boost of energy to the brain and muscles. Cortisol is on hand to help heal cuts and bruises. Your body is essentially getting ready to defend itself.
The problem, though, is that these changes sometimes happen even if you’re just sitting at your desk, dealing with a difficult phone call. And when you don’t fight or run, the hormones and the extra fat and sugar in the blood aren’t used as the body intended. Over time, when stress is chronic-when it occurs hour after hour, day after day, week after week-these substances hurt the body.
Chronic stress can worsen other conditions, namely those that affect the heart, such as high blood pressure, angina (chest pain from clogged arteries), coronary artery disease, and arrhythmias (changes in the heart’s rhythm). It also wears out or damages blood vessels and the heart itself.
WHAT CAUSES IT?
Any mental, emotional, or physical activity can cause a stress reaction. But it varies from person to person. A situation that is stressful for you may hardly affect someone else; for instance, your blood pressure may spike when you face challenges that don’t faze your coworker. It all depends on how you react.
Usually what sets off your stress response is a problem you feel you can’t cope with easily. The brain knows you must do something, so it calls on the stress reaction, triggering the release of hormones that prepare the body for action.
You may have chronic stress if:
Someone close to you recently died.
You’ve gone through a divorce or separation.
A family member or close friend is in the hospital.
You’ve recently lost your job.
You’ve received a promotion.
You’ve changed jobs.
You’ve recently retired.
You’ve recently married or become engaged.
You have a new baby.
Any of your children have left or returned home.
You recently moved to a new city or into a new home.
Your financial situation has changed for the better or worse.
You’re having problems with a friend, partner, or family member.
You’re recovering from an injury or long illness.
You’ve lost something valuable to you.
If you are going through one or more of these situations, it’s natural to feel stressed often or most of the time. Be aware that during such times, it’s easier to develop a physical or mental stress-related illness.
WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOURSELF
You can do a lot to reduce stress and handle it better when it does enter your life.
First, slow down. Think about your problems, what causes stress in your life, and how you might deal with each problem. Find ways to keep stressful situations from building on one another, so that you are not constantly stressed.
Here are some steps to help you handle your daily challenges and relieve built-up stress:
Exercise
Studies show that people who exercise regularly feel less anxious and more relaxed. Physical activity-running, walking, biking, anything that works up a sweat-gives your body the chance to do what the fight or flight response prepares it to do: burn off some steam.
Exercise can also help prevent damage caused by stress. It strengthens the heart and arteries, lowers blood pressure, builds up the immune system so that it can better fight infection and perhaps some forms of cancer, and reduces the risk of diabetes.
Any exercise is better than none. If you haven’t exercised regularly for a while, start by being a bit more active each day. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk the dog for 15 minutes each evening.
When you’re used to being more active, add some more activities that are more aerobic to your routine. These should make you breathe harder and sweat a bit and get your heart pumping. Brisk walking, running, biking, cross-country skiing, and swimming are all great for the heart. Take a couple of months to work up to 20 to 30 minutes at a time most days of the week.
Find something you enjoy-it’s much easier to keep exercising when you like to do it.
Beat stress at work
Laugh more. Use humor to ease stressful moments. Studies show that laughter releases stress-busting hormones.
Don’t be a perfectionist. Set reasonable goals and ask yourself whether everything you do has to be the best.
Take breaks during a hectic day to calm down. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as it’s a time-out that changes your tempo. Aim for at least 20 minutes a couple of times a day.
Find a deep-breathing exercise that relaxes you. For example:
Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Exhale fully. Close off your right nostril with your thumb and inhale slowly through your left. Close off your left nostril, and open the right. Exhale slowly through the right. Inhale through the right. Close off the right and exhale through the left. Inhale through the left. Continue for 30 seconds to three minutes, changing nostrils after each time you breathe in. Work to make breathing out last about twice as long as breathing in.
Lack of time causes stress in many people. Take a time-management course. Often organizing your work and home life can do a lot to ease stress.
At home
Keep a pet. Animals may shed and slobber, but studies show their owners have fewer health problems.
Relax through yoga, deep breathing, stretching exercises, or meditation.
Clear up the clutter. People don’t think about it, but having too much stuff is a major source of stress. Don’t simply rearrange-throw it out or donate it if you won’t use it.
Sleep better
A good night’s rest can help relieve and prevent stress. The quantity of sleep isn’t as important as the quality. Here are some tips for a good night’s sleep:
Avoid taking your problems and work to bed with you. Make a point of not thinking about them late at night.
Keep a routine. Go to bed around the same time every night. Don’t take a late afternoon nap. If you are sensitive to caffeine, cut it off after noon. Don’t drink alcohol or use tobacco products three to five hours before bedtime. Make sure the bedroom is dark, quiet, and well ventilated.
Relax. Develop a routine for relaxing your mind and body before bed. Try reading, meditation, deep breathing, or stretching.
Reserve your bed for sleeping. Don’t use it as a place to watch TV, eat, or work.
Exercise in the afternoon.
Avoid sleeping pills. These drugs can be habit-forming and cause more problems than poor sleep.
If you can’t sleep, don’t stay in bed tossing and turning. Get up and read or write a letter until you’re tired. Then go back to bed. Be sure to get up at your normal time the next morning, and don’t take naps the next day. Don’t slip out of your normal sleep routine.
Eat the right stuff
It’s easy to neglect your diet when you’re under a lot of stress. But diet can affect how well you handle stress. Make an extra effort to eat well and to get the recommended daily amounts of vitamins and minerals. Eat foods high in complex carbohydrates, moderate in protein, and low in fat. Avoid or reduce caffeine: Too much caffeine has been shown to raise anxiety levels.
Be careful with alcohol
Watch how much you drink. Stress “relievers” such as alcohol can mask fatigue, damage your heart, and raise blood pressure. Drink in moderation.
What’s “moderate”? A rule of thumb for men is no more than two drinks a day; for women, no more than one. A drink is one bottle of beer (12 ounces), one glass of wine (5 ounces), or one shot of hard liquor (1.5 ounces).
Stay involved
Friendships can reduce stress and do wonders for your health. Studies show that frequent contact with others cuts your risk for many kinds of disease-in fact, having a good social life reduces general mortality by twofold, about as much as having low cholesterol or being a nonsmoker. Volunteer, join community groups, take classes, and visit your friends. If you are chronically under stress, join a support or stress management group to talk with people who know what you’re going through. You’ll learn how to deal with stress and make some new friends.
Learn how to cope
If you find that you’re not dealing with a stressful situation as well as you’d like, try these approaches:
Befriend someone who you think can help. Find someone who can offer advice from outside the problem, perhaps showing you a better way to approach it.
Focus on the positive outcomes of stressful situations. Accept them as challenges that can lead somewhere and help you accomplish something.
Deal with several sources of stress one at a time. Break large problems into smaller tasks.
Explore as many different ways to solve a problem as possible. Get as much information and consult as many sources as you can.
Keep a journal. One recent study of patients with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis showed that writing about traumatic experiences improved the patients’ health.
WHAT YOUR DOCTOR CAN DO FOR YOU
Your doctor cannot actually treat your stress, but he or she can help treat the problems it can cause-for example, too little sleep. For emotional problems caused by stress, you may need to visit a psychologist or therapist.
Your doctor may prescribe a tranquilizer or other drug that helps calm you down or helps you sleep. These medicines treat the symptoms of stress, not the cause.
Call your doctor:
If you think you are anxious, depressed, or more than routinely stressed.
If you have symptoms of stress combined with any of the following: strange sleep patterns, mood swings, loss of sex drive, frequent crying, a feeling of great fatigue even with minor tasks, unusually slow movements, or a change in menstrual periods (late, spotty, or missed). You may have a form of clinical depression.
If your symptoms of stress are especially long-lasting and bothersome.
Therapies used to treat stress:
Cognitive-behavior therapy. This technique focuses on how you react during a stressful event. You learn skills that make stress work for you rather than against you.
Psychoanalysis. This kind of therapy explores the deeper origins of how you react to a stressful situation, such as a prior experience or trauma.
Group therapy. A group can provide support and feedback from others who are going through the same problem. Other members can offer insights and advice. It can be particularly useful to adolescents, those recently widowed, separated, or divorced, and those who have gone through severe trauma.
Biofeedback. Electronic equipment registers your body’s response to stress as it happens. This “feedback” can help you learn about your reactions to stress and how to influence bodily functions such as heart rate, muscle spasms, and blood pressure.
