You may be familiar with the emotional upheaval that stress brings into your life, such as tears, worry, or fear surrounding a stressful event. Stress also affects your physical self. When your mind interprets a situation as dangerous, your brain signals your physiological self to release powerful hormones that help ready your body for movement away from the danger.
These stress-produced hormones cause your muscles to tighten, your heart rate to increase, and your blood pressure to rise as your breathing becomes shallow. Your focus narrows as all of your senses concentrate on that dangerous thing in front of you.
This is helpful when you’re trying to avoid debris falling from a truck on the highway. It’s not so helpful when stress is caused by situations you can’t change, such as worrying about all the careless drivers on the road, even when one isn’t nearby.
When your mind frets over unseen drivers, financial concerns, or other stressful issues in your life, your brain sends the same signals that produce those powerful stress hormones, sometimes in a never-ending loop that can have disastrous effects on your physical health.
Ongoing stress can lead to numerous health concerns, including:
Because your physiological response to stress is interwoven with essentially all of your body systems, including the cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal systems, successfully dealing with stress requires a multifaceted approach.
Nutrition plays a vital role in your physical health as well as your emotional health. A diet that’s filled with processed, sugary, and salty foods can actually cause irritability, depression, and anxiety. A nutritious diet can decrease the underlying edginess that can dovetail into a stress response.
Other methods to manage your response to life’s stressors include counseling, nutritional supplements, increased physical activity, and employing relaxation techniques such as yoga. Controlling your heart-rate variability -- which is the interval between heartbeats -- also reduces your physiological response to stress.
The highly-skilled team of health care professionals at The Ash Center for Comprehensive Medicine is well-equipped to help you learn to manage the stress in your life.
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