Stress is a natural human reaction that happens to everyone. Your body is designed to experience stress and react to it.
Some stress can be beneficial, says Dr. Laurel Strahan, program chair of the Psychology Department at Keiser University’s St. Lucie West campus. “Good stress is short-term, and it inspires and motivates you, focuses your energy and enhances performance. People in stressful situations have more accurate senses and respond more quickly. It enables us to meet deadlines at work.”
This “good” stress is called eustress. Healthline, a website that provides health advice and wellness information, says that eustress produces positive feelings of excitement, fulfillment, meaning, satisfaction and well-being.
Healthline goes on to explain that this type of stress empowers you to grow in three areas:
- Emotionally, eustress can result in positive feelings of contentment, inspiration, motivation and flow.
- Psychologically, eustress helps us build our self-efficacy, autonomy and resilience.
- Physically, eustress helps us build our body (e.g., through completing a challenging workout).
Dr. Strahan describes what happens in the brain when stress is perceived. “If the brain perceives something as dangerous, the hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which travels to the pituitary gland, triggering the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH).
“This hormone travels to the adrenal glands, prompting them to release cortisol. The body stays on high alert. When the threat passes, cortisol levels fall. The parasympathetic nervous system then dampens the stress response. These are short-term affects that won’t have a negative impact on the body.”
While there are pluses to good stress, long-term or chronic stress has detrimental effects on physical and mental health.
According to Everyday Health, the three main kinds of stress are acute, episodic acute and chronic.
- Acute stress: Acute stress is short-term stress that comes and goes quickly. It can be positive or negative. It’s the feeling you get when you’re riding on a roller coaster or having a fight with your spouse. Everyone experiences acute stress from time to time.
- Episodic acute stress: Episodic acute stress is when you experience acute stress on a regular basis. With this kind of stress, you don’t get the time you need to return to a calm, relaxed state. Episodic stress frequently affects people working in certain professions, including doctors, social workers, firefighters, lawyers and teachers.
- Chronic stress: Chronic stress is long-term stress that goes on for weeks or months. You may experience chronic stress due to marriage troubles, health problems, difficulties at work or financial problems. Chronic stress can harm your health in multiple ways.
“People dealing with stress seek out comfort food,” says Dr. Strahan.
Harvard Health, the newsletter of Harvard University Medical School, says numerous studies have shown that physical or emotional distress increases the intake of food high in fat, sugar or both, which is counterproductive and can add more mental and physical stress.
WebMD says that stress can lead to decreases in HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol), and increases in obesity levels, insulin resistance and triglycerides – all of which can damage your inflammatory pathways. Thus, stress is indirectly tied to metabolic syndrome through the harmful effects of inflammation.
Dr. Strahan concurs and adds that mood disorders like anxiety and depression are similarly affected.
When you’re stressed, your heart rate goes up and so does your blood pressure.
Everyday Health outlines ways chronic stress can impact the body:
Stress causes inflammation. Studies have shown that chronic stress is linked to increased inflammation in the body. Chronic stress is linked to an increase in pro-inflammatory cytokines, a type of immune cell that is typically part of the body’s defense system. When these cytokines are chronically activated, as with stress, they can damage the heart.
Stress affects your digestive tract. The gastrointestinal tract is filled with nerve endings and immune cells, all of which are affected by stress hormones.
Stress messes with your immune system. Many studies have shown that stress lowers immunity, which may be why you’re likely to come down with a cold after a crunch time at school or work.
Stress can muddle your brain. Brain scans of people with post-traumatic stress disorder show more activity in the amygdala, a brain region associated with fear and emotion.
Stress can make you feel crummy all over. Stress makes us more sensitive to pain, and it can also cause pain due to muscular tension. People under stress are less apt to sleep well.
The pandemic didn’t cause an increase in stress per se, says Dr. Strahan, but “it gave us a different set of stressors. People who never had a fear of getting sick or dying started to think about it. We were even stressed by the thought of running out of toilet paper!
“Now our stress is affected by the political climate and divisive speech. Simply being human is traumatic in and of itself.”
A healthy diet made up mainly of fruits, vegetables and whole grains can help reduce stress by boosting production of serotonin, a brain chemical associated with positive feelings.
Likewise, there is an effective arsenal of meditation techniques, psychological practices, exercise programs and other tools to reduce stress that are easy to find and practice.
Mayo Clinic offers these Tips to Tame Stress:
- Get active
- Eat a healthy diet
- Avoid unhealthy habits (such as drinking too much caffeine or alcohol, smoking, eating too much, or using illegal substances)
- Meditate
- Laugh more/smile more
- Connect with others
- Assert yourself
- Try yoga
- Get enough sleep
- Keep a journal
- Get musical and be creative
- Seek counseling.
If new stressors are making it hard for you to cope or if self-care measures aren’t relieving your stress, you may want to think about therapy or counseling. Therapy probably is a good idea if you feel overwhelmed or trapped. You also may think about therapy if you worry a great deal, or if you have trouble performing daily routines or meeting duties at work, home or school.
Professional counselors or therapists can help you find the sources of your stress and learn new coping tools.
Dr. Laurel Strahan earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from Texas Woman’s University. She has a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Tulsa, and an undergraduate degree from Texas Tech University. She has 25-plus years’ experience providing psychotherapy and assessment both within the private sector and the public education system. She’s also a behavior interventionist and parent coach. Dr. Strahan is program chair of the Psychology Department at Keiser University’s St. Lucie West campus.