Today I’m going to blog about stress. It’s a word that means many things to many people, and at present is almost definitely responsible for our feelings and reactions. I have studied stress a lot, in fact it was the topic of my functional medicine dissertation, so this blog is going to be about understanding stress more, and the next one will be ways to combat it otherwise known as resiliency.
SO WHAT IS STRESS?
“Stress is the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response.”
“Stress can come from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, nervous, or anxious.”
“It’s the reaction you have to an imbalance between the demands you perceive are placed upon you and the resources you have to cope.”
Regardless of the exact wording, we are essentially talking about something that is happening that is beyond our available resources. So great, now that we’ve got that…
The key thing to remember is that stress is not inherently bad. In fact, our ability to have a stress response is brilliant as it has meant humankind’s survival.
Stress is primarily a physical response. When stressed, the body thinks it is under attack and switches to survival mode - releasing a complex mix of hormones and chemicals to prepare for what is necessary to survive. The modern challenge is that what our physiology perceives as stress is no longer the sabre-toothed tigers of our ancestors. It can now be the toxins in our air, the lack of nutrition in our food, the over-stimulation of social media or the stress of relationships, work pressures, expectations, uncertainty. Our body doesn’t differentiate.
So, it is worth really understanding what stress is, how you deal with it, and if /when is the time to take on more stress by choice, or support us when stress is thrust upon us.
To do this we’re going to look at the following things related to stress:
1) Physiology of stress
2) Types of stress
3) Complete a stress test
SO LET’S LOOK AT THE PHYSIOLOGY:
The simplicity of the human body means that there are just three choices when it comes to reacting to stress – we know them as fight, flight or freeze.
Fight:
Sometimes, when you feel threatened you can initiate the ‘fight’ stress response, which is aimed to ward off predators. So, your heart races, your energy levels rise, you feel agitated and aggressive.
Flight:
At other times when you feel threatened, you want to avoid the situation, removing yourself from the situation instead of tackling it. This is the ‘flight’ survival instinct. Recognisable also by heart racing as the blood pumps to enable you to run.
Freeze:
Or your response to stress is that you ‘freeze’. When you want to do something that is scary (such as public speaking) or when confronted with something shocking (seeing someone attacked). It’s a common response to extreme stress. To freeze your breathing shallows, your eyes dilate, and your limbs become heavy.
Let’s look at a scenarios to demonstrate exactly what the body is doing and why it’s a genius and elegant solution – or at least it used to be:
While out on the prairies, a caveman comes across a sabre-toothed tiger and in that split second the body assesses the situation and decide which of the three reactions is most likely to save the caveman’s life.
Can he fight and win? Can he freeze and hope to go unnoticed? Or, can he flee and get somewhere safe?
Let’s say the decision is to fight, the body will then do what it needs to in order to optimise that situation. Blood will be diverted to muscles, shutting down unnecessary bodily functions such as digestion; while hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, flood the body, giving a rush of energy in preparation to fight. In short, the body gives all it has to ensure energy, muscle strength and stimulation are there to better the caveman’s chances.
The pounding heart, fast breathing and boost of energy will be short lived but intense because, whichever way the fight goes, it won’t last long.
Or let’s say the decision is to freeze. Again, the body does what is needed to optimise that situation. This time a different combination of chemicals and hormones, acetylcholine and cortisol, are released, which means the energy gets ‘locked’ into the nervous system. This relaxes the lungs so the breathing becomes significantly more shallow. No breathing means there is no blood flowing to the limbs, which results in the limbs becoming heavy and lifeless. The body is aiming to have the tiger not sense the caveman and perhaps walk past him leaving him unharmed.
The last option is flight. The same hormone and chemical mix as the ‘fight’ response occurs, but the body sends that energy to different places and shuts down different systems. We don’t need to digest food whilst running, we don’t need to procreate – but we do need energy and lots of if – so the endocrine system becomes catabolic, turning stored fat into energy to sustain the flight for as long as is needed, pushing energy into the limbs and heart to keep the legs moving and the heart rate high in order to run into the bushes or climb a tree to escape from the tiger’s gaze or route.
These responses all seem logical and well founded. Let’s now look at how this plays out in a modern situation.
It’s 8am on a Wednesday morning and you’re stuck in traffic on your way to a 9am job interview. Which of those three reactions will best serve you in this stressful situation?? Errr……. Well, none of them really! But those are the only choices your body has so it will pick one. So, you’ll get agitated, frustrated or angry. Or perhaps you’ll get deflated, apathetic and detached. Lastly, you may get creative, passionate and motivated. I’m sure you can relate these reactions to many situations you’ve found yourself in. The emotions and sensations in the body tell you which reaction is happening underneath the surface.
Not to say that these reactions don’t have their place – they still help us survive dangerous situations, such as reacting swiftly to a person running in front of our car by slamming on the brakes. The challenge is when our body goes into a state of stress in inappropriate situations, like sitting in a car, stuck in traffic. When our physiology focuses on the reaction of stress chosen, it means all other functions are minimised. That can be a great hindrance in both our work and home lives.
If we are kept in a state of stress for long periods it is hugely detrimental to our physical, emotional and mental health.
TYPES OF STRESS:
So the body doesn’t differentiate when it comes to stress. If it thinks survival is at risk, then that’s it, it calls it stress and responds accordingly. The entire system is designed to assess the world around us and judge it based on our intrinsic survival. That means the system is accumulative and this is where the juxtaposition of modern life and our basic physiology fall out.
We can classify modern stressors into four main categories, which are listed below along with some examples:
Physical:
No exercise, too much exercise, bad food, excessive food, lack of sleep, exposure to toxins, exposure to chemicals, inflammation, illness, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine
Emotional:
Jealousy, rage, anger, grief, fear, sadness, passion, lust, disappointment, which can be the result of relationship upset, family conflict, work issues, arguments
Mental:
Depression, anxiety, worry, comparison with others, low self-esteem, self-confidence issues, over-thinking, catastrophizing
Spiritual:
Lack of purpose, loss of life meaning, crisis of faith, disconnection, lack of compassion for others, lack of relationship with self
The lack of physiological differentiation between these types of stressors means that we can view them all as an inter-connecting series of buckets.
The body has a tolerance level, known as resilience, and it is when this level is breached by the accumulative level of all stressors that physiologically the decision over whether flight, fight or freeze is made. A great example of this is how you or I may react if we are approached on a dark street by a potential mugger versus how a professional boxer or marine may respond. They have a higher tolerance, as a result of their training and experience, for these situations so they may not trigger a stress reaction.
Advancements in our lifetime have meant that stressors are always present and affecting our physiology – be that man-made chemicals in the air, or in the soil affecting the nutrition levels of the food we eat, sleep deprivation due to noise or light pollution, electro-magnetic waves stimulating our brains differently, inflammation caused by different/unnatural forms of exercise, or inactivity thanks to the modern habits of the sofa-loving gaming generation. This is all before we even get into the other types of stressors that modern living has created in terms of confidence, self-esteem, comparisons, status, financial security, community, and all matters of the heart.
It’s also important to know that the body will assume that the situation triggering these responses is short-term – such as that scenario with the tiger – the caveman either survived and returned to what they were doing before, or they died. We’ve all seen examples of this on natural history programmes when, having fled from the lion, the gazelle escapes and immediately stops and starts feeding again as if nothing happened. We all feel like that from time to time – like when trying to explain a pain that’s gone.
The challenge is that with the body constantly reviewing the entire environment for potential risks, along with all those constant stressors we talked about just now, we are essentially living in a state of chronic low-level stress, and in the process of our day-to-day lives we are using up most of the body’s tolerance levels.
This is why we can find the smallest things stressful, because our tolerance level is already depleted. This accounts for the times when not being able to find your phone can sometimes feel like the end of the world, and at other times a lovely relief.
It also means that when we actually need the body to prepare us for a truly stressful situation, such as the one we are now it, or a bereavement, getting married, getting divorced, we can find the body lacking or under-resourced, which results in disease or conditions like adrenal fatigue, burnout, ME, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, the list goes on and on… In fact, The Royal College of General Practitioners states that 80% of patients sitting in a doctor's surgery are there because of a stress-related illness. It’s time to take this seriously.
If you’d like to understand this a little more, then I highly recommend– Dr Bruce Lipton P.hD Check out a great video here: https://www.facebook.com/QuantumUniversity/videos/10155399740777900/
I’m keen to ensure that you fully grasp this, so let’s make this real...
STRESS TESTS:
There are many ways to assess your current stress levels. Lots of places offer free online stress tests that are quick and simple to complete and give you a high-level view of your current stress levels. These tests utilise various techniques to assess stress levels by measuring what we can consciously assess – our emotions.
These are my personal recommendations:
https://www.bemindfulonline.com/test-your-stress/ (This test will take 5-10min and has offers details about Mindfulness, as a way of lowering your stress levels.)
http://www.stress.org.uk/individual-stress-test/ (This test will take 5-10min to complete.)
There is one test that I want you to do today. This is based on the most extensive research and is called the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale - also referred to as The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). This research is based on thousands of studies on the accumulative impact of stress. As mentioned, the buckets all link up and the tolerance is what is key here. So Holmes and Rahe created a scale of the stressfulness of various situations and then by looking at how many of these you’ve experienced in a period of time you can see how full your combined bucket is.
Your ability to cope with the demands upon you is key to your experience of stress. For example, your reaction to the current isolation situation will depend on how your wider life is right now. If life is stable and positive you may be adapting fine, but if you’re in a state of flux or had existing challenge with other issues around illness, money, housing, relationships, your buckets are fuller and this means your tolerance level is lower and as such you may be finding it harder to adapt and cope.
This tool helps to measure the stress load we carry, and by knowing that we can then think about what we should do about it. So, let’s find out your current score… (Please allow 10min for this exercise.)
That’s enough for today, so we’ll pause there, and in the next blog we’ll talk about that tolerance level - resilience – and ways to improve it.
Until next time...
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