We all know stress is a normal part of life.
We also know managing stress is imperative for our mental and physical health.
Without proper stress management, we set ourselves up for exhaustion, worry, poor sleep, feeling rundown, and … even more stress.
But knowing about stress is different from recognizing stress in ourselves. So if you’re wondering how to tell if your stress is too high, physical stress symptoms may be more evident than you realize.
Here’s what’s happening in your body when you’re overly stressed and the signs to watch out for:
The Body & Stress
Stress is your body’s response to experiencing an overabundance of demand or a threat. When your body senses danger, your focus heightens, and stress hormones increase. Consequently, you’re more alert and responsive to your surroundings. For an immediate threat, that’s a perfect thing. Your body provides a hyper-focused reaction, giving you the increased focus and energy you need to survive.
Traditionally, stress is a response to something physical. Physical stressors refer to outside influences that trigger a state of heightened stress. For example, maybe another driver pulls out in front of you, and you must respond quickly to avoid a collision. Or your work requires demanding physical labor that puts your body in a temporary state of stress.
But that’s just one aspect of what we call stress. This stress response keeps us safe from danger, but being “stressed out” is different.
Being stressed out implies a perpetual state of worry, agitation, or perceived danger. It happens when a threat doesn’t go away, like working long hours, dealing with difficulties at home, or navigating family illness.
Most of these situations fit into what we call cognitive stressors. Cognitive stressors are perceived risks that lead to physical responses. While these often include work demands or family issues, such as screen time can be a mental stressor. Too much visual stimulation and blue-light exposure can lead to the same heightened focus and hormone release as physical stressors.
Whether cognitive or physical, real or perceived, your body responds to these triggers physically by preparing for danger.
Immediate Signs of Being Stressed
The stress response protects us from immediate danger, but our brains, bodies, and behaviors suffer when the stress doesn’t go away. Here’s how:
Mental and Physical Effects
If you notice these physical stress effects, it could be a sign your body is asking for help to reduce or manage your stress:
- Headache
- Muscle tension
- Aches and soreness
- Fatigue
- Restlessness
- Lack of sleep
- Irritability
- Lack of motivation or focus
- Worry
Behavioral Effects
People naturally express these mental and physical effects through their behavior. For example, if they feel anxious, it will likely spill over into their relationships and work. If they’re exhausted, they won’t be able to focus.
Often, instead of addressing the causes of cognitive stress, many people rely on unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with it.
Common behaviors that result from stress include:
- Overeating or under-eating
- Having emotional outbursts
- Consuming or abusing drugs/alcohol
- Smoking
- Withdrawing emotionally
- Exercising less
- Living a more sedentary, reclusive lifestyle
Long-Term Effects of Stress
The problems only get worse if you ignore prolonged stress. Health problems can be a typical result of an ongoing stressed lifestyle.
Sadly, this is where many Americans end up. People working in high-stress environments often eat more and exercise less as the stress increases. Ultimately, these issues affect their quality and quantity of life. And for those who remain stressed, life isn’t as enjoyable and doesn’t last as long as it should.
How to Reduce Stress and its Harmful Effects
While recognizing stress in yourself can feel like a harsh wake-up call, you’re not doomed. There are ways to manage stress, reduce it, and turn around your physical and mental health.
When we think about dealing with stress, consider setting two goals:
- Reduce the causes of stress
- Better handle the unavoidable stress
With intentional exercise, diet, meditation, and goal setting, stress becomes much more manageable.
Exercise
Exercise is the starting place for a solution to stress. Resistance training, cardio, and yoga — anything that gets your body moving — can help deal with stress. Exercise promotes the release of endorphins (the happy hormone), so you feel good. In turn, this exertion of physical energy reduces the adverse effects of stress and improves your mood.
Diet
Equip your body to handle stress better with your diet. Think of diet as anything you put in your body — food, drink, drugs. If, for example, you’re in a stressed environment, drink more water, avoid processed foods (fast-food included), and opt for whole foods.
Heavy, processed foods increase stress on the body. Avoiding excess sugar, alcoholic beverages, drugs, and other harmful substances helps to keep your body from experiencing this extra measure of physical stress.
Your body craves easily digestible foods. So when you give your body what it needs (without excess intake), you prevent your body from storing the food as fat.
With proper nutrition, your body can also function more optimally to help balance the hormones you need to handle stress. For example, cortisol (the stress hormone) is released when stress is induced on the body. When this hormone is released, your body wants to store fat. But when you give your body the nutrition it needs, it better detects when to release cortisol.
Stress is inevitable – but your diet shouldn’t cause stress. When you eat healthily, your diet helps you handle stress better.
Meditation
Meditation can take a lot of different forms. One of the best (and easiest) ways to meditate is through breathing techniques.
Try counted breathing, box breathing, or other stress-reducing breathing techniques to help.
Practices such as these help calm the mind and bring you back to the present. It helps you put life in perspective so you can focus on the situation with clarity.
Goal setting
Set clear goals and establish timelines to manage stress proactively.
Both personal and professional goals keep you organized so you’re not getting bogged down with work and deadlines that cause undue stress. When you have a clear objective and an actionable path to achieve it, you’ll be able to overcome your cognitive stressors better and focus your efforts.
When to Seek Help
If you feel you can’t manage your stress on your own, or if health risks are becoming more of a concern, see a professional. Start by seeing a doctor, especially if you think stress may be affecting your heart health, weight, or you have other signs of being stressed. Your primary care physician can check to see if stress is the primary cause or if anything else is happening.
As you work to handle stress, take the walk-before-you-run approach. Be practical. What’s a small step you can take to decrease your stress today? You likely won’t be able to cut sugar entirely and meditate for hours on end right away. And if you attempt to master something like this immediately, you’ll probably create more stress for yourself.
Start small and overcome your stress one step at a time.
What stress management methods work best for you? Email blog@snipnutri.com and your ideas may be featured in an upcoming post.
