How stress affects your body and mind – and how to manage it
Stress is such an innate part of our existence that all of us will be exposed to some form of it over our lifetimes.
We sometimes need a degree of stress in our lives to perform. Some research has even suggested that parents are more productive home workers than singletons due to the acute worry of needing to achieve more in shorter spaces of time amidst the demands of childcare.
Yet chronic stress over a long period of time is almost always negative for health. One 2023 study found that consistent high levels of stress ages people just as rapidly as smoking.
So what exactly is stress and how can we manage it?
What is stress?
The simplest definition of stress is simply the process of our body responding to any physical, social, or psychological demand, no matter how big or small. According to The Priory Group, a provider of mental health care facilities across the UK, 79 per cent of adults in this country feel stressed at least once a month and 32 per cent have experienced suicidal thoughts as a consequence of stress, with women reporting higher rates than men.
“Think of our stress response as a complex system of systems, an orchestra of at least six main organ systems, playing effortlessly under the conductor, your central nervous system, for your survival day and night,” says Lawson Wulsin, a professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Cincinnati, and the author of Toxic Stress: How Stress Is Making Us Ill and What We Can Do About It.
Types of stress
While short bursts of stress can be manageable, even positive, stress can have a deeply damaging impact on our health when it occurs in an unrelenting fashion over time.
Researchers tend to place stress in two main categories:
Acute stress
This refers to short-term pressures such as an exam or an impending work deadline. An Olympic athlete standing on the start line will be experiencing acute stress.
For an athlete, a certain amount of tension actually helps prime the cardiovascular system and the muscles for optimum performance. For the rest of us, mild-moderate bouts of physical and mental stress stimulate the production of blood molecules called interleukins, activating the immune system so it is better able to fight off infections.
Some studies have even suggested that babies born to mothers who experienced a small amount of everyday stress during pregnancy, for example through continuing to work, develop faster by the age of two compared with children whose mothers had a relatively relaxed pregnancy.
Chronic stress
Chronic stress occurs when a person is exposed to persistent demands, either physical or mental, that they feel unable to deal with, continuing over many months and years. “This can make us sick, accelerate ageing, and cut years off our lives,” says Prof Wulsin.
While acute stress can act as a booster, research has shown that chronic stress can actively weaken the immune system, and even change brain circuitry, affecting both the brain chemicals which modulate mood and systems which control motivation and mental agility. This is why chronic stress is a known risk factor for conditions like anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression.
“Toxic stress disrupts the fine-tuning that allows us, in good health, to filter out false alarms and regulate moods through the ups and downs of daily life,” says Prof Wulsin. “As a result, we feel vulnerable and sense danger where there is none, confusing our judgement and making daily life an ordeal. This is the vicious cycle of stress compounding stress.”
What makes us stressed?
In 2018, YouGov conducted the largest known survey of stress levels in the UK, assessing 4,619 people across the country. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most commonly cited causes of stress included financial insecurity and workplace pressures while stressors varied considerably between age groups.
Over-55s were more stressed about their own long-term health conditions or those of a friend or relative, while 18-24 year olds were most stressed about housing worries or comparing themselves to others. Under-35s also felt more stress from pressures to succeed compared to over-45s.
However, Prof Wulsin describes lifestyle habits as being a surprising contributor to daily stress and our ability to deal with it.
“One of the underappreciated sources of modern stress is the pattern of overstimulation we engage in through our tech devices, cheating on sleep and disrupting our day-night rhythms, which are essential to regulating our stress response systems,” he says.
Physical effects of stress
Much of the body’s stress response is dictated by two separate parts of the nervous system which work in tandem to keep your body in balance. The sympathetic nervous system controls the “fight, flight or freeze” response, which humans evolved to enable our ancestors to run away from perceived threats, and when you’re experiencing any kind of acute stress, this kicks in.
“Physiologically, your pupils dilate to let more light in,” says the NHS doctor Dr Ally Jaffee, the founder of Nutritank, which provides free education on food, nutrition and lifestyle medicine to health professionals. “From an evolutionary perspective, this would make you aware of your surroundings to make a strategic plan for flight. Your breathing also gets faster, more shallow, and that can turn into hyperventilation which is why some people experience panic attacks due to stress. Your heart will also pump faster which causes that fluttery feeling in your chest.”
Dr Liz McManus, a psychology lecturer at the University of Manchester adds that in some people, the activation of the sympathetic nervous system can lead to a whole range of unpleasant symptoms.
How stress affects the body
Stress has been shown to exacerbate conditions such as:
Skin conditions: psoriasis, rosacea and eczema
Digestive problems like indigestion and heartburn
Be a trigger for headaches
The parasympathetic nervous system, which is often dubbed ‘rest and digest’, then kicks in to try and relax these symptoms, and this also affects the body in a profoundly physical way.
How stress affects the mind
It can even impact cognition, reducing perception and short-term memory, which is why stressful events sometimes seem like a blur when we attempt to reflect on them.
But when these stress responses are chronically activated over a long period of time, they can also drive harmful physical responses such as increasing inflammation, and inducing spikes in cortisol, the stress hormone, which can have serious health consequences.
Can stress make you feel unwell?
Chronic stress can, unsurprisingly, make you very unwell over time, with stress-related health issues thought to cost the NHS more than £11 billion per year.
“Stress response systems are not built to deal with sustained high levels or repeated activation,” says Dr McManus. “When stress hormones like cortisol continue to be released throughout the body, bodily responses, like changes in heart rate, continue. As a result, prolonged stress can lead to issues like hypertension, which is a key risk factor for health problems like stroke and heart disease.”
In 2022, Dr McManus and colleagues published a study using the UK Biobank, a national health database with information from more than 500,000 participants, to examine the effects of highly stressful events during childhood and adulthood.
They found that high levels of stress can even be related to disruption in the connectivity between certain brain regions and can impact working memory. The results also showed that chronic stress is linked to increased mental health problems in both sexes, with women being particularly vulnerable.
Dr Jaffee says that many of the multi-pronged effects of stress on the body are due to rising inflammation, both systemically and in the brain, and its impact on hormones like cortisol. “So, if you already have an autoimmune condition, you can experience a flare-up with added stress,” she says. “The rise of cortisol also leads to a rise in glucose, so chronic stress can also be a causative factor to develop things like pre-diabetes and diabetes.”
How is stress diagnosed?
According to Dr Jaffee, right now we only tend to diagnose people with stress-related conditions when they’ve reached their tipping point, and have developed burnout, clinical depression or even experienced an initial episode of psychosis, all because of a stressful environment.
“What my primary care colleagues tend to see is people in crisis where stress has been a causative factor, but that’s not the official diagnosis,” she says.
How can we treat stress?
The uncomfortable truth is that there is often no quick fix for treating stress and it is not always possible to tackle the underlying cause. Instead, experts tend to focus on different management techniques as a way of reducing the impact of chronic stress and reversing stress-related conditions.
Dr McManus says there is evidence to show that strategies such as mindfulness and yoga can promote calmness and decrease tension, while exercise and having good social support systems can make a considerable difference.
“Having good social support can provide help to deal with stress in a wider variety of ways, such as emotional support to vent about worries, practical or information support to help resolve issues and general companionship to give us a sense of belonging even in difficult circumstances,” she says.
How to manage your stress
The best stress management approach tends to be a personal choice, based on what works for you. While some will relish yoga, it may not be the option for all, and not everyone can afford a gym membership.
However, Dr Jaffee says that there are numerous effective and low-cost options for stress management. In the last couple of years, two studies looking at the benefits of adult colouring books alongside other mindfulness techniques found that this improved relaxation and resilience in both university students and stressed-out teachers.
The benefits of breathwork
Dr Jaffee is an advocate of breathwork. “Breathwork is an amazing technique that I do on the wards when I’m stressed,” she says. “I do a lot of square breathing where you inhale for four seconds, hold your breath for four seconds, exhale for four seconds and then rest for four seconds. Sometimes when people aren’t looking, I actually draw the square with my finger, visualise my breathing, and then I really do feel peace of mind.
“What happens is that you engage your vagus nerve through deep diaphragmatic breathing, and you basically get yourself out of that fight, flight or freeze overdrive, and back into rest and digest.”
Get outside and put away the sugary drinks
Studies have shown that getting out into nature and taking a walk around green spaces can make a major difference when it comes to reducing stress, while avoiding many of the bad habits which many of us turn to when we’re stressed, such as smoking, consuming fatty or sugary foods, caffeine, and energy drinks, can also help with finding balance.
Above all, it is important to try and take steps to manage your stress before it becomes chronic and has too much of a detrimental impact on your health.
“I’m a big believer in prevention over cure,” says Dr Jaffee. “There are so many effective techniques for reducing stress. It’s really people figuring out what their individual needs are and what works for them.”
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