You can eat balanced meals, exercise regularly, and take every supplement on the shelf – yet your body still isn’t healing properly. The missing piece to this puzzle is stress. When the body is stressed, it is in survival mode, and healing is put on hold.
As claimed by Yale Medicine, chronic stress is a constant sense of feeling pressured and overwhelmed for an extended period of time. Chronic stress could start from numerous sources, from a dysfunctional family to a dissatisfying job. Chronic stress can slowly drain a person’s mental resources while damaging their brain and body.
Around 75% of Americans say their stress has increased in the last five years, with physical or emotional symptoms.
Chronic stress hinders the rate of physical healing in many cases. Key impacts include weakened immune system, increased inflammation, and slower recovery times. The immune system plays a large role in the body’s ability to heal. ACE Physical Therapy mentions how cortisol, a hormone responsive to stress, affects the body’s immune system to produce anti-inflammatories.
“Our body is going to survive,” said Mrs. Leanne Roy, health teacher at Oakmont Regional High School. “Our body is going to do what it needs to do to survive, and rebuilding doesn’t necessarily happen during stress,” continued Roy.
Survival mode is a term used to describe when the nervous system is dysregulated. The sympathetic nervous system can be seen as an accelerator in survival mode. This can result in a faster heartbeat, increased blood pressure, and dilated pupils. The other part of our nervous system, called the parasympathetic nervous system, can be seen as a break in survival mode. This helps us downregulate after stress is passed. Survival mode can be seen differently in different people. In some, it may look like anxiety, other flatness, and depression.
“Some people take on stress physically, and it’s really unique to each person,”
claimed Mrs. Kristen Brochu, Oakmont guidance counselor. “I think stress can manifest physically in extreme and not-so-extreme situations,” said Brochu.
Symptoms of physical stress could include headaches, dizziness, body aches, and increased inflammation. When stressors are always present, you may always have the feeling of being under attack, and your fight or flight system stays on alert. A long-term activation of the stress response and excessive exposure to cortisol can disrupt the body’s processes.
“Your body responds to stress by releasing chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. The release of those, especially cortisol, increases the inflammatory response; it also hinders the immunity process in our bodies,” said Mrs. Jennifer Groncki, Oakmont health and psychology teacher.
Stress can affect anyone. Cara Delevingne lives an upscale life as a model. However, her life isn’t easy all the time. As a model, she is put in high-stress settings constantly. Delevingne struggles with psoriasis, which flares up during high-stress situations.
According to the National Institute of Health, around 31% – 88% of people with psoriasis report that emotional stress can cause flare-ups.
Psoriasis flare-ups happen because stress releases hormones like cortisol. The cortisol triggers the immune system into overactivity. This leads to the amount of skin cell turnover being accelerated and increasing inflammation.
Everyday Health declares that inflammation is our body’s response to a threat. In response to this, our immune system sends out pro-inflammatory cytokines to attack the invaders. Pro-inflammatory cytokines usually do their job and disappear. However, this is not the case when stress is chronic. They become habituated in the body. This is when the inflammation starts to be deleterious to the body.
“Stress is something we have to deal with head-on, and something we have to address,” said Brochu.
We can deal with stress head-on by managing how we handle it. We can handle stress by using techniques like meditation, proper amounts of sleep, and journaling. However, whenever our body is healing, and stress is present, it will not heal properly. Survival mode turns on during stress, and ultimately, that becomes more powerful than your body’s healing for the future.
