“Today’s economy is stressing people out, and stress has been linked to a number of illnesses – such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and increased risk for cancer.  This study shows that stress is also linked to weight gain.”

Some other findings of this study suggest that people who are already overweight get heavier with stress, but not for people who are lower weight.

There are also differences by gender. Women tend to eat more when stressed by financial problems or a difficult work environment, strained family relationships, and a feeling of being limited by life’s circumstances.

Weight gain for men tended to be more likely affected by work problems rather than family problems.  Examples include lacking decision authority or lack of skill discretion (the ability to learn new skills on the job and performing interesting work assignments).

“Our findings show that stress should be recognized as a threat to the well-being of adults, especially those who are already overweight.”

I’m not surprised at the findings.  Stress is such a negative influence in our lives that I would wager that most of the illnesses we suffer are a result of chronic stress.  I think it’s only a matter of time before more studies show the direct linkage.

I think the good news out of this study is that you first recognize that if you have a higher BMI (body mass index), then you need to be watchful of your eating patterns.  If you start to gain weight, take a moment to evaluate whether the stress in your life has changed, possibly increasing.  If so, take active steps to counteract the stress.  Take more walks, make sure you have healthy snacks around, and identify what activating event is causing your stress.

Knowledge is power.  Use it to your advantage.

“Beyond the physical addiction, smokers repeatedly pointed to the stress relief that smoking provides.  “Cigarettes are just adult pacifiers,” said three-pack-a-day smoker Deborah Israel, 56, of Chicago. “You stick ‘em in your mouth when you get stressed.”

I guess the same could be said of drinkers, who take a drink whenever they get stressed and need to “calm down”.  The alcoholic buzz and the warm glow helps to smooth the rough edges.

The problem with these  “stress relievers”, and other misused alternatives (pain pills, muscle relaxers, illegal drugs, etc.) is the danger to go too far with them.  In the case of the stressed out smoker above, evidently she is getting stressed 60 times a day.  (20 cigarettes to a pack and three packs a day).  That’s every day.  That’s way too much stress to deal with on a daily basis.

But I suspect her stress is not that often.  My guess is that she uses “stress relief” as her validation of why she can’t quit smoking.  And that’s probably true of the other alternatives to reducing stress.  All of these are highly addictive, and produce more bad effects on the body than good.

What do you take for your stress?  Have you stopped to think about it?  Do you subconsciously reach for something to calm you down?  It doesn’t have to be items that are considered bad by society.  How about candy?  Mints?  Snack food?  Sodas?  More coffee?

A bedrock of dealing with stress is to be aware of what is causing you stress and to consciously make decisions as to how to address these “activating events”.  Remember our “ABC Model”?

Choose your stress relievers wisely!

The Biology of Stress on the Brain

When a person experiences stress, the adrenal glands secrete adrenaline and cortisol, the stress hormones. Adrenaline increases heart rate and respiration and forces muscle contractions. Cortisol increases glucose levels available for muscles to use. It also temporarily inhibits other areas of the body including digestion, reproduction, growth, and the immune system. Cortisol also directly affects the memory and learning centers of the brain (the hippocampus) and to the emotional gateway of the brain for memory (the amygdala). Together these two hormones produce the fight-or-flight response (or stress response) of the body to perceived threats.

During a period of acute stress (where a threat occurs suddenly and then disappears), cortisol helps the brain remember the incident, perhaps in order to avoid that particular situation in the future. However, this memory comes at a price. Cortisol can damage the neurons of the brain. With chronic stress or depression, where the stress hormones are released over and over for a long period of time, this damage to neurons can add up. Over time, high cortisol levels can cause brain cell dysfunction, kill brain cells, and cause brain atrophy of the brain.

Recent Studies

As noted previously, a number of research studies are giving us a better idea of how stress affects our mind. For example, a Yale study has concluded that experiencing stressful life events can reduce the gray matter in critical regions of the brain that regulate emotion and important physiological functions. The researches found that brains of healthy subjects who had only recently experienced a stressful life event showed markedly lower gray matter in portions of the medial prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain regulates not only emotions and self-control, but also bodily functions such as blood pressure and glucose levels.

Another study conducted by The Washington University (St. Louis, MO) School of Medicine has also found evidence of damage to the brain’s neurons in people suffering from depression. Even in people who had been depressed years prior to the study, as much as 12-15% cell atrophy was found in their hippocampi, resulting in the loss of an infinite number of memory cells.

Finally, another study emphasizing worry (one of a number of stress-related emotions) found that chronic worriers have an increased risk of cognitive decline. This decline included a propensity for Alzheimer disease. Chronic worriers had more than double the risk of decline compared to more carefree subjects.

Summary

Stress produces a number of physiological and emotional responses within an individual. Over time, these responses can cause significant decline in mental ability.

The effects of stress on your emotions can be significant over time if left unchecked. Chronic stress has been linked to anger, anxiety, and depression. Anger is a negative response to a negative stimulus. Anxiety can be described as thoughts about the future while depression can be described as thoughts about the past.

Anger and Hostility

One trait of anger is that it can be expressed in a continuum, that is from simple resentment to full out-of-control rage. There are many emotions that can be said to exist along this continuum, in a way helping to define the degree of anger being experienced. For example, resentment, irritability, and jealousy could be terms used to describe mild anger. “Going postal” could be a description of the other end of the anger scale.

Hostility is anger that is directed at something or someone. Hostility is especially dangerous in that anger is now personalized in an aggressive way. Hostility is not normally defined as an emotion, but rather an action. It is anger turned into a negative action.

Anxiety

Worry is a manifestation of fear. Worry is a state where we dwell on something so much that it causes us to be apprehensive. Worry is not as severe as fear because fear will cause physical changes such as a racing pulse and fast breathing. Worry is also the thinking part of anxiety. Anxiety is the psychological and physiological response to worry. Anxiety and worry are focused on future events. If worry and anxiety escalate out of control, then fear is the ensuing emotion.

Depression

Depression is an emotion that is characterized by low mood and an aversion to activity. Sadness, worthlessness, despair, and hopelessness can all be used to describe depression. Depression tends to focus on things of the past. Severe depression can lead to suicidal thoughts and tendencies.

The Effects of Stress on Your Emotions

In each case of the emotions discussed above, the emotion begins as a thought. Just as in the case of stress itself, these emotions are the results of how we think situations should be, not how they really are. Referring to the ABC Model, these emotions represent the “B” in the model, or beliefs. If your beliefs are not in line with the activating events in your life (the “A” in the model), then negative results (consequence, or “C”) occur. These results can be stress which can lead to anger or hostility, anxiety, or depression.

Direct Effects of Stress on Your Health

The stress response, or the fight or flight response, is one that the body has whenever it perceives a danger or threat. The sympathetic nervous system is activated, which results in the secretion of stress hormones that prepare the body for action. Non-essential functions, like digestion, are shut down in order to conserve energy. Heartbeat and breathing are increased, increased sweat secretion occurs, and the immune system is suppressed. These significant bodily functions occur each time a danger or threat is perceived.

In modern daily lives, there are numerous stressful events that the body interprets as dangers or threats. Work pressures, driving in traffic, problems with children and parents, financial or job anxiety, and many more add to the number of times the body invokes the fight or flight response. Over time, these numerous events tend to cause damage to the body, most notably with the amount of time the immune system is suppressed. With a weakened immune system, our bodies are much less able to fight disease and infection.

The immune system is made up of monocytes, lymphocytes (white blood cells), interluekins, and killer cells. Interluekins act as messengers, lymphocytes fight infection, while killer cells attack viruses and certain tumor cells. Stress causes cortisol to suppress the release of interleukins as well as slow the production of lymphocytes. Stress also inhibits killer cells. Together, these results of chronic stress cause the immune system to be impaired in its ability to protect the body against disease.

Another direct effect of stress on health is that of heart health. In cases of chronic stress, where stress is experienced over and over, it has been shown that the heart may suffer from these harmful effects:

• Constriction of the arteries during periods of stress decrease the blood supply, resulting in less blood being delivered to the heart
• During stress, the blood tends to clot more easily. As a result, the blood clots may restrict the flow of blood in an artery, which will increase blood pressure or may completely shut off the flow of blood. This may result in either a heart attack or a stroke.
• Stress causes increased oxygen demand because heart rate and blood pressure are elevated.
• High levels of cortisol may affect heart health by promoting inflammation that could cause heart attacks.

Indirect Effects of Stress on Your Health

Chronic stress can affect your health by the way you react to stress in your life. If unhealthy behaviors are adopted as a way of dealing with stress, then over a long period of time the body may suffer not only from the direct impact of stress but also from the indirect impact of the unhealthy behaviors.

For example, the following is a list of common unhealthy behaviors that have been adopted as a result of chronic stress:

• Overeating
• Smoking
• Drinking
• Drug Use (illegal drugs, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety pills, muscle relaxants)
• Sleep disorders
• Too much caffeine
• Watching too much TV or videos or computer surfing
• And many more.

It should be readily apparent that all of these behaviors can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. Sometimes the behaviors we adopt can be much worse than the effect of stress itself.

An effective stress reduction plan must incorporate knowledge of the potential for unhealthy lifestyle choices which need to be identified and modified. While nearly everyone should know what it takes to live a healthy lifestyle, it is quite evident that there is still a significant disconnect between that knowledge and the actual implementation of one.

Acute Stress Effects on the Body

The body responds to an imminent danger by preparing to either fight the danger or run from it. It does this by releasing stress hormones (epinephrine and cortisol) which cause the body to immediately begin preparing for more power and speed. The immediate physiological changes that occur as a result of the release of stress hormones are:

• Increased heart rate and output
• Increased blood pressure
• Increased mental activity
• Increased breathing rate
• Increased oxygen to the brain
• Increased muscle contraction
• Shunting of blood away from digestive system (stops metabolizing food)
• Increased secretion of sweat glands
• Dilation of pupils
• Blood thinning
• Immune system is suppressed
• Pain perception decreases

In the modern world, we rarely find ourselves in situations where the fight or flight response is required. However, our bodies are unable to distinguish between real imminent dangers and the more mundane sources of stress. As a result, our bodies are responding to modern-day stressors with a prehistoric physiological response. Our bodies have not yet adapted.

This type of stress response is necessary for those truly dangerous situations. But having the same stress response to traffic problems, schedule issues, workload demands, family commitments, etc. can add up over time to a chronic situation in which the body eventually breaks down.

Chronic Stress Effects on the Body

There have been many studies conducted on long-term effects of stress, most of which suggest that chronic stress can harm your body. Increasingly, evidence suggests links between chronic stress and cardiovascular disease, immune system deficiencies, cancer, asthma, gastrointestinal disorders, premature aging, and many more.

Cardiovascular Disease

The term “cardiovascular disease” is a somewhat all-encompassing expression that usually refers to diseases of the heart and/or blood vessels. This can include atherosclerosis (accumulation of fatty deposits on artery walls), heart attacks, and strokes.

While stress alone has not been identified as a cause of cardiovascular disease, there have been many studies that have identified stress as a strong contributor, along with other contributors such as depression, anxiety, low socioeconomic status, and anger.

The mechanisms for stress to contribute to cardiovascular disease are under study. It is thought that the release of stress hormones cause the amount of cholesterol in the blood to increase. Likewise, blood pressure and heart rate increase. Experiencing these reactions on a chronic basis put a great deal of tension on the walls of arteries and with time may cause damage. With the increased cholesterol in the blood, and the increase in platelets trying to repair the damage to the arteries, the stage is set for thickening the arteries’ walls and setting up a situation where a blockage may occur due to clotting. It is this process over time that may lead to atherosclerosis, heart attack, or stroke.

Immune System Deficiencies

The immune system is composed of lymphocytes, monocytes, and interleukins (a chemical that acts as a messenger). Stress produces cortisol, which slows the production of lymphocytes and reduces the ability of interleukins to communicate with lymphocytes. These effects combine to produce an immunity system with diminished capability. The body thus becomes more susceptible to infections due to bacteria or viruses.

Studies have even determined that the adverse effects of stress within the immune system can remain for years after the source of the chronic stress is no longer present.

Cancer

A by-product of a weakened immune system may be the increased susceptibility of the body to cancer. While no studies have definitively linked stress and cancer, it is thought that a weakened immune system is not able to recognize cancer cells and thus are not able to destroy them.

Studies have been conducted that show that stress management can have a positive impact on the recovery of patients to cancer therapy. Lowered stress levels helped patients have a more positive outlook on the impact of cancer to their lives.

Asthma

Asthma is a disorder of the bronchioles, or small airways, within the lungs. Asthma is characterized by chronic inflammation of these airways which in turn cause them to swell, thus causing restricted airflow. Symptoms of asthma include coughing, shortness of breath, wheezing, and chest tightness.

Factors that can cause the onset of an asthma attack include strong emotions (such as fear or anger), dust, mold, pollen, cold weather, and exercise.

Stress, in the way that it can cause strong emotional responses, can be linked to causing asthma attacks. Clinical reports suggest a strong cause and effect. However, studies have yet to determine if stress can actually cause asthma in individuals who previously did not have the condition.

Gastrointestinal Disorders

Stress can affect the gastrointestinal tract in several different ways. Stress can increase gastric acid production (a factor in heartburn and the inflammation of the esophagus). Stress can also cause abnormal muscle contractions in the small intestine and colon (a factor in Irritable Bowel Syndrome). It is also believed that stress can hamper the normal healing of the lining of the gastrointestinal system (resulting in ulcers).

Premature Aging

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 provided a direct link between stress and premature aging. Using the length of chromosome caps as an indicator, chronic stress was shown to hasten the shortening of these caps, which is indicative of a shortening of the cell’s life span and an acceleration of the body’s deterioration. The study suggested that for individuals under high stress, they could be aged as much as 9 to 17 years.