Written by: Denise Belisle, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Stress is a natural physical response to situations that disturb your sense of balance or make you feel threatened. When you perceive danger, real or imagined, your body's automatic "fight-or-flight" reaction, also known as the stress response, goes into high gear.
The stress response is your body's way of protecting you, and when functioning correctly, it helps you stay focused, alert, and energetic. In critical circumstances, stress can even save your life by giving you the extra strength to defend yourself or react quickly to avoid danger.
Moreover, stress can be beneficial by helping you meet challenges. It keeps you sharp during a work presentation, sharpens your concentration during a game-winning free throw, or motivates you to study for an exam. However, too much stress can harm your health, mood, productivity, relationships, and quality of life.
Good Stress
Imagine that you're being chased by a bear, and you manage to outrun it. Your body will return to its normal, balanced state (homeostasis) soon after you reach safety. This is how our bodies were designed to function in survival mode – out of balance for a short period until the danger passes. This type of stress is what I call "Good Stress" or "Eustress." It provides a burst of adrenaline to help accomplish goals and meet deadlines, mental alertness, motivation, efficiency, and self-esteem. Good stress helps us go about our daily tasks, learn new things, adapt to change, and engage in creative thinking. Everyone experiences good stress daily. Another form of good stress is the stress that enables us to survive in times of trauma by making us aware of dangers and helping us escape.
However, Good Stress is also experienced in our modern world, although in different situations than being chased by bears. For example, if someone gets cut off while driving on the highway, they may be momentarily frightened, but their body will return to normal once they realize they're safe – unless they've encountered countless stressful situations throughout the day.
Too Much Stress
Most people experience a string of nerve-wracking incidents that keep them in a fight-or-flight response, preventing them from returning to their normal, balanced state. Traffic on the way to work, the pressure of preparing for a presentation, an argument with a spouse, a credit card bill, a computer hard drive crash, and noticing a new gray hair in the mirror can all keep stress hormones circulating in the body on a near-constant basis. Combined with memories of past stressful experiences and anticipation of future ones, these repetitive short-term stresses can blur together into long-term sustained stress. This is what living in survival mode looks like in the 21st century.
Bad Stress
I call this type of stress "Bad Stress" or "Distress." It doesn't aid people in achieving their goals or tasks but rather hinders their daily functioning. Bad stress occurs when stress builds up excessively. The body then responds with symptoms such as perspiration, anxiety, headaches, and rapid breathing. This type of stress can have a significant impact on one's physical and mental well-being.
When in a fight-or-flight mode, the body mobilizes all its energy for either fighting or running away.
However, when there is no return to homeostasis due to a persistent perceived threat, the body loses vital energy. As a result, there is less energy in the internal environment for cell growth, repair, and long-term building projects on a cellular level. This hinders the healing process as the energy is channelled elsewhere, leading to cells shutting down and becoming "selfish." The collective community of cells working together becomes fractured, causing the immune and endocrine systems, among others, to weaken. This happens because genes and related cells are compromised when external informational signals to the cells are turned off. The process of cellular breakdown can make one feel exhausted and sick.
To illustrate the negative impact of sustained stress, imagine living in a country where 98% of resources are spent on defence, leaving nothing for schools, libraries, road building and repair, communication systems, or growing food. This situation leads to the development of potholed roads that are left unfixed, budget cuts that cause schools to offer fewer educational resources and the closure of social welfare programs that aid the poor and the elderly. The masses may even go hungry as there is not enough food to feed them.
Sustained Stress
Sustained stress has been linked to several conditions, including anxiety, insomnia, cancer, chronic fatigue, hair loss, and diabetes. These conditions result from epigenetic changes, and no organism is designed to withstand the effects of long-term sustained stress.
Numerous studies demonstrate how cells shut down their healing and regeneration mechanisms during emergencies. For example, researchers at the Ohio State University Medical Center found that wounds of stressed patients took 40% longer to heal. This shows that the immune system and the wound healing mechanism were less efficient and weakened.
While the fight or flight response was highly adaptive in early humans, the prolonged activation of this survival system redirects the body's resources from creating optimal health. Therefore, it becomes maladaptive as the system is not built to handle long-term sustained stress.
Managing Stress
While we cannot always control the stressors that we encounter in life, we can learn to manage our stress levels in healthy ways. Here are some tips to help you manage stress:
Exercise regularly: Physical activity helps to reduce stress by releasing endorphins, which are the body's natural mood elevators.
Practice mindfulness: Mindfulness meditation can help reduce stress by bringing your attention to the present moment and allowing you to let go of worries about the future or regrets about the past.
Get enough sleep: Lack of sleep can increase stress levels and make it harder for you to cope with stressors in your life. Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep each night.
Connect with others: Spending time with friends and family can help to reduce stress and improve your mood.
Seek professional help: If you feel that your stress levels are becoming unmanageable or interfering with your daily life, it may be helpful to seek the guidance of a mental health professional. They can help you develop coping strategies, provide support and guidance, and help you address any underlying issues that may be contributing to your stress.
In addition to these tips, it's also important to prioritize self-care and make time for activities that bring you joy and relaxation. These could include hobbies, spending time in nature, or simply taking a break from technology and the demands of daily life.
Remember, managing stress is an ongoing process, and what works for one person may not work for another. It's important to experiment with different strategies and find what works best for you. With time and practice, you can learn to manage stress in healthy and effective ways, allowing you to lead a more balanced and fulfilling life.
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Denise Belisle, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Denise Belisle is the founder of Denise Belisle In-Motion Coaching. She is a serenity expert and positive intelligence specialist. She is an international speaker, online TV show host, functional medicine health coach, and Reiki master. Over the last 40 years, Denise has been immersed in all areas of health and wellness. She has been practicing mindfulness and meditation since she was a teenager and has developed great skills in the discipline of emotional and mental fitness. She works with professionals in their 50s and up who feel like they are on the hamster wheel of the new normal, empowering them to bring back the SPARK ✨ so they can rock the second half of their lives and shift from crisis to oasis.
