Throughout your life you’ve probably heard the word “stress” thrown around. But what is stress? How does stress actually affect our health? And are we all just destined to be whittled away by the “modern world”?
TL;DR
“Stress” is a state in the nervous system. A response to actual and perceived stimulation. Some stress is necessary to grow and achieve.
The nervous system was not built to be “on” all the time and long term stress results in a variety of negative health outcomes.
Glossary
Let’s start off with a bit of vocabulary, since most people haven’t studied the nervous system since high school biology (and we know a bit more than we used to):
You probably already know that your nervous system is the control structure in the body, made up of the brain, spinal cord, and all the nerves in your body. Ok, so here comes some nuance that matters when we talk about stress:
Autonomic nervous system - all the automatic functions that happen without you every thinking about it. Your heart beating, digesting food, your hormones, etc. The autonomic system has 2 “settings”:
Sympathetic nervous system - you probably know this as “fight or flight”. If you listen to the Better Than Fine podcast you’ve also heard me say “upregulation”. This is your brain, body, organs, and whole kit getting set into the on position, ready for some action or potential threat.
Parasympathetic nervous system - think parachute. This is coming back down from fight or flight into homeostasis. You might have heard of this as “rest and digest” for lots of reasons that will become obvious later in this post.
So what is stress?
Stress is the presence of demands on your system that cause your autonomic nervous system to switch into sympathetic mode. IMHO there are 2 kind of stress: there are demands that you choose and demands that you don’t. Either you want the stress and it’s going to grow you (going to college, starting your dream job, having kids) or you don’t want it (an accident or tragedy, getting cut off in traffic, your boss yelling). So stress isn’t all bad. Sometimes stress grows us. But of those 2 states there are 3 conditions:
Stress you choose and can meet the challenge = eustress (“good stress”). You feel good about it afterwards and re-ground to baseline.
Stress you choose but you can’t meet means that your dreams, desires, and needs go unmet. This can be frustrating and result in lasting threat or even trauma.
Stress you don’t choose - we all know what what one feels like and where it leads.
Ideally, we experience something that upregulates us, we meet the challenge, then we return to baseline. But we know that isn’t always the case - and it’s when stress is ongoing we really start to see the problem:
What happens when we stay stressed?
On any given day you’re cruising along in a sense of stasis. You’re in a good mood, feeling safe and happy, doing you thing in your life ~ when something disrupts that state. Your boss calls. You nearly get in an accident. Your kid starts screaming.
What happens in the body:
Your autonomic nervous system recognizes something it interprets as a potential threat - it’s reading a lack of safety and whipping up the resources to deal.
Faster than you can think, the signal goes out to shift the system.
Adrenaline is released causing a whole cascade of things.
The liver releases glucose and your pancreas drops a bunch of insulin, making energy (in the form of sugar) readily available to your muscles.
Your airway relaxes and saliva production slows so you can suck in more air (this is why your mouth gets dry).
Digestion and urine production both slow and the stomach relaxes - you don’t want to be digesting when you’re fighting for your life.
Blood pressure and heart rate both increase, ready to support whatever efforts are about to happen.
In a perfect world safety would be re-established. Parasympathetic systems would kick in and you’d return to stasis - normal heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and metabolism.
Many of us do not live in that world.
We stay “up” longer than the threat exists.
We have threats that don’t require us to run or fight or wrestle a bear (meaning we don’t need all that insulin and glucose floating around).
We have sustained or repeated perceptions of threat.
Meaning we’re driving around nervous systems who’re jammed into the wrong gear.
What’s it all mean?
Consider for a moment the implications of being stuck in “on”.
Think about diabetes. Heart disease. Bodily functions & motivation.
Self perception in a world that’s pushing us all to be bigger, faster, stronger, and high achievers - even as the hurdles to do so get higher.
This is the first post of a series on stress, the nervous system, the body, and how we live. We’ll explore these topics in more depth as well as what each of us, individually and collectively, can do about it.