Stress – What’s REALLY happening?

The common misconception surrounding stress is that it only affects us psychologically and emotionally. The reality is stress is so much more than a state of mind. To the human brain and body, stress is stress. It may come from a million different factors but to the body, stress is stress.

A simple way for you to understand this would be to realise that stress can be deemed as anything that upsets the “status quo” within your body. This status quo is officially known as “Homeostasis” but to simplify this, think of it as maintaining a constant balance within us.

You see, our brains like to maintain a balance within the body at all times. This is achieved via it monitoring, maintaining and prioritising key parameters at all times. Things like blood pH level, oxygen levels, core temperature etc all have to be strictly regulated. This is to ensure that we are able to stay alive and function properly. Now, ANYTHING that disrupts this carefully controlled balance is officially classed as a stress (or stressor). Once the balance has been upset, the brain has to act quickly to try and restore normality in an act to keep us alive. The response to the stressor is deemed “The Stress Response”. 

Now as you probably now realise, stress can come in many different forms, not all of which are just emotional or psychological. Many can be physical. For example, being exposed to very cold temperatures will upset the balance (homeostasis) within the body as resources will have to be diverted to keep your vital organs warm. Undertaking intense exercise will upset the balance as energy demands from the working muscles increases, breathing rate, blood pressure and heart rate will all have to increase to meet such demands. Therefore, exercise and training is a form of stress in itself.

Another two totally different examples of stress could be a lack of sleep and an incident of road rage. A lack of sleep is a drastically different form of stress to the seemingly psychological rage in the car. However, both will impact upon and affect homeostasis within your body and immediate physical changes will have to be made by the brain and body to ensure we are able to deal with and manage them.

The point being whether the stressor is physical, emotive or anywhere in between, the body responds to it. As previously mentioned, this response is coined “The Stress Response”. This response is the go-to response of the body not matter whether the stress is seemingly physical or psychological.

“The Stress Response” is the body’s method of maintaining the balance when faced with a stressor or stressors. It is how it maintains and provides us with energy to enable us to deal with the stress and keep in check with the parameters of the balance within the body that is required to survive. This basically means the stress response gives us the energy we need to be able to deal with the stress, restore balance and stay alive. Think of it this way, the stress response is a protective mechanism that is designed to protect and maintain homeostais within the body. 

THE STRESS RESPONSE – HOW IT WORKS

When faced with a stressor, the general stress response initiated by the body is to increase levels of immediately available energy. During this response, the body commits to meeting the demands of the stressor by increasing the secretion (and production) of stress hormones into the blood stream. Two of the most well-known stress hormones are adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline acts to increase heart rate and blood pressure. The effects of this are improved delivery of oxygenated blood around the body (this ultimately increases blood circulation). Whereas cortisol functions to mobilise nutrient stores to help release energy to where it is needed in the body. Increased blood circulation and energy mobilisation means the body now has the tools to face the stress and restore homeostasis. Think of it this way, cortisol releases the fuel, adrenaline revs up the engine!

Now, regardless of the actual stressor, the pattern of the stress response remains largely the same. This means if we lift weights, go for a run, deprive ourselves of sleep, compete in a competition or drink alcohol excessively, we will see the same systematic response. The response is designed to ultimately provide us with a huge shot of energy to be able to respond quickly to the stress/threat that we are faced with. This Stress Response is often coined “The Fight or Flight Response”, which you may well be familiar with. Think about when something has made you jump, your heart rate skyrockets and you feel a surge of energy, increased alertness and breathing rate! This is an acute stress response! It is designed to protect you. Maintaining the balance within the body (Homeostasis) and The Stress Response are key players to human survival. Without them we simply wouldn’t survive!  

Your brain is hard wired for survival.

Human brains always have been. The centre of the brain that kept our cavemen/women ancestors alive still exists in your brain. This part of the brain still plays a huge role in your life and in modern society. Your “caveman brain” is working behind the scenes every time you have an incident of road rage, get excited or nervous about a competition or get pulled into the office by your boss and you don’t know why. The reason? Because the caveman brain still perceives that we are under genuine threat and initiates the “Fight or Flight Response”. By doing so, it believes it is giving us a chance of survival when under threat.

Your caveman brain cannot distinguish between an angry boss or a sabretooth tiger emerging from the bushes from all those centuries back. All it knows is that there is a threat and it has to prepare you to survive that threat right there and then. You see, your brain is hard wired to survive and in order to survive, it must prepare for the worst-case scenario. Our caveman brain does not care about the future, only the here and now. It does not care if you want to have children in a years time or if you have an important meeting tomorrow. It only cares about keeping you alive at that very moment and it is willing to make any sacrifice in order to keep you alive.  

What your caveman brain does in these moments is shift your body into a state where it has a tonne of energy. It does this so that you can either move extremely quickly so that you can escape the danger (Flight) or stand and defend yourself (Fight). Your caveman brain also physically alters the position of your body so that it can maximise power to run away in a straight line or stand and fight what is in front of you! This position is one where your pelvis tips forwards, your chest and rib cage rises up and your lower back arches. This is known as an extended posture. This makes you fast. This makes you powerful.

Now when faced with real danger, this is a great tool for survival. The problem is in modern society, there are a tonne of scenarios that your caveman brain is faced with where it BELIEVES you are in danger, but the reality is, you probably aren’t. Think to an incident of road rage or of an intimidating Coach hauling you into shout at you. What happens? Your brain kicks into “fight or flight!” You feel your heart start beating faster and the effects of adrenaline! But how many times have you actually needed to get out of the car or how many times has your Coach actually tried to kill you?? And that’s the problem!

Your Caveman brain is still wired back to the time of our ancestors, but modern society has moved on. Back in the times of our ancestors, sure there were times of threat and these threats often were genuinely life or death. But they were most probably few and far between. There also wasn’t a society of “go, go, go”, never switching off, having to beat rush hour every day and filling ourselves with fast food and caffeine on zero sleep. The problem in modern society is that stress is everywhere, it is constant and it wreaks havoc on us. Stress in modern society has become destructive to our health and performance.

You see, the thing with stress and humans is, we are only meant to experience it in acute doses (short lived doses). Our brains and bodies are not entirely designed to undergo chronic levels of stress. If you continue to think about our caveman brains and think about how they governed stress in cavemen and woman. Stress in those days came in the form of life or death scenarios! IE another caveman trying to bash our heads in, or a sabre tooth tiger emerging from the bushes and facing up to us etc. The point being, these situations were life and death scenarios but they were short lived! Mr Caveman faced the sabre tooth tiger (the stressor), the stress response was initiated (Fight or Flight), energy was rapidly provided and a decision was made to use this energy to get ready to rumble or leg it! Once the danger was gone, the stress response ended and Mr Caveman got on with their day. That’s the whole point of the stress response, it is there to provide us with immediately available energy but only in short lived doses!

Now, fast forward to 2020 and these stressors aren’t just sabre tooth tigers anymore. They’re everywhere. From road rage, financial worries, school/work pressures, poor nutrition, exercise itself, competition anxiety, general anxiety…the list goes on!

It seems like there is not a minute in the day where we are not faced with some form of stress. Now ask yourself how many of these are truly life or death in that moment? Not many! And this is the problem! It is this accumulation of chronic stress and the continuous triggering of the stress response in modern life that destroys both our health and performance. You see stress can be a hugely positive or destructive force. That same stress response that provided Fred Flintstone with a burst of energy to run away from the tiger and save his life, is now costing humans dearly in terms of their health and performance potential.

We are repeating ourselves now but to hammer the message home, the stress response is supposed to be a short lived life saving response! Blood pressure, heart rate and stress hormones all increase for that short time period to provide rapid energy. In modern times, this stress response is continuously being triggered meaning heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones continue to rise and continue to stay high. THIS is what ‘kills’ our health as unchecked, chronic stress can literally be linked to every major illness, disease and condition in modern society! Think cancer, diabetes, cardiac arrest, dementia, chronic fatigue, anxiety and depression. Chronic stress can also kill our performance and the simple reason behind all of this is because undergoing chronic levels of stress costs us dearly with regards to energy!

Undergoing chronic levels of stress costs an absolute fortune. Our body literally has to haemorrhage cash just to stay afloat with the rising energy bills of stress. This is unsustainable on the system as the debts begin to rise and take their toll on the brain and body. It is in this state of affairs that inflammation begins to rise in the body and things start to breakdown and go wrong. This is when problems involving the immune system (recurrent coughs, colds, infections), cardiovascular system (high blood pressure, chest pain, cardiac problems), musculoskeletal (muscle aches, pains, headaches etc), digestive issues (IBS, upset stomachs, poor gut health, abdominal pain etc) all begin to rear their ugly heads. It all boils down to stress!

REDUCE THE STRESS = REDUCE THE PROBLEMS.   

Now if you are reading this and feeling highly alarmed as you think to all of the stressors in your life. Don’t panic! Because like most problems in life, they can be reversed  and they can be dealt with. Reducing stress is just like any problem solving activity. The first step is to identify and the second step is to find the easiest, most manageable method and start there IE go after the easy wins first! Pick the low hanging fruit!

We as humans have a huge tendency to overcomplicate things! We have a rule at Tier 1, the simplest way is the easy way and the easy way is the successful way. This means KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID! Or as we affectionately term it KISS!

For example, we know from evidence that the best methods to combat stress are:

1. Sleep
2. Nutrition
3. Exercise
4. Environment

We know that sleep and nutrition are the primary methods in which human beings can recover, recharge and remove the toll of stress. What we also know is that exercise, although a form of stress in itself, can literally become like body armour in the fight against stress. Yes, it is a form of stress but it is a form of stress that you can CONTROL & MANIPULATE to your advantage. Of course if you do too much, it will increase your problems through overtraining. And of course if you do too little you won’t create any improvements to combat stress. Do the right type and apply the right dosage however and you have created an immensely powerful antidote to stress!

You see, exercise is movement and movement is medicine! When we exercise, we boost the happy hormones within our brains and body which in itself starts the fight against FEELING stressed! And where the brain goes the body follows! A happy brain has a calming influence! Secondly, when we exercise it literally clicks our bodies into gear! But perhaps most importantly, when we expose our bodies to exercise, a huge stimulus is placed upon them to IMPROVE! And they improve specifically to the stimulus that we place upon them! For example, if we tell the body to get stronger, hey presto! It will get stronger! If we place a stimulus upon the body to become more aerobically capable, it will do so! And the key point here is that if we can place a stimulus on the body to improve in these key areas, we will naturally have fortified ourselves against the damaging effects of stress!

By improving strength, aerobic function and by boosting happy hormones, stress cannot harm us in the same way it would be able to harm someone who hadn’t boosted those key areas. If you are strong stress can’t break you down, if you have a good aerobic engine your improved ability to transport and use oxygen can literally burn off the physical effects of stress. And all that remains now to discuss in this blog is the environments in which you find yourself in!

The environments that you find yourself in can have a dramatic effect upon your stress levels. Noise, light, temperature, air pollution and people (to name just a few!) all influence you either consciously or subconsciously! For example, if you work in an office in winter and your desk is located in the middle of the room, away from the windows, this may directly affect your exposure to natural light sources. To add insult to injury, now imagine you are sat directly below the air conditioning unit which somebody has left on and the office is absolutely bustling with people and the air is filled with chatter and ringing phones. Now imagine all of this off the back of a terrible nights sleep, missed breakfast and temporary traffic lights holding you up for 20 minutes on your way into work.

How do you think this will impact you?

You see, such an environment is a breeding ground for stress. Yes, there are other circumstances at play but the environment that you are now in is starving you of natural light, is imposing the stress of both cold and noise onto you and thus will be triggering the stress response probably at both conscious and subconscious levels. This means heart rate and blood pressure will rise, adrenaline and cortisol levels will rise, muscular tension in the body will rise and all of this will continue to happen so long as the environment remains the same….IE you will be exposed to a day of chronic stress and this will start to take it’s toll on your both mentally and physically as the day goes on.

Conversely, now picture a great nights sleep, a lovely breakfast and you hit every green traffic light on the way to work. Now add onto this, you get to work and the office is lovely and quiet and you park yourself at your desk which happens to be by a window that overlooks some lovely views and better yet, the office temperature is just perfect!

Bingo! No exposure to stress, no stress response, lovely and chilled!

The key points in all of this is BALANCE, if you can perfect the balance of sleep, nutrition, exercise and balance you are cooking with gas! These really are the key areas in which the battles can be won and the tide can be turned! It’s all about STRESS MANAGEMENT! Stress itself is unavoidable and in many cases, necessary. We just don’t want to overburden or over-expose ourselves to it!

So there you have it, hopefully after reading this blog you should now know what stress is, how it affects us and the key areas in which to reduce the effects of stress in your life.

The question now to ask yourself is: where does most of my stress come from?

•  Is it a lack of sleep?
• Poor nutritional habits?
• A lack of/too much exercise?
• Poor environments?

And where do you even begin to start once you’ve identified your biggest problem areas…?

…with the low hanging fruit of course! Start with the easy wins to get the ball rolling!!

Stuart Turner

stuart@t1trainingandrehab.co.uk