What does stress really do to our bodies – and when does it become a big problem? | Life and style

Yesou wake up later than expected, so you’re in a hurry to get everything sorted before school starts. While you wait for the toaster, you stupidly check your phone. Something happened, and your timeline is a hot mess of the worst takes imaginable. One of your kids left their shoes somewhere unfathomable and there’s an envelope on your doormat scolding you for rolling in a bus lane.

You are undeniably stressed, and your body is likely to respond by intensifying the same biological systems that evolved to deal with inter-tribal conflicts and mammoth attacks. But is there a downside to being constantly stressed – and having these systems activated –? Take a deep breath and let’s dig deeper into the science.

“The most immediate effect we see in a stressful situation is a rush of adrenaline causing an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and breathing,” says Professor Kavita Vedhara, a specialist in stress and behavioral medicine at Cardiff University. “This is your fight or flight response, and it is designed to prepare you for the challenge you face.”

Within about 30 minutes of this rapid response, you will also feel an increase in cortisol, often (somewhat reductively) known as the stress hormone. “Again, this is very helpful in supporting the fight-or-flight response because it regulates blood pressure, suppresses inflammation, and increases the availability of sugar in the blood to increase energy,” says Vedhara.

This was all very useful centuries ago, when most of what life threw at us were physical challenges. But now, it’s pretty rare that we need to literally run away from — or physically fight — the source of our stress, and it’s very easy for us to start worrying that someone is being mean to us on the internet, or to spend hours ruminating about an argument with our partner. The problem, generally speaking, is that when your body diverts all its resources to fight or flight, it displaces them far from areas such as digestion, repair, and the immune system (sometimes called rest and digest systems). It’s fine if it happens occasionally — that’s how we evolved to function — but if we’re chronically stressed, the body never has time to catch up.

“Perhaps the most well-known problem associated with chronic stress is lower immune function, which can increase the risk of infections, make vaccines less effective, impair wound healing, etc.,” says Vedhara. “But chronic stress has also been shown to increase the risk of obesity, depressive illness, and progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.”

Another problem is that all of this can create an unhealthy feedback loop. “Due to the complex physiological nature of the stress response, we often see a range of changes in the body,” says Dr Jo Daniels, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Bath. “This in itself can become alarming for some people: Why is my heart beating so fast? This can then trigger increased focus on essentially normal bodily variations, which effectively amplifies these physiological sensations, adding another layer of stress and anxiety.”

“When we are in a stress response, we are hypervigilant, so we are more likely to view normal variations in our bodily sensations as threatening – and because we are flooded with stress hormones and using this ancient part of our brain that is programmed for survival, our decision-making is also likely to be impaired, so we might react in unhelpful ways.”

“If you’re feeling a little nervous, for example, you might not go out because you’ll feel like your body is telling you, ‘There’s something going on here that we need to protect ourselves against.’

How stressed do you have to be – and how often – for any of this to be a concern? This is a question that scientists are still working on. “It’s an elastic system – it’s designed to respond and recover,” Vedhara explains. “How bad is it really? It is certainly true that the experience of stress has such widespread effects on our physiology that it can have very detrimental consequences on our health and well-being – but this is only true for long-term, lasting stressors.”

It is almost certain that more difficult lifestyle factors make stress even more threatening. For example, in a landmark study from the 1990s, researchers recruited nearly 400 healthy volunteers, exposed them to the common cold, and found that stress was strongly correlated with a tendency to get sick. Older adults, whose immune systems are already in decline, may experience the effects of chronic stress more severely than middle-aged people. But what complicates the situation is that we seem to differ wildly in our ability to tolerate stress. “A lot depends on your life experiences,” says Daniels. “People who have been affected by trauma may have a lower stress response threshold, while others seem to seek out and thrive in stressful careers. This is also influenced by learned resilience and the ability to manage and respond to stress – although in the long term, as we have seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone has their limits.”

And so what can are you doing to better manage stress? One of the most evidence-backed options, perhaps surprisingly, is learning to stop, take a moment, and slow your breathing. “When people are stressed or anxious, they tend to breathe shallower and faster, which strengthens the threat response and maintains the physiological loop,” says Daniels. “If you breathe slowly, you give your brain the message that everything is okay and you are safe, which essentially induces a relaxation response. So something as simple as regulated breathing can really make a difference and eliminate mental stress. The same goes for exercise, which can help reduce excessive adrenaline buildup caused by high stress responses.”

It’s important to understand that this is particularly helpful in acute (i.e. temporary) stressful situations – severe, debilitating stress cannot be resolved by simply taking a break. If the stress is more prolonged and frequent, another option is to use evidence-based psychological therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). “When we’re stressed and overwhelmed, we often have thoughts like, ‘I can’t cope with this,'” says Daniels. “But is it true? Thoughts are not facts. A helpful strategy may be to sit down and evaluate the evidence: Have you ever faced worse situations? Can you survive a worst-case scenario if you are late for school and forgot to feed the cat? It may also be helpful to stop or gradually eliminate coping strategies that are not helpful and contribute to the problem – for example, some people tend to work longer or harder to try to solve a problem work-related, which is likely to contribute to increased stress over time.”

With mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques, the goal is different: You learn skills that allow you to step back from unhelpful thoughts rather than question them.

One option is to experience both, depending on the nature of what’s stressing you out: Negative thought patterns and unhelpful coping strategies are often better addressed with CBT, while mindfulness-based stress reduction might be better for dealing with the inevitable.

Avoid stress completely, Of course, is not a realistic option. Even the 6% of people in the UK who say they never get stressed are probably just better at handling difficult situations than the rest of us. The best thing to do, if you’re worried that you’re constantly suffering from high levels of stress, is to understand and address the causes of that stress: it could be as simple as not going on social media early in the morning, or as difficult as changing jobs or having difficult conversations with your family.

“Catch your stress response early and you have a good chance of reversing it using simpler strategies – but for chronic stress, lifestyle modifications, access to social support and the development of helpful coping skills are essential,” says Daniels. “I would suggest people seek help when they are stressed most or all of the time, or if they themselves are concerned about their stress levels.” And remember: while you can’t always control the mammoths that attack you, you can control how you react to them.