Why Stress is Really Bad for You

You’ve probably been told before that stress is really bad for you. It’s something that is constantly rammed down our throats and we’re constantly being reminded how stress can cause heart problems, cause weight gain and generally cause all manner of problems.

This is not news then. But what we don’t get told so often is precisely why stress is so bad for us or what it actually does to negatively impact on our health. Read on then and we’ll look at the reasons why stress is actually such a problem and what you can do to prevent it – or at least to limit the negative consequences.

Stress and Your Physiology

The first thing to note is that stress has a profound and direct effect on your physiology. That is to say that it increases your heart rate, it increases muscle tension and it causes your blood to actually thicken. All of this is intended to make us more efficient at combat and better able to run away in order to escape danger. This is all controlled by the body releasing specific hormones – and those include dopamine, adrenaline, cortisol and glutamate among others. These are our ‘stress hormones’ (though some of them are more accurately described as neurotransmitters).

As the heart rate increases and the blood vessels dilate, more blood is sent specifically to the muscles and to the brain with the intention of enhancing focus and physical performance.

This is great news again for fighting and for getting away from danger. But what it also means is that blood is being directed away from your other systems – away from your immune system for example and away from your digestion. When you’re being chased by a lion, or falling off a mountain, those things just don’t really matter quite so much!

The Long Term Problem

The problem then comes when this is allowed to continue over a longer period of time. In the wild, chronic stress didn’t really exist: we wouldn’t have to worry about things like debt or having a mean boss!

And when stress doesn’t go away, that means that your immune system and your digestion never get the attention they need. This is why you can end up getting heartburn or becoming ill when you’re constantly stressed.

Meanwhile, your body is consistently releasing adrenaline and your heart rate is consistently beating hard. Eventually this can become a problem as well as you become more and more likely to suffer a heart attack. And remember, your blood pressure has also gone up – making you significantly more likely to experience very high blood pressure.

Likewise, this prolonged state of arousal can lead to a number of other issues. For instance, the heart working this hard for this long can potentially put a lot of strain on you and maybe even lead to a heart attack. Likewise, the constant secretion of adrenaline can eventually lead to ‘adrenal fatigue’. At this point, the body has exhausted its supply of adrenaline, leaving you exhausted and potentially even depressed.

How to Get Started With Meditation

Meditation has a huge number of incredible benefits – it decreases stress, it improves the memory, it aids mental calmness and much more.

The only problem is that meditation is also very difficult to get started with – or at least that’s the perception. Meditation often seems almost ‘mystical’ and can come with religious connotations. It involves a big commitment of time and a lot of discipline. And many people will work hard at it and still not see any results.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re keen to give meditation a go and to see the results for yourself, here are some ways to get started…

The Right Approach

The first tip is simply to approach meditation in the right way and to have the right expectations. If you’re expecting to become enlightened overnight, then you’ll be disappointed. Likewise, you shouldn’t expect that something is going to ‘happen’.

Instead, try to view meditation – to begin with at least – as a tool for helping you relax and just feel a little more at ease. The idea here is to let your thoughts pass by without engaging with them and to thereby get a ‘break’ from stress and anxiety and busy thoughts. Eventually, this can become a very relaxing place to ‘escape’ to whenever you need to take five.

And if you practice it regularly, the benefits will start to come.

With this in mind, try not to be too harsh on yourself. You’re allowed to scratch your face and you’re allowed to occasionally have distracting thoughts – just keep recentering and keep bringing yourself back.

Find somewhere quiet for 10 minutes

The Right Strategy

To do this then, try just sitting down somewhere quiet and for ten minutes let your mind relax. Don’t engage with thoughts and instead just be aware of your body in space – and of any sounds you might notice in the background. Don’t ‘do’ anything, just ‘be’.

If you find this hard, then you can use something external to focus the mind. That might mean counting your breaths, or it might mean watching a candle flame. Another method is to use ‘worry beads’ which you can roll between a finger and thumb absent mindedly.

Tools

Another great tool to help you get the hang of meditation faster is the Headspace app. This app provides simple meditation sessions that you can digest in small chunks and will talk you through mindfulness. Another option is to use something like Mindwave. Mindwave is an EEG machine that can read your brain waves and thereby assess the level of activity in your mind. This is a very useful tool for gamifying the process of meditation – but it’s not cheap so keep that in mind.

In fact, you can even try using virtual reality in order to combat stress and that would allow you to visit a ‘happy place’ in a much more tangible way!

What You Need to Know About Panic Attacks in Order to Stop Them

It’s one thing trying to improve your ability to control your own stress response so that you can combat anxiety and improve your health. But it’s quite another when you experience serious panic attacks that leave you crippled and that prevent you from engaging in normal activities.

But in fact the tools you will use to achieve both ends are similar. The difference is just that panic attacks might require a more intense and a more focussed approach.

And in either case, understanding the biology behind the experience can be a fantastic tool to help you take control more effectively.

Let’s look at what panic attacks are and how you can take them on head-to-head.

The Basics of Panic Attacks

When you experience any kind of stress, it’s because your sympathetic nervous system is releasing specific hormones and neurotransmitters into your system. Specifically, these are:

- Adrenaline (epinephrine)
- Noradrenaline (norepinephrine)
- Cortisol
- Testosterone
- Estrogen
- Dopamine
- Serotonin

When these occur together, your experience of pain is dulled, you become more attuned to your senses, your thoughts are focussed, your strength increases your muscles contract. Your heart rate accelerates significantly and more blood and oxygen are sent to your muscles.

But the thing is that this increases your overall strength your reflexes and your ability to fight or run. This is a useful response in the right context.

The problem is when you misinterpret these signals and cause a panic attack. What happens in this case is that you notice yourself get anxious and you become worried that this is going to cause you embarrassment or make you faint (perhaps because you have previous experience with panic attacks). You begin to hyperventilate and this combined with the elevated heartrate causes chest pain. And some people mistake that chest pain for the signs of a heart attack.

All this makes you more anxious and that in turn means you ramp up the response even more. Your heartrate increases more, you get more anxious and eventually you might even start to get dizzy from all that oxygen.

The Solution

The solution then is to recognize that you’re having a panic attack but not to give it any power over you. And the way you do this is to try and detach yourself from it and essentially continue to go about your normal business. Of course this is easier said than done but as soon as you stop letting it control you and as soon as you aren’t afraid of panic attacks, you’ll find they end a lot more quickly and eventually they can stop happening entirely.

Cognitive behavioural therapy can help with this, as can using the technique known as AWARE which is simply a set of steps to remove yourself from the experience and to avoid being afraid of the stress.

Most people will have a panic attack at some point in their lives but if you can understand what is happening and control your emotions you’ll find it can disappear as quickly as it arrived.