What’s Stressing YOU Out?

Last Updated: Dec. 1, 2003

The ‘fight or flight’ response
Your car goes into a skid on an icy freeway. Your heart is pounding. Your hands are shaking. Your muscles are tense. Your breathing is shallow. All your senses have shifted into overdrive alert to avoid a crash or the ditch. These are the outward symptoms of your body’s reaction to sudden stress. And they may have saved your life.

Caused by a rush of adrenaline and other hormones coursing through your body, your blood pressure rises. Your liver is busy converting sugar into energy, lowering blood sugar levels. Digestion slows as blood is shunted from the intestines to the muscles and limbs making them ready to fight or run. Researchers have even determined that the blood’s clotting factor increases when exposed to stress.

Is adrenaline good for you? Yes.
After the skid on the icy freeway, you’re still in one piece, and you won’t need to file an insurance claim. But you may need to pull over and get out of the car to draw in a few deep breaths of fresh cold air as you try to calm down. Since the important thing now is to relax, the instinctive urge to breathe deeply – a common relaxation technique – is just what your body needs.

And, no.
On the other hand, those who suffer from heart disease or chronic hypertension may be in more danger from their bodies’ response to adrenaline than they were from the danger itself. The rise in blood pressure, the effect on heart rhythm and the increase in clotting factors are some of the main causes of severe reactions to sudden stress.

But for most of us, the real danger is when stress becomes the norm in our lives. Long-term stress is so damaging that it is estimated that over 80% of all illness is related to ongoing stress.

Causes of short-term stress
Stress is not only caused by a sudden shock to the system, such as that near accident on the freeway. Other, less obvious problems can also cause the stress response. These include noise and crowding, isolation, hunger, infection, real or imagined danger, or the memory of a real or imagined threat or dangerous event.

In most people, once the threat has passed, their levels of stress hormones return to normal, a condition called the “relaxation response.”

Causes of long-term stress
Chronic stress is usually caused by ongoing stressful situations where the urge to fight or flee must be suppressed. The most common causes are high-pressure occupations or stressful work situations, and long-term relationship problems.

Less obvious symptoms include loneliness, persistent financial worries and ongoing stress following a traumatic event (such as being a victim of crime or involved in an accident).

While short-term stress can be dangerous to some, it is chronic long-term stress that causes the most health problems. Take the MedicalMoment “Stress Overload” Quiz to gauge your vulnerability to long-term stress.

Depression
Since depression can be both caused and aggravated by stress, the holidays are an important time to recognize the dangers of depression and the need to treat it. To learn more about depression in adults and children, you’ll find several articles in this month’s MedicalMoment.

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