For many of us, stress has become an inevitable companion. Stress may take many different forms, with anxiety being one of the most common. Other sources of stress include impending deadlines and personal obligations.
Although anxiety’s negative effects on our mental and emotional well-being are well known, its impact on our health are ignored by many. You can ignore your health until your health demands your attention, and you do not want to reach the point where your symptoms have compiled, and you are unhealthy. It results in a long, hard road to returning to a healthy lifestyle.
Examining stress’s relationship to your health, we see a common cycle that significantly affects every aspect of human health, including gut health and dietary habits.
The Impact Of Chronic Stress On Our Health
Understanding the impact of chronic stress begins with understanding our body’s fight-or-flight response. While fight-or-flight is designed to protect us from danger, it is supposed to be a short-term reaction to danger. When fight-or-flight is prolonged, it becomes chronic stress that negatively impacts our health over time.
Understanding The Link Between Fight Or Flight And Stress
If you see a lion in the wild charging at you, you are preprogrammed to run or stand your ground and fight. In those moments, we are not relying on rational or calculated steps, our body takes over and takes action.
The Root Cause: Prolonged Fight Or Flight Resulting In Chronic Stress
Prolonged stress causes our body to remain hypervigilant. This sets off a series of physiological reactions. In order to provide our heart, brain, and muscles fuel for fight or flight, our heart rate increases, our blood sugar levels rise, and our overall blood pressure goes up. At the same time, as these areas of our body take priority, blood flow slows to the cerebral area of our brain, and our digestive system slows because they are not as important as escaping from the lion.
The Health Impact Of Chronic Stress
As chronic stress persists, our health is impacted in the following ways:
- Type 2 Diabetes: Diabetes can result from constantly elevated blood sugar levels.
- Hypertension & Cardiovascular Disease: Because of the elevated heart rate and blood pressure, you can be at risk for hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
- Gut Health Issues: When your gut is sidelined during a fight-or-flight response, it slows. A gut that is slowed for long periods of time can develop a myriad of gut health issues, from irritable bowel syndrome to leaky gut syndrome.
- A Weakened Immune System: All this stress on your body weakens your immune system and leaves you susceptible to getting sick more and more. This just adds another layer of stress to your body.
The Downward Spiral Of Stress & Anxiety’s Impact On Health
Below, we look at a common spiral many of our patients have described: a starting point where they had control of their health, a stumbling block, and a slow downward spiral in health that is linked to the stresses of life and the stress of health issues.
Step 1: The Stressful Trigger
It starts with an event that sets off a large amount of stress in your life. From an approaching deadline, a difficult scenario at work, or personal changes. Many of our younger patients speak on how their health started declining in college; many mothers point out that the stress of their children was the start of their health declining. Others do not know the exact moment but simply feel the stress in their life grow, and with it, their health starts to decline. No matter the cause, this stressor creates the conditions for the subsequent chain of events.
Step 2: Seeking Comfort in Food
Research articles on comfort food show that a comfort food habit can be developed from stress exposure and acute stress. We can turn to food as a stress response. Stress results in our body’s primal instincts, which lead us to turn to food for safety. More specifically, when danger is imminent, human beings tend to seek out fatty or sugary meals.
This natural reaction has its roots in survival, as our systems store up energy-dense meals in anticipation of imagined dangers. That is why comfort food is a common stress response. Since the danger is not imminent, our body wants to prepare for the danger that might come.
Step 3: Decline in Health
But overindulging in comfort food extremely degrades one’s health. The extra calories are unnecessary for the body’s stress response, leading to weight gain, high blood sugar, and other health issues. Even while our bodies try their hardest to save energy in case of danger, living in the modern world frequently leaves us with more calories than we can burn.
Step 4: Impaired Digestive Health
The longer the cycle continues, the worse our digestive systems get. Overindulging in processed meals and the negative impacts of long-term stress upset the delicate equilibrium of our gut flora. This instability can exacerbate our health problems by causing inflammation, gastrointestinal problems, and a compromised immune system.
Step 5: The Vicious Cycle Continues
As our health deteriorates, the cycle continues. Health issues serve to increase our stress and anxiety levels, feeding a vicious cycle that keeps getting worse. The health concerns are initially minor and can be ignored, but there is a growing mountain of discomfort as symptom after symptom compiles. Finally, you will come to a breaking point where the symptoms have added up too much. You will have to stop the unhealthy spiral.
Breaking The Cycle & Recovering Your Health
When you reach a breaking point, you will realize you need help reclaiming your health. Speaking with a medical professional can be very helpful in determining the root causes of your health issues and creating a customized recovery strategy.
Navigate Your Health Journey With PEAK
It is crucial to remember that healing takes time as we set out on the path to regaining our health. It takes years of an unhealthy pattern to reach this breaking point. Reclaiming your health will take time, effort, and patience. We can escape the unhealthy lifestyle and reach PEAK health by addressing the connections between worry, stress, nutrition, and health.