In this article about the influence of stress on the body: Stress plays an important role in daily life and often has more impact on your body than you might think. Stress often has a negative connotation; most people know that too much stress can lead to burnout or even a breakdown. However, the body also needs stress to adapt. To clarify the role of stress on the body, we will first explain what stress actually is. Then we will explain what influence stress can have on the body and indicate how relaxation, nutrition, and training can help combat chronic stress.
What is the influence of stress on the body explained
What is stress?
Stress is a form of tension that is controlled by the brain and occurs in the body as the cortisol hormone. Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands according to a biological rhythm. Your cortisol level peaks in the morning to wake you up and decreases throughout the day so you can sleep. Additionally, stress serves as a survival mechanism for the body, a mechanism that can even be traced back to evolution. Your brain continuously analyzes potential dangers that can throw you off balance. When stress is released by the brain, the body is actually warned to adapt. You can experience acute stress, such as when you have an important competition or need to give a speech. You then feel hyper-alert, and your heart may start to race. After a while, this tension disappears, and your body is at rest. When the amount of stress increases over a longer period and is no longer in the person's interest, it is referred to as chronic stress. This can occur, for example, due to excessive work pressure combined with stress in private life. Chronic stress has negative effects on health.
What is the influence of chronic stress on the body?
The influence of acute stress on the body can be seen as positive because it stimulates your body to adapt, and the feeling of stress quickly disappears. However, chronic stress is linked to various negative health consequences such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, heartburn, decreased libido, binge eating, sleep disorders, weight gain in fat, and a deterioration of the immune system, making you sick more often. To explain these effects, we will examine a number of important consequences and explain how they are related to other substances in the body.
Chronic stress & body weight
The negative effect on your body weight comes, for example, from the relationship between cortisol and insulin. Chronic stress leads to elevated cortisol levels in the body, which negatively affects insulin sensitivity. As a result, insulin is processed less effectively, the amount of insulin in the body rises, and fat mass can increase. This insulin insensitivity can ultimately even lead to diabetes.
Increased cortisol levels also cause the lean body mass, such as muscle mass, to break down. A decrease in muscle mass means a reduction in metabolism, which leads to an increase in body weight.
Furthermore, an elevated cortisol level can increase your appetite, causing you to overeat more quickly and your body weight to increase.
Chronic Stress & Sleep Disorders
The effect on your sleep pattern is due to the relationship between cortisol and growth hormones. As previously described, cortisol is produced according to a natural rhythm so that you wake up in the morning and can sleep at night. The production of growth hormone occurs in the opposite rhythm. During the night, the production of growth hormone peaks so that your body can recover or grow, while these levels decrease during the day. Increased cortisol levels result in less growth hormone being produced, which means you recover less well at night and may even experience sleep rhythm disorders.
Sleep and stress are deeply interconnected. The quality of your sleep affects your stress level, but conversely, your stress level also influences the quality of your sleep. To delve deeper into this, we have written an article about sleeping better.
How can you prevent chronic stress?
It is now clear that we want to prevent chronic stress. There is no miracle cure that can eliminate chronic stress. The only real solution is to address the stressors at their source. Therefore, be consciously aware of your body, identify symptoms, and ask yourself what might be causing you to experience stress. To ensure you relax, you can seek activities that calm you down, such as meditation, yoga, exercising, or reading a book. Relaxation is, of course, different for everyone. Additionally, you can supplement with magnesium before going to sleep, as this promotes relaxation of the neurotransmitters in your brain. We also don't need to explain that healthy nutrition is essential for the body to function well. Therefore, try not to easily reach for unhealthy food in stressful situations, as this will only cause your cortisol levels to rise further. Training causes stress; a training stimulus disrupts the balance in the body, leading to cortisol production. However, training can also be a form of relaxation and is therefore recommended, as long as it is not experienced as stressful for you. In particular, strength training enhances insulin sensitivity, which can counteract the previously described negative effects of chronic stress. In our article on strength training and reducing psychological disorders, we delve deeper into this.
How a personal trainer helps you reduce stress
Exercising more helps reduce stress. But people with stress already have enough to consider. Starting to exercise can be quite a hurdle that only adds more stress. Doubts about the busyness of the gym, how to start, and what adjustments you need to make is too much to think about. A trainer helps you get over that. They have figured all of this out for you. All you need to do is put on your sports shoes and show up. Additionally, a trainer knows how to stimulate your body and system enough through exercise. This breaks down cortisol and helps regulate your overall hormone balance. As a personal trainer in Haarlem, we help people exercise at our locations in Overveen, Bloemendaal, and Heemstede.
Conclusion
Stress is essentially a survival mechanism of the body and is not necessarily negative. However, when chronic stress is experienced, it affects various processes in the body such as your metabolism, sleep rhythm, and immune system. This can lead to weight gain, sleep disorders, and getting sick more easily. Therefore, tackle stress at the source, try to manage stress by incorporating relaxation moments, pay attention to your nutrition, and train enough (but not too much).
Do you have questions about the impact of stress following this article? Or do you want to know more about how to cope with stress and promote a healthy lifestyle? Don't hesitate to contact us at info@daadkrachtoverveen.nl
