It’s nothing short of an epidemic. Understanding what stress is and how it affects the body and mind can offer powerful insights into how to cope better.
As an internal medicine doctor and assistant clinical professor in the department of medicine at Stanford University, Maria Juarez-Reyes, MD, PhD, sees a steady stream of stressed-out patients in her office. “They present in two ways: Patients come in and tell me, ‘I’m so stressed! I’ve got a LOT on my plate.’ They realize how stressed they are. The second type of patient comes in not recognizing they are suffering from stress, but they feel the symptoms. They come in complaining of headaches or shortness of breath, although they’re 25-year-old, healthy exercisers,” she tells DailyOM.
Inflation. The pandemic. Social media overload. We are living in teeth-grinding times. Indeed, a 2022 Harris Poll for the American Psychological Association (APA), appropriately named “Stress in America 2022,” describes what we’re facing as an epidemic. One-third of adults polled reported that stress is “completely overwhelming” most days. Seventy-six percent said they have experienced health impacts from stress in the past month including headache, fatigue, and anxiety.
And the U.S. has lots of company: The international Gallup Global Emotions 2022 survey polled adults in 122 countries and areas, and found stress and worry at the highest level in the history of Gallup’s tracking.
What Is Stress?
You know it when you feel it: Your stomach is flipping, your temples are throbbing, you’re studying the ceiling paint at 3 a.m. But what exactly is stress? Understanding the phenomenon can be the first step in coping with it.
Stress is your body and mind’s way of mobilizing you to help you respond successfully to challenges in your environment, Jeanette M. Bennett, PhD, an experimental health psychologist who studies the effects of stress on health at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, explains to DailyOM.
This stress response evolved to keep us safe and help us survive. When our cave-dwelling ancestors encountered a tiger, their bodies readied for action to meet the threat. Stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine ramp up to provide energy. Breathing quickens, the heart pumps harder, the immune system gears up to be ready to respond to injury. Once the tiger is vanquished and the threat is over, the body returns to a state of rest and restoration.
Our fight-or-flight response is still protective today, Bennett says. “There are times you must act quickly — say, when a driver cuts you off in traffic suddenly. If we didn’t have that system kick on when it needed to, we wouldn’t be here.”
Interested in learning more? Check out Guided Relaxation With Ocean Sounds
The Problem of Chronic Stress
The problem arises when what was meant as an occasional emergency response becomes a day-to-day, chronic state instead. Modern life can feel like an endless stream of emergencies: buzzing phones, the dire news crawl, your checking account balance. “Today, our stressors often are not life-threatening. But it’s still that same biological response,” says Bennett. “We weren’t designed to be stressed constantly. Biologically, it’s a very energy-intensive state, and it’s very hard on the body and mind to maintain.”
A state of chronic stress takes a heavy toll on the body’s systems. Research has linked chronic stress to a host of physical and mental conditions from high blood pressure to weight gain to digestive problems. A 2022 study out of Yale University found that chronic stress actually makes us age faster at the cellular level, speeding up our biological clocks and shortening our life spans.
Chronic stress also has profound consequences for our emotional health, says Juarez-Reyes. It can precipitate anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, and depression. The APA Harris survey found that a fifth of adults said stress had caused them trouble concentrating, forgetfulness, or difficulty making decisions. “Your thoughts can become a stressor even in the absence of an outside threat,” says Juarez-Reyes. In other words, just thinking about your long to-do list can cause your heart to race and your stomach to churn.
Compounding the problem: We may turn to unhealthy ways of coping, says Nisha Chellam, MD, an internist and functional medicine doctor at Parsley Health in New York City, whom DailyOM spoke with for this story. “You may start seeking quick relief by eating more or drinking more or smoking more.” These strategies may feel good in the moment, but can cause further damage to our physical and mental health, she explains.
5 Successful Strategies for Coping With Stress
Escaping forever to a tropical hideaway with no Wi-Fi may sound like a tempting — if unrealistic — solution. The good news: While inflation, political strife, caregiving, and work deadlines may be here to stay, there is much you can do to boost your resilience in the face of stress. The same Yale study found that subjects who rated higher in measures of psychological resilience did not show the same damaging effects of chronic stress on the body. Here’s expert advice for some important first steps.
1. Take Inventory
Press pause and take an honest look at your day-to-day life, advises Juarez-Reyes. “If you keep going 24/7 at 120 miles an hour, you're never going to get a handle on stress,” she says. She recommends reflecting on how you are feeling physically and mentally and identifying the stressors that may be contributing (e.g., being on your phone constantly, skimping on sleep, taking on too many volunteer projects). “Some people don’t want to take stock in this way as it increases their feelings of stress or anxiety,” Juarez-Reyes says. “But recognizing your stressors is the first step to being able to do something about them.” While you may not be able to eliminate your life’s stressors entirely, reflecting on those aspects you can control and doing something about them can be very helpful. If you are caregiving for an ill loved one, for example, you could ask a friend to walk the dog for you or organize a meal train.
Chellam adds that such reflection may involve taking a hard look at your priorities and then cutting back. “You may be thinking, ‘I’m doing these 100 things. I’m so important!’ We just take it as a part of modern life. But it’s not sustainable. Ask yourself, if today was the last day of your life, how would you spend your time?”
2. Lean on Others
Being around people you trust can calm your body and mind, but unfortunately, loneliness is its own major public health crisis. “During the pandemic, rates of anxiety and depression went through the roof and isolation played a huge role. The data makes [it] clear: People who have social support cope better,” says Juarez-Reyes. “I tell patients, you don’t have to talk to them about your problems. It can just be hanging out with your book club! But make spending time with family and friends a priority.” Pets, too, can offer us social support, decrease the stress hormone cortisol and help reduce loneliness.
3. Try Mindfulness
Mindfulness meditation has been shown to offer a host of stress-busting benefits — from lowering blood pressure to easing anxiety. “With regular practice, you can become less reactive. You’re able to sit back a bit, take a breath, and contemplate before you shoot back a reply to that distressing email,” says Juarez-Reyes. Another effective go-to: breathwork. “Simply closing your eyes and inhaling and exhaling five deep breaths can have an immediate stress-relieving effect,” she says.
4. Practice Good Self-Care
Stress saps your mental and physical resources, so good self-care can help you be more resilient. Chellam advises her patients to prioritize sufficient sleep. “Look at your evening routine. Turn off your phone, listen to relaxing music, take a bath, so your body knows it's time to rest.”
Make regular exercise a priority, too. That doesn’t mean you have to have a full-out sweat session every day. “Walking can be great exercise. Many of my patients use a step counter. You can slowly increase your goal by 1,000 steps at a time.” (Other exercises that are particularly restorative for body and mind include yoga and tai chi, says Juarez-Reyes, and there’s support for spending time in nature to reduce stress as well.)
A healthy diet can also help you combat the toll of stress. That can start with eating more mindfully, advises Chellam. “Eat with a focused mind. I tell patients to chew their food down to a liquid before they swallow. Once you really connect with your food, you tend to want to eat more nutritiously.”
5. Seek Help
Sometimes, despite such efforts, we reach a state of complete overwhelm. (An alarming 27 percent of Harris’s survey respondents reported that some days they are so stressed they can’t function.) Seeking professional help from your doctor or a therapist can be an empowering step toward coping better, advises the American Psychological Association.
True, modern life is super stressful. “But humans are resilient. We are wired to adapt and grow even in difficult times,” concludes Bennett. “Coping better is a matter of knowing yourself and figuring out what works best for you to create a space of calm.”
