HEALTH MATTERS
By: Dr. Ian Livingstone
Despite technological advances in transportation, convenience foods and communications, demands on our time and performance continue to increase. Have you caught yourself feeling or saying you are "stressed out"?
"Stress" is one of those words bantered about by everyone from grade-school children to senior citizens. Although stress is a specific biological condition, it is commonly misused as a synonym for being unable to cope, for feeling overwhelmed, or for generally describing anything that makes us feel uncomfortable.
According to testimony before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services in 1998, 60 to 70 percent of all visits to primary care physicians in United States are for stress-related disorders.
| "Our nervous system and entire body are subject to the effects of stress, which will exaggerate any coexisting anxiety or sleep disturbances."
Ian Livingstone, M.D.
Neurologist The Medical Center at Princeton |
What is stress and what does stress do to your body?
Technically, that which threatens us or forces us to meet a challenge is the "stressor" and the response that this elicits in us is "stress." Therefore stress describes both our reaction and that to which we react. The stressor may be physical, such as exposure to cold or pain, or it may be psychosocial.
Interestingly, the biological basis of stress was first systematically studied by a Canadian, Hans Selye, who published a paper on stress in 1936, certainly a stressful time for the world. Based on experiments with rats, he categorized the stress response in three stages: "general alarm reaction" when we are confronted with a critical situation; "the stage of resistance" in which we try to adapt ourselves to the new situation, and the final stage in which we are exhausted, lose our resistance, and succumb to the stress.
Excessive and prolonged stress can have a negative effect on our cardiovascular health; our ability to heal physical wounds; our immune system; our aging process, and our brain function.
Tracing stress to its core leads us to the central nervous system which is divided into voluntary (conscious) and involuntary (autonomic) systems. The involuntary nervous system, consisting of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, controls our response to stress. In a healthy state, these systems are in balance. When they are not in balance, we experience stress, and those who are more vulnerable to stress demonstrate a total physical response to stress.
The sympathetic part of the involuntary nervous system is activated in response to challenge or to threat and prepares us to deal with the threat head-on ("fight") or avoid the danger ("flight"). This protective and healthy response to threat can become damaging when it is prolonged and not balanced by periods of relaxation.
The parasympathetic nervous system, by contrast, is active during relaxation and pleasure. Loss of balance in the involuntary nervous system with chronic overactivity of the sympathetic nervous system leads to an accumulating burden of stress on the body. This accumulating stress load is called "allostasis."
Although it is easy to see the connection between stress and headaches, the link is not as obvious but just as real with other medical conditions in which the burden of the stress-load is a slow gradual process.
For example, it can be seen in conditions such as asthma and arthritis where the physical response to stress may result in a flare-up of the condition to which the person is vulnerable. Our nervous system and entire body are subject to the effects of stress, which will exaggerate any coexisting anxiety or sleep disturbances.
To combat stress and improve our reaction to it, it is helpful to utilize stress management techniques that can help improve our quality of life and health.
Remember that much stress is self-imposed. Part of the stress reaction is to "fear the worst." This negative outlook is the automatic and protective way of thinking that occurs when we are under threat. This can become a habit. As long as we remain in this mode, we think negatively. We begin to see events, demands, and even other people in a negative light always with the background tone of expecting the worst. We cannot counteract this with positive thinking alone.
Unchecked, this negative perception leads to a self-fulfilling cycle of more stress, more headaches and so on. Our outlook becomes gloomier and darker, and we lose the capacity to feel joy and expansiveness while we remain in this contracted state of being. Taken to an extreme, this is like living in a state of permanent emergency.
Our response to stress is protective and normal. We all need varying degrees of stress to keep us motivated and focused. Our growth and development comes partly from learning to adapt to and meet new challenges. We would not grow or become strong if our lives were purely stress-free. Understanding how we perceive and respond to stress gives us the capacity to select the best response to any stressful situation.
When you begin to feel stressed out, remember that anxiety, worry and the anticipation of stress add to the cycle of stress. Finding ways to engage your relaxation response will help restore balance and promote and support your body’s natural ability for healing and restoration.
Dr. Ian Livingstone is a board-certified neurologist on staff at The Medical Center at Princeton. He is the author of a soon-to-be-published book examining stress. This article was prepared in collaboration with Lorraine Seabrook.
Next week: Stress, the silent epidemic: Part Two, Dr. Robyn Boudette examines stress signals and relaxation techniques.

