Stress Affects Everyone
We all experience stress from our environment, thoughts, and emotions. Our body responds to these triggers with the “stress response”–our heart rate, breathing rate, and blood sugar rises, our alertness increases, and our body becomes flooded with hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. The stress response, also known as the “fight or flight” response, served us well in our hunter-gatherer days when we were likely to be in a situation where we needed to escape physical danger.
Nowadays, our modern day stressors have evolved. Instead of worrying solely about our next meal or evading predators, modern civilization and technology have introduced additional stressors that may cause us to worry. This includes everyday stress, such as job pressures, media overload, relationship problems, and financial burdens to more traumatic levels of stress, such as experiencing an accident or death of a loved one. While we may not experience the same type of stressors that our ancestors did, our stress response remains the same and serves to help us deal with the everyday demands in life.
Chronic Stress
Recent studies suggest that the stress that we encounter in our day-to-day lives may have long-term impacts on our health. Acute stress, or short-term stress, can help us overcome challenging situations. When acute stress subsides, our breathing rate, heart rate, and hormone levels return to their normal levels. When the acute stress becomes chronic stress, for example, when job pressures carry on for weeks on end or when small arguments build up and cause a relationship to dissolve, stress can be harmful to the body. Long-term stress has been associated with poor health outcomes such as elevated blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, anxiety disorders, and depression.1,2
Stress Can Make Us Older
Scientists have recently come up with a way to measure our epigenetic age, which is the biological age that reflects a person’s lifetime exposure and experiences. By measuring DNA methylation patterns, which are chemical markers that change in response to environmental stimuli, scientists are able to accurately predict one’s epigenetic age. Since the age calculators were developed, many studies have been done examining the effects of different stressors on our epigenetic age.3,4,5,6 Overall, these studies suggest that chronic stress, including stress from work, financial burden, socioeconomic disadvantage, and emotional or mental trauma, accelerates aging and subsequently, the onset of age-related diseases.
Managing Your Stress
While stress is unavoidable, we can change how we approach stressful situations so that we can minimize their effects on our health. The following are some suggestions that may help:
- Exercise regularly:Regular exercise has been linked to stress relief. Studies have shown that exercise increases the amount of dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that are linked to mood regulation, in your body.7,8 Try to incorporate 30 to 40 minutes of moderate exercise such as running, aerobics, cycling, or swimming every day.
- Eat a healthy diet: Good nutrition is essential for managing stress’ effects on the body. A well-balanced whole-food diet consisting of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats will give you the vitamins and minerals your body needs to combat everyday stress. Eating fruits and vegetables have been linked to a reduction in inflammation and oxidation as well as a boost in serotonin and dopamine. 9,10
- Practice breathing exercises: Deep breathing has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Deep breathing, also known as diaphragmatic breathing, sends signals to your brain to calm down and relax. Studies have shown that deep breathing practices were able to reduce cortisol levels.11 Take 10-15 minutes a day to practice diaphragmatic breathing and you are sure to notice a change in your mood!
- Find a good support group: Having a network of friends and family for support, whether its emotional support, informational support, tangible support, or esteem support, can help you navigate difficult situations. Numerous studies have shown that a strong community is important to for good psychological and mental health.12 Expand your support network by joining clubs, meeting new people, and cultivating relationships.
- Prioritize and organize: Being able to identify the most important tasks that need to be done will help you when you are feeling overwhelmed. Try making a “to-do” list and focusing on two or three items that need your attention. Focusing your time and energy on the important tasks that need to be done will help you meet deadlines and reduce feelings of stress.
Fight Aging by Staying Healthy and Stress-Free
Our stress response is important–it helps us rise up to the challenges we face in our everyday lives. However, because we encounter many different situations that can cause stress and anxiety, we need to be able to successfully manage our reactions to stress. Now that we have studies that point to the relationship between stress and aging, we need to remember to relax and actively cope with our stress in order to maintain healthy, long lives.