Stress and The Nervous System
Stress is a natural response of the body to challenging situations, but if it is prolonged or excessive, it can have negative effects on both physical and mental health. The nervous system plays a crucial role in the stress response and its regulation.
Cue your fight or flight response - your shoulders will round, ready to throw punches if needed, your head moves forward and the large muscle groups (think pecs, gluts, hamstrings and calves) tighten, ready to run. Your heart rate and blood pressure increases to get the blood flow to the muscles you need, your pupils will dilate so you can see all escape routes and your hearing will become sensitive to every sound to determine if there is another tiger or some other danger nearby you can’t see. You’ll get an adrenaline rush (thank you adrenal glands which will also pump out cortisol) and you’ll start sweating. Do you think you would be experiencing some stress? 100% YES.
Interestingly when this response kicks in our digestion slows (who needs to eat when they’re running away), our blood sugar increases (to fuel fleeing), our blood clotting increases (in case we get injured escaping), our reproductive and immune systems are suppressed because, lets face it, our bodies are not worrying about babies or colds when we are running for our lives!
As mentioned above our “fight or flight” response is controlled by our sympathetic nervous system but this is just one side of the coin. The other, our parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for rest, digestion, reproduction and repair. This is our “rest and digest” mode and should kick in after the danger has passed. Unfortunately both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems can’t work at the same time. If one is dominating the other is suppressed!
Ok so the above tiger situation is unlikely to occur in metropolitan Perth (I’m sure Perth Zoo has great emergency training if a tiger does get out) but what if our everyday lives might be making our brain react like there is constantly a tiger in front of or near us?
Sympathetic nervous system activation can be short term… Like when a car pulls out in front of you, you go sky diving or bungy jumping but more and more the demanding pressures of everyday life… jobs, finances, relationships, kids (I have a toddler who loves to activate my sympathetic nervous system), even worrying about ageing parents, can cause us to remain in a state of sympathetic nervous system activation even if we don’t really feel “stressed”.
Did you know that poor posture could activate your sympathetic nervous system? The area of nerves in our thoracic spine, between your shoulder blades, directly communicates with the part of the brain responsible for our “fight or flight” response. If you are constantly in a posture with your shoulders rounded and your head forward (think long periods bent over a mobile phone or laptop) the brain will take the cue from your body, think a danger is present and activate the “fight or flight” response.
Some symptoms you may experience if your body has been in “fight or flight” for a long period
headaches or irritability,
sensitivity to light and/or noise,
tightness in your neck,
shoulders that feel like rock and tight calf muscles,
gluts or achilles tendons.
you may have digestive issues (bloating, constipation or diarrhoea),
high blood pressure,
find yourself constantly tired or struggling with low mood.
So what do we do about it? We need to allow the parasympathetic “rest and digest” nervous system to kick in. Unfortunately you can’t consciously do this and well quitting your job might not be an option right now so what if we can confuse the brain and get it to restore the parasympathetic side of the coin. The next blog instalment will cover this!!
If you have any questions, please contact us!