The Stress Response That Once Kept Us Alive, Is Slowly Killing Us

Exposure to chronic stress might be one of the biggest precursors to dis-ease and ailments within the body. Whether it be something relatively minor like a common cold or neck pain/headaches as a result of a stressful period, to the development of chronic fatigue or coronary heart disease following prolonged stress, it has the ability to create widespread issues in the body. Although stress is negatively affecting the health of many people in today’s society, the human stress response has played a major role in there actually being a human society today. Our bodies ability to respond to a stressor throughout the generations and keep the species alive is significant, when the stress response is functioning appropriately it creates an excellent survival mechanism.

Stress however, has changed. Stress used to be about evading a predator or hunting down prey, so the stress response prepared the body for this, it was meant to be a short-term response for survival. Biological evolution is much slower than the societal evolution that has occurred over the last couple thousand years. Stress now has become less physical and more psychological however our stress response is still biologically preparing for a physical response. Heart rate is increased, blood flow is moved away from the gut to the muscles, muscle tension is increased to improve strength/endurance and breathing rate is increased. This is your ‘fight or flight’ response. Interesting to note, it’s thought that clenching of the jaw when stressed came from trying to avoid the jaw from being broken in battle with prey or fellow human, as no jaw = no eating = you know what. All this results in the body being ready for whatever physical stressor is at hand, then more often than not (in previous generations) this would have been enacted upon and some degree of physical exertion completed which then helped the body to balance back out after the stressor has gone. Now however, our stressors are a deadline at work, mortgage stress, being stuck in traffic, or job insecurity. The stressors are becoming more constant, more varied and without the ‘fighting or flighting’.  

This constant flow of psychological stressors is overloading our bodies stress response. It is working overtime with little respite and often without the acting out of a physical response. The respite and physical response help to bring back some balance and ease within the body. That’s why ‘walking it off’ works to calm you down. Now this information should not be misconstrued to bring back our primal instincts and fight the work colleague who is causing some stress or to run away from financial adversity. Rather to highlight that this stress response that can create a lot of issues in our health helped to ensure our survival. While also bringing to light a more recent line of thinking and research that although stress sets off an automatic physiological response in the body, it is thought that our learned behavioural and psychological responses to stress may be able to influence the stress response. We have all come across people who seemed to be unphased in periods of stress, despite significant life events or a seemingly unbearable workload they are able to remain calm and collected. It may be that the temperament and conscious approach to stress that these types of people apply to stressful situations helps to mitigate the potential negative ramifications of prolonged stress.

Given this line of thinking it is worthwhile to be grateful for the human stress response that has kept our species alive to this point and to be thankful that although life can be full of stress, our physical safety has never been better and the ability to get our basic human needs to be met is at an all-time high. Also useful is having a checklist of conscious behavioural stress responses and actions to put in place in times of ongoing stress to help balance out the physiological response. By approaching our stresses with this type of attitude and a plan of action in place, it may help influence the way our body responds to the stressor ultimately reducing the potential negative effects of our subconscious physiological stress response.