Does it seem like these days things keep speeding up? People seem to have more commitments than ever, not to mention all the new technology to keep up with! The stress we experience as a result of this “sped up” way we live is putting us at risk in a variety of ways. One way is that it is an insult to our bodies. And, over time, it can literally make us sick and tired.
Scientists have discovered that we humans produce stress hormones that are brilliantly designed to help us survive unexpected threats. But non-life-threatening stressors, such as constant worrying about money, pleasing your boss or figuring out what went wrong with your computer, also causes the release of stress hormones. Over time, a constant and chronic release of these hormones increases health risks. The human body is just not designed to respond to stress on a daily basis.
According to Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroscientist, “Primates are super smart and organized just enough to devote their free time to being miserable to each other and stressing each other out, but if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed you’re going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we’ve evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.”
(excerpted from an article released by Stanford University, Feb. 17, 2007)
Studies show that long term stress has some profound effects on our health:
Suppressed immune system, susceptibility to infectious diseases, disruption of menstrual cycles, and erectile dysfunction, to name a few!
At Sapolsky’s lab, they have spent the last 20 years focusing on stress and brain function. They have found that chronic stress impairs many aspects of how the brain works.
According to Sapolsky, happiness and self-esteem are important factors in reducing stress. He also notes that “The United States has the biggest discrepancy in health and longevity between our wealthiest and our poorest of any country on Earth, We’re also ranked way up in stress-related diseases.”
Stanford reports that Sapolsky recommends the following:
“We’re now about 70 years into thinking that sustained stress can do bad things to your health. The biggest challenge for the next 70 years is figuring out why some of us are so much more vulnerable than others.”
Sapolsky suggests that people do whatever they can to reduce stress in their daily lives. “It takes work” he says “But the same things that make us smart enough to generate the kind of psychological stress that’s unheard of in other primates can be the same thing that can protect us.”
What are you doing to stop the stress in your daily life? Can you feel it when you really shift out of the stress mode? What do you notice about how your reactions to stressors “infect” those around you?