Too much stress takes a physical toll

Amanda Hamilton

• Last Updated: November 29. 2009 3:06PM UAE / November 29. 2009 11:06AM GMT

Though celebrity breakdowns often make the news, it is important to understand the inner workings of stress before symptoms begin. Georges DeKeerle / Getty Images

If headlines are to be believed, high-profile celebrities are forever teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, the stresses and strains of a life lived in the public eye being too much for them to cope with.

The latest “victim” is the UK sweetheart Cheryl Cole, whose rise to fame has been meteoric. Her tales of sleeplessness, weight loss and anxiety could, ironically, serve to increase her likeability as people identify with the symptoms, if not the cause. But it is often the inner workings of stress rather than its outer appearance that hold the clue to long-term health and well-being.

Just reading some statistics on stress is enough to start the nerves jangling. The consumer researcher Roper Starch Worldwide’s recent survey of 30,000 people between the ages of 13 and 65 in 30 countries showed that increased stress is felt around the world. Globally, 23 per cent of women executives and professionals, and 19 per cent of their male peers, say they feel “super stressed”.

The American Medical Association has stated that stress is one of the major causes of 80 to 85 per cent of all human illness and disease, having a detrimental effect on our health. It links stress directly to to heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents and liver cirrhosis.

The chief architects of your body’s stress response are the triangle-shaped adrenal glands that sit neatly atop your kidneys, producing and releasing cortisol. Cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone”, is vital, involved in such key body operations as the regulation of blood pressure, insulin release, a properly functioning immune system and inflammatory response. In other words, messing with it can prove harmful.

Healthy adrenal glands secrete cortisol on a 24-hour cycle. Rising cortisol levels help us wake up in the morning. Then secretion drops through the rest of the day, often with a small dip in the afternoon – just when you feel a tea break coming on.

Stress can disrupt the rhythm of cortisol release. Small spikes can be helpful, offering a quick injection of increased immunity, better memory, heightened pain resistance and, in our “fight or flight” response to danger or hazard, a dollop of energy for survival.

Yet the challenge is that in our stressed culture, cortisol levels are triggered more frequently and for longer, elevating us to a state that is called “chronic stress”.

Chronic stress brings with it a host of challenges, from blood sugar imbalances and high blood pressure to impaired cognitive performance and decreased bone density and muscle mass. It also brings lower immunity and inflammatory responses, and for some people dramatic weight loss.

However, for most people, stress leads to increased abdominal fat and hard-to-shift weight gain. In times of stress, we often turn to precisely the things that we should not: comfort food and stimulants to prop up energy. A coffee jolt or a sugar high in the mornings results in a drop in energy a few hours later that triggers the adrenals into overdrive. It is a vicious cycle in which the body demands more and more help just to get through the day.

Over time, the disruption of the body’s normal balancing process can leave us prone to rapid ageing, weight gain around the middle and chronic ill health.

People respond to stress in different ways; some seem to shoulder it, if indeed they get stressed at all, while for others, all it may take is a messy kitchen or their spouse not putting the top back on the toothpaste tube.

So how do we rein in our stress levels, or at least kick-start the relaxation response to shorten this state? Next week I will address a range of strategies from around the world on how to prevent stress as well as deal with it when you experience it.

Amanda Hamilton’s detox programme can be seen on The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses on BBC Lifestyle.