For instance, it increases your heart rate and releases energy stores, while also suppressing functions that aren’t as immediately essential, such as digestion. ‘It permeates cells all over the body, promoting functions that help us escape from or overcome the perceived threat,’ explains Dr Law. In response to something stressful the brain sends signals to the adrenal glands to secrete more cortisol into the bloodstream. (We also need it for functions such as regulating blood pressure and blood sugar levels.) These communicate with each other to control the release of cortisol, sometimes nicknamed the ‘stress hormone’ because more of it is released when we encounter something stressful. It consists of two areas of the brain, the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, as well as the adrenal glands, which sit above the kidneys.
The body’s main stress-response system is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. So how does something stressful have a physical effect in the first place? This kind of chronic stress is increasingly - and, according to some leading scientists, unhelpfully - being labelled as ‘burnout’. ‘We too easily fall into the trap of pathologising stress when, in fact, it’s a normal part of the human experience,’ he saysīut there seems to be a tipping point and too much stress, for too long, is ‘associated with almost everything bad that you could imagine’, says Dr Law - from depression to lower immunity and cancer.
Yet a certain amount of stress is normal, says Dr Hooper. Our stress response system has evolved to deal with the sorts of stressors we might have encountered in our evolutionary past, such as a predator we need to get away from, explains Dr Robin Law, a senior lecturer in psychology who is part of the psychophysiology and stress research group at the University of Westminster: ‘Once the threat has subsided, then it goes back to normal.’ What’s more, our bodies are designed to cope with short bursts of stress. ‘Some of the most important and wonderful things we do in life are also stressful - if you get married, for instance.’ ‘We too easily fall into the trap of pathologising stress when, in fact, it’s a normal part of the human experience,’ he says. This may seem concerning, given that this feeling - of having to keep too many plates spinning in the air or having too few hours in the day - is one we’re all familiar with.Īnd yet a certain amount of stress is normal, says Dr Hooper. ‘In general terms, stress is where demand exceeds our resources and our perceived ability to cope with that demand,’ explains Dr Chetna Kang, a consultant psychiatrist at the Nightingale Hospital in London. Now, worryingly, job stress (a risk factor for heart attack and stroke) is rising at an alarming rate among working women, according to a Swiss study reported earlier this month. The second, published in the journal Cardiovascular Research, suggested high stress levels make it more likely someone will develop ‘broken-heart syndrome’, or takotsubo, a form of heart disease that occurs after a severe emotional shock such as a bereavement. found that stress does, in fact, turn hair grey - while reducing stress levels may be able to reverse the process. In the first, scientists at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in the U.S.
From illness, loneliness and job uncertainty, to juggling work and childcare while constantly making and remaking plans according to the latest rules
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