What is stress?

Today I want to tell you about what the stress response is, why it is so important for our functioning, and how wisely it is all organized in our body.

I will also tell you in what circumstances the stress response stops serving us and can contribute to the development of physical ailments or diseases.

I have the impression that very often the lack of understanding of a given phenomenon or issue causes us to start to fear it and feel powerless in the face of its effects. We do not know and do not understand where, how or why.

And I also have an observation that when we start to understand a given phenomenon, we feel more power within ourselves, we see how much depends on our choices. Then we are more able to find solutions and implement them into our lives.

And so it is with stress. For many years, the word “stress” has appeared on the lips of so many people, in so many books and articles. Wherever we turn, we hear about stress and its negative impact on our lives and health.

I want to show you what the stress reaction really is, how important it is for our functioning and in what circumstances it can contribute to the emergence of difficulties and diseases in our lives.

I hope that understanding this topic will allow you to take control of your life, will allow you to look at your daily choices and take actions that will bring you many benefits.

And I wish you such positive changes.

In short, stress is our body’s physiological response to a stimulus (also called a stressor).

Such a stimulus/stressor can be both a physical and psychological event. Today, speaking about stressors, I will stop here, and I will tell you more soon in the next part of the series “All this stress”.

Importantly and very interestingly – a stressor can also be a thought or anticipation of what may happen. Exactly, we can and often do get stressed by thinking about what could potentially happen, worrying or over-analyzing events from our lives.

It is not important for our body whether the stressor is a real event (e.g. an accident) or the thought of such a potential event (e.g. fear that something will happen to me, fear that I will have an accident). In response to the emerging stressor (event, thought), the body will automatically turn on the stress response.

Let’s start with the fact that our body constantly strives to maintain homeostasis, or balance. This is a state in which everything works exactly as it should, in the most optimal way for our body. Various systems in our body, such as the immune, hormonal and nervous systems, ensure that the body does not fall out of homeostasis, and when it does, they make sure that it returns to it as quickly as possible.

To better illustrate how it all works, imagine that you are a primitive man, living in your small community. It is a day like any other, nothing special is happening, we assume that your body is in homeostasis. And you, like any other day, set off to pick fruit in the nearby forest.

You walk and walk, until suddenly a stressor appears – a tiger jumps out from behind a tree.

AND ACTION! The stressor, in this case the tiger – recognized as a threat – mobilizes your body to action.

Actions aimed at survival are automatically implemented. The stress response is triggered and you are probably familiar with the fight or flight mode. During the stress response, survival is what counts – only the here and now counts.

What is the stress response based on? Whether we fight or flee, we need strength in our muscles. Muscles need energy. And they need it now.

The brain then rapidly issues further instructions:

• Hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, and later cortisol, the stress hormone, are released.
• We need more power: that is why glucose, the simplest proteins and fats are mobilized from the fat cells of the liver and muscles, in order to add power where it is needed most.
• Transport speeds up: nutrients and oxygen must be rapidly transported around the body, so the heart rate and breathing rate increase, blood pressure increases.
• Changes in perception and feeling appear, our senses sharpen. We are a bit like superheroes.
• At the same time, all processes that are not crucial to survival at this particular moment slow down. The body moves all energy to places where it is crucial to survival. Therefore, digestion, growth, reproductive processes slow down, growth and repair of damaged tissues are limited, and immunity is inhibited. This explains why during stress we may experience problems with digestion, fertility or immunity.

Let’s get back to our stress response. Imagine that your mission ends with SUCCESS! You escape or let’s assume that you fight and win this duel. The energy stored in the muscles has been used up. You survived. Your body now has time to return to a state of equilibrium. Slowly, all physiological processes return to their initial state – to equilibrium, and you can relax.

And look!

The stress response is super adaptive and helpful. It protects us from threats, mobilizes us, gives us the strength to survive a difficult situation. We can fight, we can run, we can act. Energy is mobilized and delivered to those tissues that need it most at a crucial moment for survival. And when the threat passes, everything slowly returns to balance.

And everything would be great, but still.

Since the emergence of the human species, our world has changed a lot, and with it our functioning and perception has changed. And the mechanism of our stress response, despite the passage of time, remains unchanged. Despite the passage of time, we still react as we did at the beginning of the human species. And here is where the difficulty arises.

We live in times that are very demanding in many ways. We live in a reality in which we are surrounded by many stressors that our “cave” nervous system still does not quite know how to deal with. And while it copes great with sudden – short crises, functioning in long-term stress will be a challenge for it.

Meanwhile, every day we are “attacked” by dozens of stressors. I use the word “attacked” deliberately, because for our nervous system, the daily rush, standing in a traffic jam, an argument with a neighbor, a shouting boss, pop-up notifications on the phone, deadlines, loans, late work hours, etc. are often no different from an attack by wild animals thousands of years ago. The stress reaction can be exactly the same.

In today’s world, we enter fight or flight mode too often. We are in chronic readiness too often. Very often our body is in a state of fight or flight, even though nothing really threatens us. This causes our biology and the way we function on a psychological and social level to change.

See – the problem is not the stress response. “The problem is that we can’t control it and we use it when there is no real threat.“* Simply put, every day we trigger the stress response too often. And our body, although wonderful, strong and wise in the long run, starts to get tired, starts to have problems dealing with this excess.

Abundant evidence shows that stress-related diseases appear mainly when we over-activate the stress response, and in this way we trigger physiological response circuits too often. And remember, they were created to work in short-term stress. We often trigger them for several weeks, months or even years.

In its biological assumption, the stress response is good. We need to understand this and recognize that this is how our physiology is created. We will not change it.

However, knowing this, we can do a lot in this matter. We can influence the number of stressors in our lives. We can learn to regulate the stress response so that it serves us, but does not fire too often, thus overloading our body. And this can be done.

And I will tell you about this in the next parts of the series “All this stress”, as well as in the Course for a good life.

That is why I created the “Course for a good life”, in which I want to share with you my knowledge and experience on the subject of returning to well-being and to a good life. I want to teach you how to deal with excessive stress. I want to help you take control of your life in the best way – because it is yours.

And I sincerely wish you this. See you soon! 🙂

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* the quote comes from the book “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” – author Robert Sapolsky.