Stress is a normal part of life, but when it gets overwhelming, it can become all-consuming. On Today with Claire Byrne, GP Dr Máire Finn talked about stress – how it affects us and strategies for managing it when it threatens to become too much.
Dr Finn started with a useful outline of why the stress response exists in humans:
"It's necessary. You know, if you’re crossing the road and a car comes, you have to run and protect yourself. So, stress is an involuntary physiological response to a threat or something unpleasant and it motivates us and makes us function."
But if stress is persistent or non-stop, it can cause problems, both emotional and physical. So how do you know if your stress levels are higher than they should be, and that you should be taking action to try to reduce them?
Dr Finn described some of the symptoms that high stress states produce:
"There’s this response which is, like I say, involuntary, from a part of your brain called the hypothalamus. It affects the pituitary and it causes hormones to be released, like adrenaline and cortisol, that make your heart race, make acid in your tummy, make your palms sweat and you breathe improperly."
People will recognise these symptoms; we’ve probably all had some or all of them. But they’re nearly always short-lived. The problems arise when they continue frequently or persistently. And if your stress is affecting your day-to-day life, then it needs to be addressed.
"People will recognise things like brain fog, an inability to make decisions or poor sleep, or, you know, quick to anger, quick to tears as being something that can be related to stress, but there are many, many other symptoms which you mightn’t recognise, which are the more physical ones."
One of these physical symptoms is tachycardia – or persistent elevated heart rate – due to the release of hormones. Sustained tachycardia is not good for the heart or the blood vessels.
Diabetes is another physical disease that can be caused by the hormones that get released when we’re in a state of stress, says Dr Finn:
"Because the cortisol causes a change in how we metabolise glucose, again can be a long-term effect of stress... Neck pain, shoulder pain. Headaches. Headaches are a very, very frequent presentation of stress."
In fact, there are many chronic diseases, Dr Finn tells Claire, that we know instinctively are caused by or related to chronic stress, but the correlation can’t always be proven.
Maybe we find our home life stressful or maybe it’s our job that we find stressful. Either way, what can we do to keep stress at bay?
According to Dr Finn, we’re unlikely to have stress in every single part of our lives. So we need to identify the bits that we can change and the bits that we can’t change.
"Sometimes I see people who I know have intolerable stress in their home situation and they don’t recognise that their physical symptoms that they’re coming into me with are related to that."
Dr Finn then has to try to guide the patient to identify what’s happening on their lives – is it work, is it home, is it the commute, illness, financial strain? Whatever it is, the question is to look at all the things that people struggle with and single out the things that they can fix – although of course not everything can be fixed.
"All of us have to recognise that we have stress in our lives, but to recognise when it becomes toxic is really important, but also to recognise that, you know, ok, it’s inevitable to a certain extent, and make time, even if it’s only 15 minutes per day."
Time to ourselves is really important, Dr Finn says. Like that 10 minutes when we come in the door after work, so we can avoid being overwhelmed by everything we have to do, can be very valuable. And that time isn’t just for ourselves, it’s also for the people around us, to make our life and our career more sustainable.
You can hear Claire’s full conversation with Dr Máire Finn by clicking above.
If you have been affected by issues raised in this story, please visit: www.rte.ie/helplines.
