Is stress bad for healthy aging?

We’ve all heard that stress is bad for us. A lot of us have experienced tight muscles, changes in sleep and maybe some digestive upset when we’re stressed. Often once the stress decreases, we feel “back to normal” and these stress symptoms resolve. But what happens to our body if we’re under stress frequently? There can be more than just short health changes. Can stress impact our overall health and even affect aging? 

How does stress affect our body?

We might see bags under our eyes or other things on the outside of our body when we’re stressed but what’s going on inside the body? Stress can affect many areas of our body but it has a big impact on a couple of systems: our nervous system and our adrenal glands. 

The Sympathetic Nervous System

The sympathetic nervous system, or SNS for short, is the part of our nervous system that can rile us up or calm us down. You’ve probably heard of the “fight or flight” response that happens under a big stressor. It causes our heart rate to speed up, our breathing to get faster and our gut to slow down. This stress response is meant to help us get through a short, very intense, if not life-threatening, event. 

In modern times, we live under a high stress state to where this fight or flight response that’s only supposed to kick in every so often is turned on frequently. When we’re in a constant state of high stress with that fight or flight response, our body is running many systems at full speed, which can be taxing to the body over time.

The Adrenal Glands

The adrenal glands are two small glands in your body that make and release many different hormones and chemicals that are vital to keeping your body running. One important hormone the adrenal glands make is called cortisol. You may have heard about cortisol being nicknamed the stress hormone. 

When we’re stressed, the adrenal glands get the signal to release more cortisol. Cortisol and the hormones from the adrenal glands can affect many areas of our body. The increased hormones, such as cortisol, can trigger the body’s cells to make more energy to keep up demands during a high stress time. Extra energy sounds good in the short term, but over a long term of our cells pumping out lots of energy, this can lead the cells, and our body, to exhaustion.

So what does this mean for our health and aging?

As mentioned above, prolonged or repeated stress can exhaust the body over time. Studies have shown that diseases that usually set in later in life (e.g., heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes) can happen at a younger age in someone who has high stress levels. Chronic stress can also contribute to inflammation, which can affect many parts of the body including memory and brain health.

We all experience stress from time to time in our life. Finding ways to manage chronic stress is important to help us get through the day but also to help our overall health and well-being. Find activities you enjoy such as physical activity or deep breathing to help decompress from stress. Acupuncture can also help with stress management by bringing the mind and body back to “rest and digest” mode.  And always be open to seeking advice from your health care provider if the stress is becoming a lot to handle.

References:
HS Chahal and WM Drake. The endocrine system and ageing. J Pathol 2007; 211: 173–180.
L.R. Polsky et. al. Stress-induced biological aging: A review and guide for research priorities. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 104 (2022) 97–109.