What Causes Stress? - Find out what is happening in your body.

By Bert Brown

There are many situations or things that can cause stress. But what causes stress specifically in your body? Why do our bodies react to stress the way they do?

It wasn’t until I better understood what was happening within my body that I began to understand why certain stress management techniques worked.

And when you understand why the techniques work and that there is science behind them, it reinforces your confidence and assurance that things really are happening within your body. It’s not just all in the head.

Stress is created when situation triggers a biological response. When you perceive a threat or a major challenge or change in your life, chemicals and hormones surge throughout your body.

This is your fight or flight response. Are you going to take a stand and power thru the situation? Or are you going to run away? While this historically has meant literally run away, it could just as well mean you figuratively run away (ignore, procrastinate, avoid, disassociate, etc).

Usually, after the response occurs your body should return to its normal state.

But if the stress lingers or even more stress is added into the mix and your body continues to have all these chemicals and hormones circulating throughout your body, your health is going to be affected.

Science of the Body

Your nervous system is made up of 2 parts: your central nervous system (your brain and spinal cord) and your peripheral nervous system (basically all your other physical connectors in your body).

Your peripheral nervous system is further divided into 2 systems: One system communicates with your 5 sense organs (eyes, nose, ears, mouth, skin/touch) and your voluntary muscles. You can control this system. It is called your somatic nervous system.

The other peripheral nervous system communicates with internal organs (heart, lungs, liver, etc) and glands. This happens without you even thinking about it. It is automatic. Thus it is called the autonomic nervous system.

It is within your autonomic nervous system that stress is regulated. There are 2 divisions within the autonomic system: the sympathetic division and the parasympathetic division.

Ideally, these systems should balance each other out.

When stress occurs, the sympathetic system (your automatic fight or flight mode) gets to work immediately. Pupils dilate. Heartbeat increases. Bladder relaxes. And hormones are released. You can’t control it. It just happens.

To balance out your system, the parasympathetic system (rest and digest mode) needs to get to work. It is not immediate. It works slower. Heartbeat slows down. Pupils constrict. The bladder contracts.

But, because there are so many situations in life that activate our sympathetic nervous system automatically and our bodies do not have the opportunities to operate our parasympathetic nervous system enough before the next stress activation, we feel stressed out!

And it’s being out of balance so much that can lead to conditions like high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain, and mood disorders.

The 3 Stress Hormones

When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, your adrenal glands produce 3 main hormones:

Adrenaline
As soon as a stressful situation presents itself, the brain sends a message to the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline. Your heart rate will increase and you’ll get a surge of energy to help you react to and focus on the situation.
Norepinephrine
This hormone is similar to adrenaline. It makes you more aware, awake, focused, and more responsive. It also helps shift blood flow from non-critical areas (like the skin) towards more essential areas such as muscles so you can react better to the situation.
Cortisol
This is commonly known as the stress hormone. It takes a little more time (minutes versus seconds) to feel the effects of cortisol in your body. In survival mode cortisol helps maintain fluid balance and blood pressure. It also regulates some body functions that are not essential as the moment such as reproductive drive, immunity, digestion, and growth.

When stressed, the body will continuously release cortisol. And again, this happens automatically. Too much cortisol can suppress the immune system, increase blood pressure, decrease libido, contribute to obesity, and more.

The Vagus Nerve

If I had heard of the vagus nerve prior to the last couple years, the importance of it never registered. However, there has been more articles and research about the vagus nerve appearing in the mainstream press and media.

It is the longest nerve in the body for the autonomic nerve system. This nerve starts in the brain, travels all the way to the abdomen and connects vital organs such as the heart, lungs, and digestive system.

Most importantly, the vagus nerve controls the parasympathetic nervous system.

While the autonomic nervous system operates automatically, modern life’s daily stresses don’t seem to automatically allow the body to balance out the activators (sympathetic division) and the deactivators (parasympathetic division). Many of us are operating out of balance.

The vagus nerve, my friend, is what will help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system to counteract the release of hormones and bring your body back to a more normal, less stressed state.

How to Activate Your Vagus Nerve

Most of us don’t have the luxury to wait around and avoid additional stressors for our bodies to return to a normal state. While body is certainly designed to do so, life is moving pretty fast now a day.

Because the vagus nerve is connected to your heart, lungs, stomach and it controls the parasympathetic nervous system, activating it can lower your heart rate and trigger the body’s relaxation response.

You can take the time throughout the day to help balance out your system. Here are a few ways to activate your vagus nerve and lower your stress levels:

Deep breathing

This is your number one go to trigger that you should never doubt again. When you take a deep breath using your diaphragm (diaphragmatic breathing) you are literally activating the vagus nerve with your diaphragm. That’s why it’s important to focus on using your diaphragm versus chest expansion breathing. This can be used throughout the day.
Meditation

Meditation involves deep breathing, but it also can add to your positive emotions. One particular meditation technique – the loving kindness meditation – promotes these feelings of goodwill towards yourself and others. There has been research that determined positive emotions improve your vagal tone. (Higher vagal tone means that your body can relax faster after stress.)
Mindfulness exercises

When you are fully present, your thoughts are not on the past or in the future. Both the past and future thoughts often induce stress. But when you are present with yourself, your family, and friends and enjoying being in the moment, you are influencing your positive emotions. This improves your vagal tone as well.
Yawning

While your body may automatically yawn when it is getting tired, you can initiate a yawn yourself. Those yawns trigger the parasympathetic nervous system that it is time for rest. The vagus nerve is attached to the vocal cords. Use this natural body trigger at other times during the day to reduce your stress.
Exercise

There are so many benefits to exercising on a regular basis including stimulation of the vagal nerve. Certainly you can understand the breathing aspect of it. But research has also shown how exercise stimulates gastric emptying and improved digestion – through vagal stimulation. Those runners out there certainly know how their digestion system can be affected (now you know why).

Yes, there is science behind these techniques to lower your stress. While I have already been using these methods, understanding the science behind why these work takes a lot of the “woo-woo” out of the equation for the latent engineer in me. Incorporating one or more of these into your routine will greatly help in your stress management.