Stress & Chronic Health Conditions

How does stress affect Chronic Health Conditions?

Everyone lives with stress, but we are not always very effective at dealing with it. Short periods of acute , effectively resolved stress are not necessarily harmful, and can actually bust our confidence and immunity. If we carry unattended stress, which accumulates for too long a time, it may manifest as various forms of disease. Therefore, addressing stress effectively is one of the most important life skills, which is necessary for preventing disease, reversing disease, and maintaining good overall health.

When we suffer from chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic pain, obesity, autoimmune conditions, depression, or anxiety, we can find ourselves living with constant pain, fatigue and mental exhaustion, stress and overwhelm. This can be compounded by our busy lifestyles, dealing with environmental concerns, financial concerns and our own particular social & lifestyle circumstances.

And yet, it is not about placing blame on an individual level. You are not guilty or a failure but rather a casualty of our contemporary society, where we all find ourselves overwhelmed, over-consumed and over-stressed from time to time. It is not surprising that the number of people affected with stress related chronic conditions is constantly raising. We need to learn new ways of living, something that was given, natural and did not require any special skill or learning a few generations ago. Today if we are not well informed of underlaying danger of accumulative stress , and not well equiped with skill of mindful living ,we can easily fall a pray of our own lifestyle habits. We live in a very different world than our parents and grandparents used to live in.

Covid-19 pandemic highlighted some of the huge differences that we face in our lifetime on this planet, comparing to our ancestors. The pandemic especially impacts people suffering with chronic health conditions. Early data is suggesting that chronic disease is putting people at higher risk of catching the virus, and of developing more severe symptoms, or having a long term health consequences. This is not only related to the current pandemic, but generally any pathogenic microorganism is more likely to attack and more affect an individual suffering from chronic health condition.

When the stress of life engulfs us, it is often tough to adhere to healthy lifestyle choices:

• We tend to make poor choices when it comes to our diet. We may form unhealthy relationships with food - eating food that is of poor nutritional value, eating unhealthy amounts of food, or even eating at odd times of the day, or eating too fast without sensing the taste of the food, or confusing other strong emotions for a sensation of hunger, all to cope with stress.

• We no longer prioritise healthy sleep patterns and the quality of our sleep diminishes. We all need a good quality of sleep, to be able to better deal with stress, but prioritising sleep can be hard to do when we are anxious or overwhelmed by the stresses of life.

• We tend to ‘switch off’ in front of screens, to retreat from physical movement. Although we understand that exercise & movement is critical for physical health and mental well-being, we often tend to place this item at the bottom of our to-do list. We tend to confuse emotional exhaustion as a physical tiredness sometimes.

• We try to gain a sense of control by prioritising some areas of life over others. When we focus too much on one area of life (eg. our work, finances) we can often forget to nourish and build the vital relationships of family & friends. This can also happen in a reverse, that we can over-focus on our family, neglecting some personal goals and drives in our lives. This can leave us feeling disconnected and can lead to continued isolation and feelings of loneliness.

• Not eating for prolonged periods, not enjoying the food, eating when we feel stressed and interpreting stress as hunger, satisfying sad emotions with certain type of food, 

• Life starts feeling like one big chain of unpleasant chores and tasks , and implanting any new lifestyle change seems like an additional task on already long list of mundane activities.

• Just reading this incomplete list of potential setbacks sounds overwhelmingly tiring,…..

So what can we do?

To be able to make healthy choices in terms of diet, exercise, and overall well-being, it’s important for our minds to be relaxed & focused. That seems like an impossible thing to do, when we are in an over-stressed state of mind, however, it is possible to learn how to achieve calm again, & achieve a more relaxed state of mind again.

Using mind body techniques like Positive Psychology and Mindfulness, we can learn to reconnect with our inner peace and regain joy and light into our busy lives.

It takes time and consistent practice, but it is very achievable.