Does Stress Affect Recovery?

I felt compelled to write this. Every day I work with people who desperately want to get better. They want to move more easily, live without pain, and be more productive and happier. Most of them believe that the fix is to do some exercises, get stronger, and go back to how things were. And perhaps that works for a few. But we must realize that we cannot have a conversation about what exercises to do or even what is wrong with the body without understanding that prolonged stress pulls at our every fiber and is the cornerstone of the bad stuff in your life.

We are evolutionarily mismatched. The components of our brain and body that evolved to protect us from physical danger are as active as ever but they’ve been hijacked by our modern world. Each mental event, social demand, and media-driven scare tactic elicits a stress response, which occurs when environmental demands exceed our perceived capacity to cope.
Even thinking about having a stressful time induces a stress response in the body and we act accordingly. We tense our muscles, change our breath, externally orient our attention, and lose awareness of our bodies.

Our ancestors were highly tuned organisms. They were likely incredibly dexterous and honed to their external environment, required by the forces of nature to update their model of the world often in order to survive. They experienced stress, no doubt, but their ability to be nomadic allowed them to move out of untenable situations. And being part of a tribe allowed for incredible social support necessary to blunt their stress response.
But now we’re like zoo animals – the only other animals that experience incredible chronic stress. We are held captive by our own devices and social constructs.

Chronic stress (prolonged activation of the sympathetic nervous system and exposure to cortisol) affects every cell in your body.

it changes the way we move
creates and perpetuates pain states, anxiety, and depression
forces us to see the world in absolutes with a negative bias
redirects blood flow in your brain from logic and creativity to habit and reactivity
disrupts the connections and memories in your brain which challenges the ability to learn anything other than going deeper into your habits
alters your sleep
messes with your food choices (preferring carbs) and ability to digest food as it shunts blood away from your gut
causes increased storage of body fat, particularly in the belly
kills off beneficial bacteria in your gut and makes it more permeable (leaky gut) which increases inflammation
disrupts and misdirects the immune system
erodes the ability to connect with and trust yourself, which of course damages your relationship with other people and the planet

In the understatement of the day, chronic stress is gonna affect your recovery.

So the real question is, why are you stressed? While I do think that there are some out there who choose to be stressed by making poor choices for the sake of #drama, most don’t choose to be stressed – though we can get addicted to it. A stress response is your brain’s best attempt at solving a perceived threat. And that threat is completely unique to you based on your own experiences.

Perhaps it’s awkwardly locking eyes with a crazy guy on the bus; it’s catching a whiff of body odor and thinking it’s you (or is it just me that worries about that?); it’s thinking and thinking and thinking.

It’s also the accumulation of things you don’t even notice as affecting you initially – the nearpoint visual stress of staring at a computer screen that’s blasting you with blue light or the din of traffic and the A/C unit outside your window. Ever notice how much calmer you feel once you’ve noticed the A/C shut off?

Or perhaps you are experiencing chronic stress because you can’t perceive where you are in space – because of distorted vision, balance, or sensation. Why are these perceptions distorted? Because of a traumatic injury or a stressful, chronically inflamed childhood that involved more of wanting mom or dad’s approval and not so much playing outside.

You may say you aren’t stressed, but the numbers don’t lie:

75-90% of visits to the doctor are stress-related
Stress is a factor in 5 of the top 6 leading causes of death
Half of all adults have adverse health effects due to stress
Stress costs $1 trillion per year

Until we can take a crack at solving the prolonged stress modern culture has created, our efforts to truly fix our health problems will likely be stopped in their tracks. Stress isn’t a box to be checked, it is THE thing to be fixed.

- Seth

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Does Stress Affect Recovery?

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