Being under a lot of stress can really take a toll on your physical health. The physical symptoms of stress can range from relatively minor aches and pains to severe health risks like elevated blood pressure and increased risk of heart problems.

Some level of stress is unavoidable in today’s world. But that doesn’t mean you have to be defenceless against the harmful effects it can take on your body. Learning effective stress regulation techniques can help your body calm down when it feels tightly wound, helping you feel better and reducing your risk of health issues.

Stress has a range of both physical and mental symptoms. Here we’ll be focussing on the physical side and breaking down what you can do to alleviate some of the most common physical signs of stress.

Physical symptoms of stress

Some of the main ways stress can affect you physically include:

● Low energy
● Headaches
● Upset stomach, including diarrhoea, constipation, and nausea
● Aches, pains, and tense muscles
● Chest pain, difficulty breathing and rapid heartbeat
● Insomnia
● Frequent colds and infections
● Loss of sexual desire and/or ability
● Nervousness and shaking
● Dry mouth and a hard time swallowing
● Elevated blood pressure

Effective stress relieving techniques will naturally help to combat any symptoms you’re dealing with. Still, if you’re experiencing some of these symptoms and want a targeted way to get rid of them, there are options available. Let’s look at some of the biggest physical symptoms of stress and what to do about them.

Chest pain and breathing difficulties

Stress makes your breathing become rapid and shallow, and increases your heart rate. Over time this can lead to chest pain, or a sense of heaviness on your chest that makes it hard to breathe.

You can alleviate stress-induced chest pain using deep breathing exercises. Slowing down your breathing will naturally lower your heart rate and deactivate the body’s stress response, helping your chest feel better.

There are a variety of exercises available, so try experimenting with a few and find the ones that are most effective for you. One suggestion is box breathing, which can be practised anywhere for a few minutes, or for longer to really relax your body and mind.

Box breathing instructions:

1. Fully exhale, emptying your lungs as you count to four
2. Hold for the count of four
3. Inhale, filling your lungs for the count of four
4. Hold for four
5. Repeat

Sleep and fatigue

Stress can interfere with your ability to fall asleep at night, and being constantly on edge can be exhausting. Overcoming fatigue means ensuring you get enough rest, but activity can also play a part.

Try:

● Following a peaceful bedtime routine to promote good sleep
● Eating a healthy, balanced diet with plenty of protein and complex carbs for energy during the day
● Exercising regularly- moving your body gives you a rush of energy, builds stamina over time and increases your sleep drive, making you more likely to get a good night’s rest
● Avoiding naps during the day- these interfere with your sleep drive and can lead to worse sleep at night

Aches and pains

Part of the stress response is that your muscles tense up to get ready for action. If we’re constantly stressed, this can mean constant aches in the neck, shoulders, back and other areas.

The trick to overcoming this nasty side effect of stress is to keep moving throughout the day. Getting up moving about for a few minutes once an hour stops your muscles seizing up, and can also help improve your concentration while at work.

You can also try gentle stretching routines to help ease your muscles back into a relaxed state. Isometric relaxation is a great technique for targeting and relaxing specific muscles, and can be done anywhere with no special equipment.

You can also consider making adjustments to your seating at work, your bed, or to your posture if these are aggravating certain muscles. Finally, a good hot shower or bath can work wonders for helping your muscles recover.

Digestion problems

The brain and digestive system are connected through a network known as the gut-brain axis. When we’re stressed, the brain pulls the body’s resources away from digestion, which over time can potentially lead to all kinds of bowel-related issues like IBS, nausea, diarrhoea or constipation.

Deep breathing exercises like box breathing (see above) activate the gut-brain axis and help restore balance to the body, so a daily session of deep breathing could work wonders for your bowels.

As well as ensuring you’re eating a healthy diet (lots of fibre is good), you should also pay attention to how you eat. When life is busy and there’s a lot going on we tend to cram food down our throats as quickly as possible in any spare second we get. This, as you might expect, doesn’t exactly aid in good digestion.

Taking your time with your meals and eating while sitting down, rather than on the go, can make things easier for your guts and reduce the level of discomfort you experience.

Loss of sex drive

Unfortunately, the stress response and sexual arousal cannot coexist in the body, meaning that if you’re wound up and anxious, things aren’t going go go anywhere in the bedroom. Of course, this inability to perform is hardly going to make your stress levels any better, so it’s important to find some way of breaking this cycle.

It isn’t easy, but one of the best ways to lessen the impact of changes to your libido and sexual performance is to talk it though with your partner. If they understand what’s going on they can help you find ways to relax, and you’ll feel like you’re fighting the problem together rather than struggling with it alone.

Next, try to brainstorm ways to feel relaxed and calm in the bedroom. This might mean adding sensual massage and other calming activities to your foreplay, or maybe aromatherapy and scented candles will help get you in the mood. Try a few different things and see what helps.

Finally, if you’re really struggling to make sex work, you can always talk to a doctor. Doing so can rule out any other possible causes of your difficulties, and a doctor can also prescribe you medication to help if they think it necessary.

Treat the cause as well as the symptoms

The physical symptoms of stress can make life even more difficult, so it’s important to know how to deal with the ones that seem to affect you the most. But it’s just as important to treat the root cause of these symptoms, which is the high levels of stress in your life.

Techniques like the ones listed here are great for de-stressing and helping your body recover, but taking a wider view and finding ways to control and regulate the sources of stress in your life is vital too.

For help figuring out where the stress points are in your life, and what to do about them, get in touch with our team today.