Our lives are full of things that can stress us out. From overflowing workloads, hectic commutes, and the endless noise of living in a big city to keeping a family healthy and safe during a global pandemic, our stress levels can quickly get out of hand if left unchecked.
In recognition of Stress Awareness Month, Weill Cornell Medicine is helping people understand how stress can affect physical and mental health, along with some expert advice on how to cope with stress in healthy ways.
Stress is your body’s response to a challenge or demand, and not all of those responses are negative. Common stressors may include preparing for vacation, getting a speeding ticket, taking out a loan, troubles at work, getting married, having a baby and lots of other everyday life events.
When you experience stress, your body releases the hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which increase alertness and put you in a “fight or flight” mode. When this happens, you may experience an increase in blood pressure, heart rate and blood sugar, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Stress is a part of life—everyone experiences stress now and then—and short-term stress can be helpful. For example, stress can help you meet a deadline or prevent a car accident.
“Anxiety is not new, and anxiety is very common and really normal,” says Shannon Bennett, Ph.D., licensed clinical psychologist, assistant professor of psychology in Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, and director of psychology for the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYP/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “To a point, it’s important that we feel anxious sometimes.”
It’s the long-term stress, also called chronic stress, that’s unhealthy. Chronic stress can cause serious mental and physical health problems, and it’s an issue that’s becoming more common.
“If something makes you anxious, whether that's a social stressor, academics or things that you see on the news, there's no way to disconnect from that anymore—or it's much more difficult to disconnect from it,” Bennett says. “Kids and adults are constantly surrounded by our anxiety triggers, and it's starting to overwhelm and really stress people out.”
According to the American Psychological Association, our bodies can handle stress in small doses. However, if we experience chronic stress, our bodies respond in negative ways. Here’s how chronic stress effects different parts of our bodies:
Your body is equipped to handle acute stress, or stress that comes on suddenly when performing certain everyday tasks and then stops. If you experience chronic stress, it’s important to learn ways to cope with it and lessen your risk of developing chronic disease or other negative effects.
Here are some healthy ways to manage stress:
Another way to reduce stress is to lessen the amount of time you spend following the news.
“We need to become much more conscious about what we consume in terms of information in this digital, repetitive, overstimulating informational culture,” says Gurmeet Kanwal, M.D., clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine and associate attending psychiatrist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. “Turn off the TV. Don't allow every news channel to send you notifications on every device and listen to the news one or two times a day instead of all day long. Burnout is your brain’s way of protesting the injustice and brutality of too much information, too much stress and too much repetition.”
If you’re having trouble managing stress, find a doctor at Weill Cornell Medicine who can help.