The Cycle of Stress

Can stress be a cause for my pain?

The short answer: Absolutely!

A report published on the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) website explained that “anxiety exacerbates pain through activation in the hippocampus,” a part of the brain that helps the body recover from ‘fight or flight’ response.  In this instance, anxiety triggers tension that precipitates pain.

What happens to our body when we’re stressed?

The more stress we have, the tighter our muscles get.  We move less — becoming stiffer.  Stiff muscles can make it more difficult to move and lead to pain.

Both stress and its associated pain affect your quality of life.  When stress is felt, muscles and nerves get tense, sending a signal through a bundle of nerves to a switching station at the spine’s base, then up to the brain.  The brain then tells the muscles to ‘contract,’ causing tension and pain.

Then, this cycle begins again.

When you are in a chronic state of stress

When you are in a chronic state of stress, ‘cortisol’ is over-produced.  Too much cortisol may cause inflammation and pain in the body, as well as fatigue.

A constant state of stress causes your heart rate and blood pressure to go up.  Your respiration rate increases and becomes shallow — the capillaries contract.  Over time, the stress hormones begin to damage your body, impacting the digestive system, restricting the absorption of much-needed nutrition, and increasing pain.

How to break the cycle

The cycle can be broken by reducing muscle tension with movement, breath, and intention practice.  Yoga can help because it incorporates movement, breathing, and meditation to reduce stress and, consequently, muscle tension.

Try to avoid focusing on the pain.  When you focus on your pain, it tends to amplify the pain and increase your stress.  Finding a distraction will help, such as doing something that you enjoy.

It’s natural to curtail our activities — such as avoiding any exercise — to avoid having the pain get worse. Avoidance or fear of pain may cause more stress, whereas continuing your exercise regimen may help turn down the pain intensity.

Typically, when a muscle is tight on one side of the body, the same muscle on the other side gets weaker.  The length of the muscles also changes and becomes imbalanced, as well.  Tight muscles typically lead to pain and take a toll on the body.  Then, we tend to move less, becoming stiffer.  The stiffer we get, the less we move, and the cycle repeats.  Movement practices like yoga help to better balance the body.

Bottom Line: For many people, regular exercise, good nutrition, and reducing stress are very effective ways to reduce pain.

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