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All organisms respond to stress in physiological ways. An animal being chased by a predator increases its heart rate in preparation for warding off danger. It also temporarily turns off functions that are not immediately necessary for survival, such as digestion, reproduction, and the immune system.
Stress affects human beings in similar ways. When people are stressed in response to external influences, they react by developing high blood pressure and ulcers and other disorders. Stress also affects your musculoskeletal system, both in the short term and with possible long-term effects.
If you're like most people, you want to live a less stressful lifestyle. Like the animal that doesn't want to be eaten for dinner, you want to ward off situations and illnesses that may cause you harm. While you are adapting to a more stress-free lifestyle, Wellness Professionals can be your partner in health.
How Stress Impacts Your Musculoskeletal System
Stress is sometimes called the silent killer because it affects all your body systems, including your central nervous system, cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, immune, endocrine, and reproductive systems. It even affects your skin and, in general, causes tissue degeneration and accelerates the aging process.
The stress response (known more commonly as the fight or flight response) affects your musculoskeletal system, too. Neural messages are transduced through the nervous system via motor pathways. This creates tension in skeletal muscles and joints and causes muscular aches and pains that can lead to backaches, headaches, and neck pain.
During the stress response, the sympathetic nervous system also activates the musculoskeletal system. Stress also affects the musculoskeletal system by making you predisposed to diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammatory disease that can create deformity in the joints. This is different from the wear and tear nature of osteoarthritis that people tend to develop with age.
Posture and Ergonomics
Stress can affect your posture. Some people consider posture to be a window to your health, a clue that can reveal your emotional state and levels of stress. A classic example is after a competition: there are distinct differences between a winner's confident, upright posture and a loser's stooped, hunched-over position.
And it works both ways - poor posture can cause stress, too. Having good posture opens up your chest cavity and helps you breathe properly with deep breaths. On the other hand, hunched shoulders and a small slouch reduce the volume of your chest cavity, cause shallow breathing, and increased stress.
Posture also affects your health, and if stressful positions drain your body of energy, either by impeding circulation or oxygen intake, it makes you vulnerable to fighting infections and to appropriately handling stress.
Fitness training and physical therapy exercises can improve posture. They can help the way you stand, sit, move, and work. These exercises can help avoid injury, relieve neck and back strain, and alleviate stress.
The purpose of posture exercises is to train the body to hold the spine in correct posture, or neutral position. When your body is properly aligned, your ears, shoulders and hips will be in a straight vertical line, and the spine will be curved in a slight S.
In the work environment, poorly designed furniture can create tension and pain and become another source of stress. Chairs that are improperly adjusted, sized, or designed can lead to poor back support and backache. Positioning of the monitor and keyboard during long periods of computer work may result in sore tendons in your hands. Looking at a monitor for too long can lead to headaches. These conditions cause pain and stress.
Nonphysical factors, including job and career insecurity, tight deadlines, relationships with colleagues, clients, or bosses, or excessive workload demands can also cause job-related stress . Mental and emotional stress, when prolonged, take a toll on the body, causing headaches, digestive problems, insomnia, and other symptoms. It is important to manage the stress because of the close linkage between stress and health.
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