When Stress Ramps Up Pain, Get Relief
By Sandy Schroeder
If your joints or muscles ache every day, stress may be accelerating everything. That irritating back or neck ache, sleepless night, or upset stomach may be coming from the ongoing stress in your life.
When your family, job, finances or medical worries weigh you down, stress may play out in the body. The Mayo Clinic has looked at how stress impacts the body and the way we behave, and tells us what to expect.
What Can Happen When Stress Hits
Recognizing the symptoms of stress can help you avoid high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes. When life gets complicated, and you feel stressed, it's important to find ways to reduce worries to relax and calm down. Here are some of the common symptoms of stress to look for.
- Anxious thoughts keep the mind spinning and tend to cloud the mind
- Headaches turn up day after day and cut into productivity
- Chest pain may show up when you are upset and become a troubling pattern
- Angry outbursts may bubble up when worries refuse to leave
- Drug or alcohol abuse may show up in an ongoing pattern
- Muscle tightness or pain may flare up and linger
- Emotional eating may trigger excesses of too little or too much food
- Restlessness may be hard to control interfering with daily tasks
- Feeling overwhelmed may be hard to control
- Losing motivation becomes common and hopelessness follows
- Fatigue comes again and again leaving footprints
- Isolation becomes a habit
- Sleeplessness keeps happening undermining health
- Depression and sadness follow
Take Control and Reduce the Stress
All of those stress symptoms can be dialed back when we find good strategies to reduce them. Try these approaches.
Exercise and keep moving every day with your favorite activities
- Relax with yoga, tai chi, meditation or deep breathing and make them daily habits
- Make room for laughter as you look for the funny side
- Connect with friends, family and community in mutual support
- Pause to read, enjoy music, sketch or work with crafts to lift your spirits
- Practice gratitude as you count your blessings and improve your perspective
- Reach out to help those in need, finding ways to help
- Use hands-on tasks like gardening or cleaning to let go of worries
- Look for new ways to understand your worries and let them go
- Try daily journaling
- Create small talk groups to share worries and vent
Whatever symptoms of stress you catch and dial back will make a difference in your life and your health.
To learn more about your health, wellness, and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Windermere, Fla.