amounts of sleep are subjective and vary by age, lifestyle, and overall health. But without the right amounts of restorative sleep, the general health of the body deteriorates. The general health of the body depends on sleep. When stress is a chronic condition, the physiological and psychological effects of stress become cumulative and can eventually cause serious damage. A consistently compromised immune system will be more susceptible to everything from minor infections like colds and flu to serious and catastrophic conditions like cancer. Because the digestive system is suppressed during the fight-or-flight response, stress can cause constipation or diarrhea in the short term as well as long-term conditions like stomach ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome. Chronic stress can also cause acute muscle tension such as headaches and muscular back pain, and it is a commonly cited trigger for chronic inflammatory conditions like fibromyalgia. Additionally, studies have shown that people suffering from chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia are also especially prone to depression, adding psychological symptoms to physical pain. As the body ages, chronic stress can also open the Pandora’s box known as metabolic syndrome , which is a combination of conditions: hypertension, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and excess belly fat. The cluster of conditions in metabolic syndrome are generally believed to be more dangerous together than any one of them alone, and metabolic syndrome can be a precursor to heart attack, diabetes, and stroke. When we look at how common these conditions are in the United States, it is easy to see the effects that stress has had on the population. The stress epidemic A 2018 fact sheet compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) titled “The Top 10 Causes of Death” lists the recorded causes of death worldwide for 2016 (see Section 5: References for link to fact sheet). The information is presented in overall numbers, but it is also broken down by economic status. Noncommunicable diseases such as ischemic heart disease and stroke accounted for 71% of deaths worldwide in 2016, but that percentage rose to 88% in high-income countries, including the United States. In fact, all but one of the causes of death for high- income countries was noncommunicable disease. This is in stark contrast to the causes of death for low-income countries, which were primarily communicable, nutritional, or birth diseases such as lower respiratory infections and tuberculosis.
A more subtle effect of long-term chronic stress is its role in accelerating the aging process. The research on this phenomenon is not new. At a meeting of the American Geriatrics Society in 1970, Hans Selye presented his research conducted on rats in which he concluded that aging is caused by stress and not the other way around as previously believed (see Section 5: References for a link to the Abstract). Research conducted over the last decade points to stress having a damaging physiological effect as far down as the cellular level. Specifically, researchers are looking at the effects of stress on the length on telomeres, which are at the ends of the chromosomes in the DNA. Elissa Epel, PhD, had been conducting this kind of research at the University of California, San Francisco, Center for Aging, Metabolism, and Emotion when she was interviewed for an article by the American Psychological Association. Dr. Epel stated: Telomeres are a protective casing at the end of a strand of DNA. Each time a cell divides, it loses a bit of its telomeres. An enzyme called telomerase can replenish it, but chronic stress and cortisol exposure decrease your supply. When the telomere is too diminished, the cell often dies or becomes pro-inflammatory. This sets the aging process in motion, along with associated health risks. (Lu, 2014) When you consider the attrition that chronic stress can induce, even at the level of our DNA, it is not difficult to comprehend that stress has reached epidemic proportions in the modern world. Although many factors contribute to the data, it is safe to say that we, in high-income countries, are relatively protected from contagions, but we are not protected from our own lifestyle. The data can be interpreted to show that we are not catching the diseases that kill us; we are causing them. Our advances and economic privileges have not made us any safer; they have only afforded us the ability to make ourselves sick. For example, fast food, with all of its known health risks, would not exist if we were not in such a hurry, as is our cultural norm. WHO has also been credited with dubbing stress as the “health epidemic of the 21st century.” Based on the data, it is not difficult to see why.
SECTION 2: WHY ARE WE SO STRESSED?
The American Psychological Association conducts an annual “Stress in America” survey. The 2017 survey, titled “The State of Our Nation,” showed a breakdown of the current issues causing Americans stress in general terms as well as by demographics of age, race, and gender. Although money and work still ranked high on the list of stressors across the board, another source of stress took the lead in 2017: the future of our nation. Although political debate swirls around such topics as health care and the economy, 63% of Americans feel the mounting pressure according to the survey. The poll also showed a rise in reported stress from the year before. For nearly half of Americans (45 percent), lying awake at night in the past month was one stress outcome, as opposed to four in 10 (40 percent) who had reported sleeplessness Work-life balance or lack thereof Over the past few decades, workdays and workweeks have gotten longer as productivity expectations have increased. We seem to be under constant pressure to produce more and earn more, from the corporate level down to the working individual who is just trying to make ends meet. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average workday for full-time workers in 2017 was 8.56 hours, with some full-time workers clocking an additional 5.65 hours on the weekend. For
in 2016. The survey also revealed a significant increase in the percentage of Americans who had experienced at least one symptom of stress in the past month, from 71 percent in 2016 to 75 percent in 2017. Of the symptoms reported, around one-third of adults reported experiencing feeling nervous or anxious (36 percent), irritability or anger (35 percent), and fatigue (34 percent) due to their stress. (American Psychological Association, 2017) The good news, however, is that the survey also showed a significant increase in healthy coping tools that Americans are seeking to manage their stress, as opposed to unhealthy habits like smoking. Exercise, yoga, and meditation are becoming more common. Massage therapy should also be on that list. comparison, the same data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2012 showed the average workday to be only 7.65 hours long (see Section 5: References for link to charts). That is a 12% increase in only five years, and the numbers were even higher for workers with multiple jobs. Looking at those numbers, it is no wonder there has been increasing discussion about the need to create a work-life balance.
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