Psychological Stress and Pain

Psychological Stress and Pain

Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy, and rewarding life.

—Marilu Henner

Have you ever noticed that pain increases during times of stress? Why is that? Emotions are a powerful force. We feel emotions every day. Women tend to be very in touch with their emotions, and those emotions can manifest in a variety of ways. Some can create havoc and a vicious cycle for musculoskeletal dysfunction.

Emotional stress can be contributed to nearly every health ailment known to mankind. Stress can reduce blood supply, create tight muscles, reduce oxygen, and release hormones that trigger inflammation, limit your ability to repair joints, and cause nerves to be overactive. Stress must be kept in check in order to manage chronic back and neck pain. Your body’s response to a short-term stress is known as the “fight-or-flight” mechanism. When you are being chased by a bear, you want your body to move all its blood away from areas of your body, such as your intestines and stomach, to the skeletal muscles so you can run away as fast as you can. That is necessary as long as it is short-lived. When your body perceives stress for long periods of time—weeks, months, years—you create a neurological reflex of tight muscles that can actually change the shape of your spine over time, irritate joints, and pull vertebrae out of alignment. Chronic stress slowly but surely starts to degenerate you nerves and your brain. The physiology of chronic stress is a topic for another book, but underlying stress is the source of many if not most ailments. Not all stresses are easily identified.

A patient named Misty is a 35-year-old mother of four, working 30 hours a week as a telemarketer. She and I were talking about the chronic muscle pain in her shoulders and hips. When I asked about stress in her life, she replied, “Dr. Morgan, I don’t really have stress. Everything is going well. I have a job I like, my family is healthy—I don’t really have any stress in my life.” Well you might not perceive things as stresses, but your body sure does. I asked her to walk me through her day. She begins by getting up two times a night with an infant, starts her morning with three cups of coffee while trying to get the kids up and dressed, often running late she decides to not cook breakfast and picks up doughnuts at the bakery, still late she eats in the car on the way to drop the older kids at school, goes to work, has one more cup of coffee, works for several hours, skips lunch and instead replaces it with a Red Bull or Monster Energy drink, and snack on a bag of chips while working. Hang on—there’s more…. She leaves work, picks up a few kids, hurries home to cook and clean for the kids, eats a TV dinner and drinks a cola, helps with homework, bathes kids, and does some laundry. She doesn’t even have time to sit down and unwind before bed. By about 9:00 p.m., she hits a brick wall, knowing she should go to bed, but decides to have one more cup of coffee or iced tea for a pick-me-up so she can finish some work around the house. In bed by 10:30 p.m., she has difficulty going to sleep because she says she can’t turn her mind off. After lying in bed for about an hour, she decides to take a sleeping pill. Her infant wakes up twice, usually around 1:00 a.m. and again at 4:00 a.m. Her alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m., when she gets up to start all over again.

I explained to Misty that even though she might not believe she has any stress—such as a loss of a loved one, difficulty at work, or a child who is disobedient or having issues at school—the amount of caffeine she consumes and poor dietary habits are just as bad. Caffeine is a stimulant and, if not kept in moderation, the body’s chemistry and nervous system perceive the stimulation as a constant fight-or-flight response. She doesn’t sit and eat at a slow or normal rate, she is rushed everywhere she goes, and it’s difficult for her to find the time to be in a rest-and-digest state. She eventually burns out the adrenal glands, responsible for stress hormones, and the body now feels it constantly needs stimulants to function.

High levels of stress hormones make it easy to put on weight around your waist, decrease your lifespan, and accelerate the progression of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and dementia.

So, how should you deal with and ease emotions and stresses that might not be in your control? Check out my next blog on how to deal and tips you can use!  Call and schedule your next appointment.

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