Did you know that worrying is unhealthy for your body?
Let’s be real: there are a lot of things to worry about right now. From the government to the health of our children, elderly family members, our finances, police brutality, etc…there are a lot of things we worry about.
Some worry may come and go, but more people are suffering from excessive or chronic worrying. With excessive worrying, your mind and body go into overdrive as you constantly focus on “what might happen.” Many chronic worriers share feelings of impending doom or unrealistic fears that only increase their worries. They become ultra-sensitive to their environment and to the criticism of others.
Chronic worrying can affect your daily life so much that it may interfere with your appetite, lifestyle habits, relationships, sleep, and job performance.
Sometimes, a little worry or anxiety is helpful. It can help you get ready for an upcoming situation. For instance, if you’re preparing for a job interview, a little worry or anxiety may push you to find out more about the position. Then you can present yourself more professionally to the potential employer. Worrying about a test may help you study more and be more prepared on test day.
But chronic worry and emotional stress can trigger a host of health problems. It not only affects your nerves, but also produces real changes to your body and brain.
An automatic physiological reaction to worry and stress is called the “fight or flight” response that brings on a surge of adrenaline and sets your body on red alert. The fight or flight response causes the body’s sympathetic nervous system to release stress hormones such as cortisol. These hormones can boost blood sugar levels and triglycerides (blood fats) that can be used by the body for fuel. The hormones also cause physical reactions such as:
You may also become more prone to infections. It is widely accepted that stress and anxiety can lower your immune system, making you more susceptible to picking up colds or more serious illnesses. With excessive worry, our immune systems have little time to recover so we become even more tired and lethargic.
Loss of libido is another symptom of worrying. To have a fulfilling sex life you need to feel healthy and relaxed in body and mind. When you are worn down by worry, you are neither. Worrying can cause prolonged erectile dysfunction in men as well as the lowering of libido and arousal in women.
Worry can also cause you to store fat. Stress causes an increase in the body’s level of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that can cause your body to store fat in the abdominal area. Excess fat in the belly has been shown to increase a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer.
Excessive worry could even lead to depression. If you start to worry about everyone and everything day and night, feel that life is unfair and justice does not exist or become paranoid that people will betray you, these could be the first warning signs of depression. Talk to your doctor or a trained counselor if you are starting to feel like this.
Here are some of the other things experts say worrying can cause: lack of focus, fast breathing, fatigue, dizziness, headaches, or migraines and it can even lower the strength of your immune system.
So what can we do to stop worrying in this worrisome time we live in? Here are three ways that can help:
Relaxation techniques can trigger the relaxation response — a physiological state characterized by a feeling of warmth and quiet mental alertness.
This is the opposite of the “fight or flight” response. Relaxation techniques can offer a real potential to reduce anxiety and worries. They can also increase your ability to self-manage stress. With relaxation, blood flow to the brain increases, and brain waves shift from an alert, beta rhythm to a relaxed, alpha rhythm.
Practiced regularly, relaxation techniques can counteract the debilitating effects of stress. Common relaxation techniques include deep abdominal breathing, meditation, listening to calming music, and activities like yoga and tai chi.
Daily meditation — instead of worrying — may help you move beyond negative thoughts and allow you to become “unstuck” from worries that keep your body on high alert.
With meditation, you purposefully pay attention to what is happening at the present moment without thinking of the past or future. Meditation decreases hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, which are released during the “fight or flight” or stress response.
Sometimes it’s your social network that can cause your chronic worrying.
Take a stock of your friendships and relationships to see if any of them may be toxic or pulling you in the wrong direction. Chronic feelings of loneliness or social isolation make it harder to effectively manage stress. People who are happily married and/or have large networks of friends not only have greater life expectancies compared with those people who do not, but they also have fewer incidences of just about all types of disease.
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