In our world of constant communication, stress levels can quickly spike from zero to 100 with a simple reading of a text or email. This response begins in the brain and then extends throughout the body.
Consider that some types of stress can be good—eustress—which includes things like an upcoming date, a work promotion, or other opportunities. Stress can also be bad—distress—which typically lasts longer than eustress and includes experiences such as physical pain, anxiety, or financial difficulties.
Even though you may be aware that one stress is “happy” and the other “sad,” your body’s physiological response to both types of stress is the same. Eustress and distress are daily concerns, which means optimizing health involves developing habits and routines to manage these stressors—specifically leveraging the benefits of eustress and reducing distress.
The body has developed many protective mechanisms to keep you alive. One of these is your parasympathetic nervous system. Perhaps the best-known example of this system in action is the fight or flight response, which protects you from danger by preparing your body to confront stress or run from it.
As a result, your heart and breathing rates increase, your muscles tense, and your body releases the hormone epinephrine. If the stress continues, your body adds cortisol to keep you on alert. Once the danger has passed, the parasympathetic nervous system returns your heart and breathing rates to normal, relaxes your muscles, and reduces the flow of stress hormones.
However, if you are unable to relax and your body remains in a chronically distressed state, you may experience increases in blood pressure, excess body weight, and long-term conditions such as anxiety and depression.
Exercise can be an effective stress management tool; however, exercising incorrectly can also be an unhealthy form of stress. The more stress you experience, the more recovery you need to optimize health.
During stressful periods—such as increased travel, holidays, end-of-quarter work, or other deadlines—when you are less likely to be able to allocate extra time for recovery, consider lowering your exercise intensity. While this may sound counterintuitive, lowering your exercise intensity not only reduces distress but also helps your body and mind recover.
During times of less stress, it’s appropriate to increase the intensity of your exercise. Daily tracking of your heart rate variability (HRV) is a great way to monitor your body’s ability to take on additional stress in the form of exercise intensity.
If you believe that high-intensity exercise is your only workout option, it is recommended to double your efforts in other stress-management techniques to support your parasympathetic nervous system and optimize both health and performance.
Conscious stress recovery is a beneficial skill to keep your body and mind healthy and resilient. FIT’s health hierarchy provides a useful framework to regulate and de-escalate stress. In addition to adapting your exercise routine, consider addressing other areas such as:
Understanding the effects of stress on your nervous system emphasizes the importance of making conscious changes across the five domains of the health hierarchy. These changes are especially important during periods of elevated or prolonged stress.
Keep this in mind the next time stress enters your life and you feel the “need” to fit in a workout. Adjust your workout based on the time you have available for recovery, and keep exercise working for your health—rather than against it.
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