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What’s the difference between being attacked by a lion and dealing with annual audits? You might survive the lion. So why is stress the urban jungle’s most feared killer and what can you do to combat it?
People should be more like zebras. At least, that’s what Dr Robert Sapolsky says. He’s one of the world’s leading neuro-endocrinologists and the author of several books that investigate that most curious of topics: the human condition.
Sapolsky is particularly noted for his work in the area of stress responses in animals and humans, and why it is that humans suffer so acutely from it. For example, while zebras often face the threat of death by predator, they don’t contract stress-related diseases. That’s because, Sapolsky points out, they don’t suffer from psychogenic stress. In other words, they don’t think themselves into a state of perpetual anxiety. Unlike humans.
Being human
Across the animal kingdom, stress is a response to an external physical threat. In both hunter and hunted, a stress response mobilizes the body’s resources to either flee or attack.
The response conveys itself as a heady cocktail of glucose, cortisol, adrenalin and oxygen, rapidly pumped through the body by means of a cardiovascular system working in overdrive.
Heart rate and blood pressure shoot up and breathing becomes faster; all non-essential body functions shut down, taking a back seat to the drama of ensuring that the organism is able to confront or retreat as quickly as possible. As soon as the physical threat disappears, the body’s balance – its hormonal and cardiovascular systems – is restored. The zebra, as it were, carries on as if nothing untoward had happened.
But humans are different. Our bodies produce a stress response even to the perceived threat to our well-being. And these perceptions are many and varied, and worse, unrelenting. While we may not be chased by lions or sabretooth tigers, our bodies react to stressors such as relationship and job anxiety in exactly the same way as they would to hungry predators. So we live in an almost perpetual state of stress response – with detrimental effects to our health.
The stress effect
"Cortisol pumps sugar reserves into your bloodstream to provide the physical energy to flee danger," explains dietitian Heidi Lobel. "But because we’re experiencing this stress in a sedentary environment we don’t use this shot of energy – of sugar to the bloodstream – so our body is forced to produce extra insulin to normalize levels again.
"‘If this happened once in a blue moon or if this were the wild where the threat would be gone within 20 minutes, your body would return to normal. But now the problem is that the threat doesn’t disappear (the mortgage is a hassle every month; inflation keeps going up) and the cycle of cortisone and insulin continues.
Insulin is a pro-fat hormone as it instructs the body to store rather than use the glycogen. But weight gain and early onset diabetes are the least of your worries.
Sapolsky points out that bodies living in a state of emergency pay a huge price. During periods of stress, digestion, growth, reproduction and immune functions are all put on hold until the threat has passed. But if the threat doesn’t pass, these vital functions are neglected to the point of causing or worsening disease. The line-up of consequences spans cardiovascular disease and hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome and ulcers, depression and anxiety, sexual dysfunction and reproduction irregularities, not to mention immune-suppression leaving the body open to infection.
How to be a zebra
"The first line of defense is diet," says Lobel. "Eliminate stimulants that spike your sugar and adrenalin levels; eat a broad-range, well-balanced diet and take a vitamin B supplement. All of this will help your body cope with anxiety and make it easier to recover from a stress response."
She suggests following a low-GI diet of small, regular meals, spaced at intervals of two to three hours. It might sound unreasonable for a busy executive, but as Lobel says, if you have time to eat the bad food, you have time to eat the good food.
"Either prepare your meals for the day in the morning or keep your ingredients for lunch and snacks at work. You could also order in healthy options such as fresh sandwiches, sushi or soup. Not eating or grabbing quick fixes are simply going to spike your sugar levels, perpetuate mood swings and damage your already over-stressed system."
Apart from diet, Sapolsky underlines exercise as a means to manage stress and provide an outlet for the stress hormones racing through your body. Marc Schneider, head of personal training at Planet Fitness says, "The best way to combat stress is through exercise. It’s proven that during exercise your body produces endorphins, which neutralize stress-related hormones in the body."
He recommends that execs engage the services of a personal trainer who can work around busy schedules and design fitness programmes tailored for individual body types. "Or you could simply begin an exercise regime by walking for 20 minutes, three times a week. It’s a great way to begin the journey to health, and when you’ve settled into this routine, a more structured programme can be introduced."
Over the course of his research, Sapolsky has found that the following points create and aggravate stressful circumstances:
- When you feel that you have no control over events
- When there is no predictive information about a situation
- When there is no outlet for frustration
- If your perspective is skewed and you interpret things as getting worse even if they aren’t
- You don’t have a social network or support.
Apart from modifying the environment that is causing stress, you can modify your response to it. The TARP (tune in, analyze, respond and prevent) method teaches simple techniques to control your response to stressful situations. It consists of four steps:
1. Tune in
Get into the habit of noticing early signs of stress. Pay attention to when you start feeling irritable, tense, lonely, distracted or fatigued. Make a point of scanning your body, behaviour, feelings and thoughts regularly.
2. Analyze
Stressors can be either external or internal. External stressors are things and events outside your body that can make you feel threatened or out of control, such as physical irritants like noise or pollution, work demands or conditions, frightening events and social or family demands. Internal stressors result from one’s own attitudes and thinking patterns, such as negative self-talk and criticism.
3. Respond
Deal with the cause of your stress and its effects on you. Instead of getting caught up in the stress response, take time to gain some perspective on the matter. Take a moment away from the situation and regulate your breathing. Don’t let negative thoughts spiral out of control.
4. Prevent
Diet, exercise, meditation and a good social network of friends and family have all proven to be effective in tackling stress. But Sapolsky warns that time must be set aside for stress management daily and that it’s not something that can be reserved for the weekend.