Lesser Known Facts About Stress

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Once, stress served us as a protective state. Today, it mostly just gets in the way. Some of us (me included) are deeply conditioned to react intensely to stress. I am on a journey to change that.

In this post you will likely learn something new about stress because I have gone to lengths to explore the physiology. Progress and healing often require a deep understanding of something. You can’t master something you don’t understand.

Once we understand the physiology of stress I’ll share a few really effective habits that can help you get a hold of yourselves before you become like the lady below.

What Is a Stress State Really?

We often say “I feel stressed” but it’s more like a state. Stress literally affects every cell in your body and changes the way your body behaves.

It starts in the brain, then produces chemicals that swim around your body via your blood. These chemicals stick to various body systems using things called “receptors” (imagine little docking stations). Once the chemicals dock they change the way that body system behaves. Viola, stress state.

The two chemicals that drive stress states are: 1) adrenaline 2) cortisol

I’m not really as concerned with adrenaline in this article, as it’s more of a quick sudden response and this is about chronic stress. Instead, we’ll focus on cortisol.

Here’s how cortisol works step by step:

1. Amygdala receives raw sensory data from emotions like anger, fear, shame which are interpreted by the brain as danger

2. Hypothalamus tells your body to release cortisol

3. Adrenal glands (sit just on top of your kidneys) make the cortisol

4. Cortisol enters your bloodstream and travels around the body

5. Cortisol receptors bind the cortisol to body tissue

6. Body tissues begin to behave differently

7. Hypothalamus constantly monitors blood cortisol

8. A brain signal tells adrenal glands stop making cortisol once blood cortisol levels are “too high”

9. Balance is restored

STRESS FACTS

• Adrenaline is made from dopamine. Dopamine is made in the brain, your adrenal glands and in the gut.

  
  

• We all respond differently to stress. The intensity and duration of the response is unique to you. Often, it is based on genetics, trauma (especially in childhood), and environment but it can also be the result of habit.

  
  

• We can “train” our brains to respond more or less to stress.

  
  

Stress Response Behaviours In Various Body Systems

Cortisol affects every organ and body system because cortisol receptors exist in practically every cell in the body.

Here’s a diagram summariing the stress responses of each body system:

Modern Life and Chronic Stress

Our environment has stress built into it: deadlines, traffic, shorter sleep cycles (artificial light and screens), no physical demand for exercise, constantly being bombarded by everyones perfect life, mirrors to show us how quickly we’re ageing, exposure to disasters on the news (I do not watch the news personally but I understand sometimes you need to know whats going on).

Robert Sapolsky’s wrote a highly praised book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and in it he explains how modern day life encourages stress.

Chronic stress is a killer. Literally, but also it’s a killer of your drive and your joy.

We can make it worse. Using our imagination or ruminating will create a stress response that lasts far, far longer than a typical “threat-triggered” stress response. That’s exactly why it is so damaging.

Just one round of rumination can make your blood cortisol rise for 1-2 hours. This resets every time you ruminate again.

If one wrong daydream can lead to hours of stress, we can see how easy it is to spend our entire day in a stress state. People who imagine the future a lot or ruminate about the past are especially high risk.

Unless we make a designated and prolonged effort to keep calm, we stay in a cycle of stress.

Surprising Results of Chronic Stress

Here’s some long term effects you may not know about.

• Hippocampal shrinkage - The physical size of the hippocampus shrinks after chronic stress and also results in poorer prefrontal cortex function.

• Lower back pain - caused by “muscle guarding,” an involuntary protective tightening of the muscles around your spine. Muscles contract as a way to prepare for impact, long after the danger has passed!

• Damaged teeth - high stress can trigger teeth grinding for some people which happens during sleep. It can also cause serious jaw issues from the clenching.

• Weight gain - cortisol encourages the body to store fat, especially around the liver and organs.

• Type 2 diabtetes - cortisol causes increase in blood glucose which in the long run can cause insulin resistance

• Eczma and psoriasis - cortisol slows processes like skin healing, collagen building and hair growth. Over time this means it can worsen existing conditions, and cause flare ups.

• Change genetic expression - There is growing evidence that shows stress chemicals can attach tiny chemical markers onto your DNA. Sometimes these changes are passed to children, making them more susceptive to stress.

I feel stressed just thinking about the effects of stress!

How To Break The Biological Loop

In paramedics, military and other high-risk professions, “Stress Exposure Training” is used to help individuals shorten their stress response.

Here’s a summary of what they do:

• Vagus nerve stimulation

• Tactical breathing (box breathing, 4-4-4-4)

• Cold exposure

• HRV biofeedback

• Progressive muscle relaxation

• Eye movement desensitization basics (bilateral stimulation for nervous system downshifting)

Explain why they work neurologically (parasympathetic activation)

Three Techniques You Can Do Right Now

I’ve gathered five lesser known but super powerful habits from different experts, all of which you can do right now.

Habit 1: Recognise rumination can destroy your life (Sadguru)

“Once you let your past decide how you experience the present, you have destroyed your future.” - Sadhguru

A book that really helped free me from rumination and anxiety was “Inner Engineering” by Sadhguru. He establishes very clearly how ruminating about the past, and worrying about the future are the same thing as trying to exist in your memory or your imagination. Neither are “real.” Neither exist. Come back to the “now”.

Habit 2: Physiological Sigh (Andrew Huberman)

Basically this is a double inhale, followed by a long slow exhale until your lungs are almost empty. Even three times is enough to produce results. The body naturally creates this exact type of breathing during a good old cry.

Deliberately breathing like this is a unique but powerful way to “force” your sympathetic nervious systems to shift back into a calmer state.

You can watch more breathing techniques from Andrew Huberman here: “How to Breathe Correctly for Optimal Health, Mood, Learning & Performance.”

Habit 3: Paramedics - “Glove Up”

In paramedic training, they are taught a repetitious action to create muscle memory which is stored in the basal ganglia and the cerebellum. This means they teach their body to “add” one extra step in their stress response. Here’s what they do: whenever they hear a crash / bang / scream they carry out the simple grounding technique of putting gloves on.

Done enough times, this becomes an automatic response, which interrupts their stress response. The interruption provides the paramedics time to think, take a breath and consider their next steps.

Additionally, “gloves on” provide sensory input that acts like a barrier between emotional reactivity and rational thought.

You may want to think of your own way to “glove up” but here are some ideas: taking a ring off and putting it on again or putting on a pair of glasses. Or keep a kind of “token” like a small marble or sensory item in your pocket and take it out to fidget with it.

Final Takeaway

• Stress is a biological warfare waged internally

• Modern environments are built to drive stress up

• We can teach our body to stress less if we give it tools

  
  

We are not entirely powerless, but we are not in complete control either. The daily stress you experience is not a moral failure. It’s not by your design.

By understanding that stress is a nervous system pattern, we can make some adaptions. Over time, these adapations rewire our brain a little, and give us some power back.

References

Akça, Z., Chang, S. C., Goyal, A., Lazarou, M., & Sutton, P. (2025, September 3). Epigenetic Inheritance of Trauma Across Generations: A Review of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Epigenetic Mechanisms, Challenges and Implications for Today’s World. OxJournal. https://www.oxjournal.org/epigenetic-inheritance-of-trauma-across-generations/

Harris KM, Gaffey AE, Schwartz JE, Krantz DS, Burg MM. The Perceived Stress Scale as a Measure of Stress: Decomposing Score Variance in Longitudinal Behavioral Medicine Studies. Ann Behav Med. 2023 Sep 13;57(10):846-854. doi: 10.1093/abm/kaad015. PMID: 37084792; PMCID: PMC10498818.

Lucassen PJ, Pruessner J, Sousa N, Almeida OF, Van Dam AM, Rajkowska G, Swaab DF, Czéh B. Neuropathology of stress. Acta Neuropathol. 2014 Jan;127(1):109-35. doi: 10.1007/s00401-013-1223-5. Epub 2013 Dec 8. PMID: 24318124; PMCID: PMC3889685.

Sharma K, Akre S, Chakole S, Wanjari MB. Stress-Induced Diabetes: A Review. Cureus. 2022 Sep 13;14(9):e29142. doi: 10.7759/cureus.29142. PMID: 36258973; PMCID: PMC9561544.

Thau, L., Gandhi, J., & Sharma, S. (2023, August 28). Physiology, Cortisol. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538239/