Are you stressed out or anxious? Though we tend to use the words interchangeably, and indeed it is possible to be both, stress and anxiety refer to two different things.

Understanding the difference can help you manage both.

What is the difference?

Stress refers to any thought, situation, or event that provokes anger, nervousness, or frustration. Different things stress different people out.

For some it could be relationship issues with friends or family, but for others it could be related to a specific event or project they are involved in. Still others may feel stress when something reminds them of a previously experienced trauma.

Anxiety is often provoked by stress, but they’re not the same thing. Anxiety is the uneasiness, fear, or worry you sometimes feel.

Stress can bring on anxiety, but anxiety sometimes has no clear cause. Chronic anxiety can lead to several disorders, including phobias, panic disorder and generalised anxiety or uncontrolled worry.

Stress and women

For women approaching menopause, hormonal changes can bring on stress. Emotional stress can make the symptoms of menopause worse, too, such as an increase in the frequency and intensity of hot flushes.

Women are stressed out in different ways, and from different causes, than men. While men mostly report that work causes stress, women are more likely to attribute their stress to personal or financial worries.

Women also handle their stress differently and tend to confide in friends and family and to talk about their emotions more freely.

That’s a good thing, as one way to cope with stress is to openly address it.

What’s not so good for women, though, is that their stress is more likely to manifest in physical symptoms.

Women are significantly more likely to report stress headaches, stomach complaints, and unexpected episodes of sadness and crying.

Stress isn’t always bad

Stress can cause physical problems like increased hormonal symptoms, skin rashes and high blood pressure, and lead to mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

But we feel stress for a reason, and sometimes it is good for you.

Stress can be a motivator so the stress you feel before a big event can motivate you to succeed. It can even save your life as stress from a dangerous situation can provoke a fight-or-flight reaction that raises your adrenaline and motivates you to act quickly.

Sometimes stress gives you the quick pulse and alert mind you need to stay out of danger.

Whether stress helps or harms your body depends on many factors. One is whether your stress is acute or chronic.

You know acute stress when you feel it – the way your heart races right after a car crash, or the sudden jolt of energy you get when you see a snake or spider.

Acute stress goes away soon after the stressful cause is gone.

But chronic stress is another story. The muscle pain that sets in after months of demanding work, the constant nausea you may feel during a financial crisis, and the uncontrolled weight gain you experience during a long, unhappy relationship can all be signs of chronic stress.

Stress and your nervous system

When it comes to stress, everything begins in your brain. When you are confronted with danger, like nearly being hit by a car, your brain sends a distress signal to a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.

This is where your brain starts the process for your automatic functions, sending orders to the rest of your body.

When you’re stressed, adrenaline signals your body to rev up the heartbeat, blood pressure, and breathing. Your senses become sharper, and your brain becomes more alert.

This all happens in an instant. But stress causes long-term effects too. A hormone called cortisol is released, which keeps your body on high alert until the threat passes.

For some situations and some people, though, stress levels remain high even after a perceived threat is gone. This leads to chronic stress.

Cortisol and weight gain

Chronic stress can add pounds as well as worries as it can accelerate your stress response.

It is also responsible for some of the physical changes stress can bring on, and some of these are unwanted, especially when stress lingers for weeks or months.

Cortisol puts a high demand on your body’s resources and yes you need this in the face of danger. But in the modern world stress is more likely to be caused by relationships or money problems than dangerous wild animals.

This causes problems that can lead to unwelcome weight gain because cortisol taxes your body’s energy stores, it also makes you hungry – especially for sugary and fatty foods that give you a quick burst of energy.

If your stress isn’t prompting physical exercise in response, you’re likely to gain weight.

What’s more, cortisol encourages your body to store excess energy as fat but by how much varies from person to person.

Stress and your muscles

Stress makes you tense up. That’s good if you’re facing down an angry predator. But if it persists, muscle tension causes several problems.

Tension headaches, migraines and tensed muscles can provoke more serious anxiety disorders, too.

This persistent tension can also lead to muscle atrophy, and is a problem that can get worse, as exercise is one of the most reliable means of relieving stress.

Taking a breath

Constant worry affects your breathing. When under a lot of stress we tend to take deeper breaths and to breathe more often and more quickly.

This is your body’s way of boosting the oxygen it needs to respond to a physical stressor.

That’s usually fine, but not if you have breathing problems like asthma or lung disease, then all this breathing can make your problems worse.

How stress affects your heart

When your stress is sudden and lasts for a limited time (acute stress), your heart starts pumping faster right away. It’s part of the way your body adjusts to dangerous situations.

That isn’t especially hard on your body, but what if your ‘stress lever’ gets stuck and you wind up with ongoing chronic stress?

Chronic stress keeps your heart rate up for long periods of time. It also causes your blood pressure to increase.

These put you at greater risk of major heart disorders such as heart attack and stroke.

Repeated episodes of acute stress or ongoing chronic stress could increase the inflammation in your circulatory system, especially inside your coronary arteries.

This could explain how intense stress can bring on heart attacks. In addition, stress may raise cholesterol levels in some people, which affects the circulation and heart as well.

Stress and infection

Does stress make it harder to fight off infections? Colds, flus, and other communicable diseases may be fought off more easily if you experience certain kinds of stress. But other forms of stress can make it harder to beat that cold.

Mild, acute stress seems to prepare your body to fight off infections.

However, if your stress is chronic, lasting for weeks or months, the opposite seems to be true.

Chronic stress inhibits some of the body’s most important infection-fighters: T-cells. As a result, someone suffering from chronic stress is left vulnerable to infectious diseases.

Stress and your stomach

Stress affects your digestive system in several ways. Almost everyone has felt “butterflies” in their stomach at the approach of a big event or an important meeting.

If you experience more intense stress, though, those butterflies can transform into nausea or even vomiting. Very intense physiological stress, like the kind seen in cases of serious illness, can also cause stomach ulcers.

The stomach isn’t the only place along your digestive tract harmed by stress. Stress can also lead you to eat more and to eat poorly. This can cause heartburn, as well as acid reflux, especially if you eat more fatty foods than normal,.

Stress can also change the way your intestines absorb nutrients, and how quickly food moves through your body. In this way stress can lead to either constipation or diarrhoea.

It doesn’t help that stress provokes you to eat more greasy and sugary foods and processed foods.

These foods can make your gut leaky, causing additional problems like inflammation.

Chronic stress can change the bacteria in your digestive system as well. Bad bacteria begin to replace the good bacteria, which can be killed off. With different bacteria available, the foods you eat begin to digest differently.

The best ways to ward off these problems include exercising and maintaining a healthy diet – especially one containing fibre.

However, until you get a handle on your stress, these problems are likely to continue.

Coping with stress and anxiety

Stress levels spike during Winter, with nearly half of the UK population reporting that they feel anxious.

Studies show that the stress hormone, called cortisol, is already higher during winter because of the cold weather and lack of daylight.

One of the key things needed to bring cortisol down is getting outside and having exposure to daylight to get vitamin D into your system. R

esearch shows that poor levels of sleep trigger a surge of cortisol, which is why good Vitamin D levels are vital because it is needed to create melatonin – the hormone that regulates our sleep. 

Chronic stress and anxiety takes its toll on the body, and sleep is often one of the first things to be affected.

Unfortunately, sleep is also one of the first things that suffers at Menopause due to changing sleep patterns, hot flushes and having to get up more frequently in the night.

There are several steps you can take to help stress management, so try these:

* Make quality sleep a priority

* Take small, simple steps to improve your health, such as exercising or improving your diet

* Learn how to say no to commitments that will sap your energy

* Tell close family and ask for support or seek professional help

* Do your best to look at things positively

* Bioidentical progesterone is a natural relaxant and helps not just with menopausal symptoms but also with sleep.

Helpful information: 

Hormone balance does play a part at menopause with both anxiety and depression often resulting in stress.

Progesterone helps to relax and calm the body but more severe symptoms may need a combination of both oestrogen and progesterone.

Diet is also crucial so look first to your daily routine of what you eat, how much exercise you get and most importantly your support and contact with others in your daily life.

But if you need a little boost, then this article can help.

https://anna.blog.wellsprings-health.com/how-your-diet-can-help-keep-you-calm/