Quotes & Sayings About Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is linked to some of our most deadly diseases. — John J. Ratey

In an age of rampant chronic disease, reconnecting with the Earth's energy beneath our very feet may provide a way back to better health and keeping our bodies in top condition throughout our lives. — Jed Diamond

Chronic threat and stress damage regions of the brain that are involved in planning and the pursuit of goals. The principle is clear: powerlessness undermines the individual's ability to contribute to society (Principle 19). On Kayo Drive, this could be seen in the difficulties kids had sitting still and concentrating, in their bad grades, and in the depressions so common among their parents. Powerlessness robs people of their promise for making a difference in the world. — Dacher Keltner

Everyone has a story. I see many clients suffering from chronic diseases such as Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, and generalized pain. Especially in these clients, I always look for the emotional component. And there is always an emotional component. Either there's a recent divorce, death in the family, trouble with a child or parent, or financial strife that's led to excessive stress. To reemphasize this point: you cannot heal if you don't heal your emotions. — Michelle S. Fondin

Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Under chronic stress, your body is more apt to enter a state of dis-ease. Unable to achieve its natural balance, it can't function the way it should. The ripple effects can be profound. And yet Western medicine has trained us to focus on symptomsrather than root causes like stress. Page 71 — Nick Ortner

At every level, from the microcellular to the psychological, exercise not only wards off the ill effects of chronic stress; it can also reverse them. Studies show that if researchers exercise rats that have been chronically stressed, that activity makes the hippocampus grow back to its preshriveled state. The mechanisms by which exercise changes how we think and feel are so much more effective than donuts, medicines, and wine. When you say you feel less stressed out after you go for a swim, or even a fast walk, you are. — John Ratey

Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup, or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people's lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary. — Gabor Mate

Cortisol decreases insulin sensitivity by receptor cells, decreases glucose uptake, and increases blood sugar. The rise in blood sugar is intended to serve as a reservoir for the central nervous system, which requires a continuous supply of glucose to function. Problems arise when this stress state becomes chronic. When cortisol levels (and, therefore, blood sugar levels) are chronically elevated due to the stress in our lives, the risk of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia increases, and you start to gain weight. So, by being chronically stressed out, you gain weight. — James B. LaValle

Your brain under stress is focused upon surviving and reacting, and less focused upon planning and creating. With chronic stress, your brain learns - and is rewired - to be focused upon survival and reacting only. It has difficulty amping up the area devoted to devising plans for the future. Constant time urgency takes a toll on your body, brain, and emotions. Here — Doreen Virtue

I feel . . . low," I say, looking away. "Like, literally low. Flat. It's not . . . sad, exactly. I mean, sad too, obviously. But that's a different feeling, I guess."

She nods. "There's a reason it's called 'depression' and not 'chronic sadness' or 'manic sorrow.'" She picks up a foam stress ball and squeezes it, leaving imprints of her fingers. "Depressions like these are holes left behind by a physical force. With mental depression, the force can be chemical or situational or both, but it doesn't just make a hole--it presses you into one that feels impossible to escape. — Kate Hart

At its heart, Codependency is a set of behaviors developed to manage the anxiety that comes when our primary attachments are formed with people who are inconsistent or unavailable in their response to us. Our anxiety-based responses to life can include over-reactivity, image management, unrealistic beliefs about our limits, and attempts to control the reality of others to the point where we lose our boundaries, self-esteem, and even our own reality. Ultimately, Codependency is a chronic stress disease, which can devastate our immune system and lead to systemic and even life-threatening illness. — Mary Crocker Cook

The traumatic stress field has adopted the term "Complex Trauma" to describe the experience of multiple and/or chronic and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of an interpersonal nature (e.g., sexual or physical abuse, war, community violence) and early-life onset. These exposures often occur within the child's caregiving system and include physical, emotional, and educational neglect and child maltreatment beginning in early childhood

- Developmental Trauma Disorder — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The weekly thirty minutes of sexual stress was a chronic but low-grade discomfort, like the humidity in Florida — Jonathan Franzen

In addition to single-gene genetic disorders, there are just five causes of all disease: poor diet, chronic stress, microbes, toxins, and allergens, all of which wash over our DNA causing changes in our gene expression, and turning off or on different genes and messages that affect our metabolism. — Mark Hyman

The bottom line is clear: harboring racist feelings in a multicultural society causes daily stress; this kind of stress can lead to chronic problems like cancer, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. But interracial interactions are not inherently stressful. Less prejudiced people show markedly different physiological responses during interracial interactions. In all three of these studies, people who had positive attitudes about people of other races responded to interracial interactions in ways that were happy, healthy, and adaptive. — Jeremy A. Smith

Post traumatic stress disorder starts out with nightmares, flashbacks and actually reliving the event. And this happens over and over and over and over in your mind. If you let it go on, it can become chronic and become hard if not impossible to treat. — Dale Archer

Symptoms of chronic stress are feelings of fragmentation and of chasing after time - of not being able to be present. What we are looking for is a settled, joyful state of being, and we need to give this state space. The Archbishop once told me that people often think he needs time to pray and reflect because he is a religious leader. He said those who must live in the marketplace - business people, professionals and workers - need it even more. — Desmond Tutu

Neurobiological research has shown that in people with chronic PTSD, both stress hormone secretion and areas of the brain connected to memory function, such as the hippocampus, appear to be affected, although exactly how and why remains controversial. — Siri Hustvedt

Many families amass more objects than their houses can hold. The result is garages given over to old furniture and unused sports equipment, home offices cluttered with boxes of stuff that haven't yet been taken to the garage. Three out of four Americans report their garages are too full to put a car into them. Women's cortisol levels (the stress hormone) spike when confronted with such clutter (men's, not so much). Elevated cortisol levels can lead to chronic cognitive impairment, fatigue, and suppression of the body's immune system. — Daniel J. Levitin

Stress does not cause pain, but it can exacerbate it and make it worse. Much of chronic pain is 'remembered' pain. It's the constant firing of brain cells leading to a memory of pain that lasts, even though the bodily symptoms causing the pain are no longer there. The pain is residing because of the neurological connections in the brain itself. — Herbert Benson

Chronic pain shatters productive lives. Chronic pain almost always is accompanied by depression, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, isolation, and lowered self-esteem. — Jed Diamond

FACT 211: The chronic stress of a high-pressure job has been shown to double the risk of a heart attack. Chronic stress may also result in alcoholism, hypertension, and severe depression, and can make your joints ache, your hair fall out, and even stop your period.

So that bald drunk lady at work who's always crying and giving away her tampons? Give her a break; she's under a lot of stress. — Cary McNeal

Behind every stressful thought is the desire for things to be other than they are. — Toni Bernhard

Observational studies show that exercise, nutritional supplements and reducing psychological stress can help. Chronic high stress and smoking can lead to accelerated telomere shortening. — Elizabeth Blackburn

Many low-income children face chronic stress from nutritional deprivation or persistent violence at home or in the community. By addressing their medical, emotional and developmental needs through a comprehensive clinical care model, we can lower their risk of developing long-term physical and mental health issues. — Irwin Redlener

Processed foods cause inflammation, a source of most chronic illnesses as well as stress. — Kris Carr

Use these scientifically rubber-stamped pointers to make better, brighter decisions: (a) Avoid negative things that you cannot grow accustomed to, such as commuting, noise, or chronic stress. (b) Expect only short-term happiness from material things, such as cars, houses, lottery winnings, bonuses, and prizes. (c) Aim for as much free time and autonomy as possible since long-lasting positive effects generally come from what you actively do. Follow your passions even if you must forfeit a portion of your income for them. Invest in friendships. — Rolf Dobelli

It's easy to put the links between the increases in mental illness, depression, ADHD, and the like, with the speed of the modern world. People never get the chance to do nothing, or when they do, they lack the control to prevent their mind from racing off in a thousand different directions. So much so that their doing nothing becomes a thousand different things and the thousand different things becomes stress, anxiety, worry and fear. Left untreated these simple everyday things become well entrenched in our psyches and start to dominate our lives. We have a chronic addiction with doing and we love to use our busyness as a stamp of our hard work and hectic lives and we get stuck in this busy trap of always doing. — Evan Sutter

Without energy being invested in resisting the unwanted or dueling with fears, we have more energy and attention available for noticing not only the disturbing, but the wonderful ... When we are not fixated on threat and defending ourselves, when we're not exhausted and burned out from chronic stress, we are able to see the daily evidence that we are in the midst of a mind-blowing miracle called Life ... Then we will experience breathtaking, heart-rippling moments that counterbalance every trial and tribulation. When we're fully conscious of the universe's artistry and generosity, who needs psychodelics or Prozac? — Charlette Mikulka

In 2004, results from a study that I worked on with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, linked chronic stress to shortening of telomeres. — Elizabeth Blackburn

The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings - as opposed to the invigorating "good stress" of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Ever wonder why most of the people you know or have met seem to be in chronic stress? — Jay Allen

Men have a higher death rate than women for nine out of ten leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, injuries, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, diabetes, pneumonia and flu, HIV infection, suicide, and homicide. We all die of something, but if you're a guy, you are more likely to get a serious disease and die from it than are women. — Jed Diamond