By Dr Attia Anwar
A lot of people all over the world are becoming interested in wellness, which means living a good, healthy life without extra worries. This has become a sort of trend to avoid stress and seek long-term happiness.
“Lack of good stress is a risk factor that threatens our health”
Many people, including me, who are interested in wellness, have written about the bad effects of stress and worries. Our worries are the cause of many physical and mental illnesses. We all know the bad effects of stress. However, a new term introduced by health professionals is eustress, or good stress. People are talking about good stress. Today, I will discuss what good stress means and how to differentiate it from bad stress. It is being said that a lack of good stress is a risk factor that threatens our health. Good stressors are the body stressors that help you to maximize your mental, physical, and emotional resilience. As a result, you reap a lot of health benefits. Sitting and worrying about things is not good stress. Good stressors are active choices you make to expose your body to certain changes in lifestyle. It can be exercise with intense bursts of movement, fasting more effectively, a cold shower, or challenging yourself mentally and emotionally while managing unhealthy stress. It has the power to repair, regenerate, and build resilience if used deliberately in moderation. This will keep your mind sharp, improve your mood, boost your energy and metabolism, and keep your weight healthy. It will help in increasing health, happiness, and longevity. These healing modalities are not just modern wellness trends, but they are based on old traditions and survival instinct, and are scientifically proven.
“Good stress is a type of stress that increases your heart rate, but you feel excited”
Since the term good stress is being increasingly used in wellness, everyone must know what is meant by good stress. Otherwise, you may be talking about the bad effects of chronic stress, and somebody can say that some stress is very good. There is a risk of misunderstanding and using the term interchangeably with chronic stress and worry, which is dangerous for health and well-being.
Good stress is a type of stress that increases your heart rate, but you feel excited, as for a roller coaster ride or an intense bout of exercise, there is no element of fear attached to it. While bad stress makes you jittery and leads to anxiety, confusion, poor concentration, and decreased performance afterward. Good stress is for a short duration and acute, and in between, you feel good. There is time for recovery, and that leads to increased healing of the body. Our body knows when it is good stress. It gives us a sense of well-being. It is the opposite of distress. Sometimes the same event, like getting married, can give you good stress or distress. It is about the perception of stress by your body. When we experience stress of any kind, whether it is physical or mental. Our body responds in a certain way by releasing hormones, like an increase in heart rate and sweating.
If it goes back to baseline relaxation stage after a while, then it is eustress, as we experience after physical activity, which is good for us. But once these reactions continue all the time, then it is chronic stress or distress that can damage the heart and other organs. When we experience a threat, our sympathetic system is activated, our digestion becomes slow our immune system, instead of fighting invaders in the body, goes into an inflammatory mode. When this threat passes away, our body quickly goes into repair, and digestive function becomes more efficient. It starts healing. It starts tidying up and goes into a phase of growth and repair.
If you go into stress and then come back to normal, it increases resilience. There is no damage to the body. If you complete this process successfully, next time it happens, your body says Yes, I can do it. As a result, your resilience increases, and you do not go into chronic distress from small challenges. However, if we constantly remain in this fight-or-flight mode, our body does not have time to do the work of healing and is in a constant state of fighting. This is detrimental to health. When someone repeatedly goes into too much stress ability to go to the baseline relaxation phase is diminished. Prolonged response makes you hyper vigilant, anxious, and tired. As someone has said years before, those who worry most die young. Understanding the good effects of stress gives us the idea that we can use daily life stressors to our advantage. If we experience something unpleasant, we should acknowledge it and feel our feelings, and then intentionally and logically do something about it. This will prevent the long-worrying cycle from creating more bad stress.
Good stress is motivating, increases our focus, lasts for a short time, and improves our performance. Many of us have experienced that sometimes we have performed very well under the stimulus of stress. Bad stress decreases our performance, gives us unpleasant feelings, is perceived as outside our coping abilities, and causes anxiety and health problems. By having good stress, you explore the edge of your comfort zone. You are focused and alert during performance and inspired, energized, and motivated afterwards. You learn, grow, and get stronger. Examples are stress during planning a trip, childbirth, and doing invigorating exercise. Good stress provides you burst of energy and helps you to meet the challenges of life and achieve your goals. It sharpens your focus and helps you to do tasks more efficiently. It builds your positive resilience for setbacks in life. You mostly feel in control while experiencing good stress. It helps you to connect with people in a meaningful way and deal with unpleasant events healthily. While under bad stress, you feel worried, demoralized, distracted, and scattered. Usually, it is chronic, and you feel helpless and out of control. You are unable to set effective boundaries to manage it efficiently. It prevents you from doing anything else, like things you want to do or accomplish your goals. You do not feel any motivation or long-term benefits from it. It does not feel worth it, and it is in direct conflict with another priority or value. So it is emotionally taxing due to conflicting values. You do not challenge yourself in this situation, so it is bad for your health and immunity.
In short, good stress is pressure that motivates us toward growth and progress. It may be difficult in moments, but it produces resilience and improvement. However, bad stress brings about anxiety, nervousness, fear, and depression by overwhelming us. It is usually long-term, but can sometimes be short-term pressures of life.
The author, Dr. Attia Anwar, is a consultant family physician with a postgraduate degree from the Royal College of GPs UK. She is a strong advocate of health and well-being and wants patient participation in decision-making regarding health.
