Chronic Stress And Long
Aches and pains are common symptoms of stress, however, ongoing pain or stiffness may be a sign of a more serious problem.
A 2018 study published by PubMed revealed Stress-related disorders were significantly associated with risk of subsequent autoimmune disease.
Autoimmune diseases cause your immune system to produce antibodies which attack and damage the bodys healthy tissue instead of fighting infection. In certain conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, the antibodies attach to connective tissue within the joints leading to pain, stiffness, swelling, andwithout treatmentpotentially permanent joint damage.
Autoimmune diseases are often incurable however, early intervention and treatment can help prevent further damage and joint deterioration.
Is Stress Causing Your Pain
Lifes demands create stress and although some stress may be good, too much can cause health problems. Most people equate stress with high blood pressure, a heart attack or a stroke. But did you know headaches, dizziness, neck and shoulder pain can be stress-related too?
Chronic headaches, usually accompanied by extreme fatigue are almost always a sign of stress. People literally live on Tylenol and Ibuprofen for years because they constantly have a nagging headache, induced by muscle spasms from the high amount of stress in their life.
The Cause of Stress Related Headaches
Headaches can range from minor nagging pains, to full-blown migraines that knock you off your feet for a day or two. Any headache, whether tremendous pain or not, should be a warning sign you are under a lot of stress. Prolonged stress can result in muscle tension changes, making you feel stiff, achy and painful in the neck or shoulders.
Hormone production also changes with stress. Hormones also make muscles tense up, which can cause a loss of motion, pain and irritate nerves. One may feel pain in the shoulders, neck, upper back and even radiating out to the upper arms.
Most people who are under a great deal of stress complain about having neck and shoulder pain. The most intense pain usually lies directly in the back and upper sides of the neck. The pain then radiates into the shoulder area.
Real Relief
Theory Vs Practice: Youre Not Always Going To Get Ideal Cbt
Its easy enough to get optimistic about CBT in the abstract, but in my personal experience with several psychologists over the years, and based on a lot of communication with readers well, lets just say not all CBT is created equal. Theres a great range of quality and creativity in its application, a big gap between the best possible CBT and the kind that many people will actually encounter in the wild being sold for a bare minimum of $100/hour.
Good CBT probably gives you a better chance than winging it on your own, but its still not an easy road. And its most common weakness in practice seems to be an unfortunate overemphasis on the thinking part using conscious thought as leverage. Which I cynically assume is an issue simply because thats what is easiest to do in a therapy session.
Thinking may be what gets us anxious in the first place, and it may be hard to fight fire with fire, hard to use calming thoughts to subdue or replace worried thoughts. Or, worse, worried thoughts may over time become embodied, so entrenched in our behaviour and biology that they are no longer just thoughts and fresh attempts to think less worried thoughts may have little impact, especially at first.
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How Does Stress Cause Neck And Shoulder Pain
Before we consider how massage works and how it can help resolve musculoskeletal pain we need to look at some of the ways the muscular system can become dysfunctional. Therapists are often asked what caused my problem? and the answer, unfortunately, is not always simple. In the next two articles we will follow the process of dysfunction for two common causes of neck and shoulder pain.
There is an interesting moment in the BBC News 24 countdown sequence. The tension builds as the drums beat and the pips match the time signal. Images of various correspondents, working both home and abroad, are flashed across the screen until we see John Simpson talking to camera in a war zone. An explosion occurs behind him and John, the consummate professional, continues to speak to camera. His body does react however. In fact all the people around him react in the same way. His head drops down and his shoulders rise up as he ducks.
We moved house recently, apparently one of the most stressful things you can do in normal life and whenever I took time to notice I found my shoulders were nearly up to my ears with the stress. Now Plymouth is hardly a war zone, so what is happening here? The body finds it difficult to distinguish between instantaneous fight or flight situations and the insidious stress we feel in our everyday lives and the physical reactions can be remarkably similar.
How Common Is Stress
Anxiety and stress related disorders are incredibly common. In europe, 4-10% of the population experience anxiety . This increases to 7 out of 10 people suffering from illness . Most stress is related to our health, family, work, bills and other commitments. If its an emotional or cognitive stress why does it affect our body?
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Possible Reasons For Interscapular Pain
If you are feeling pain between your shoulder blades youre likely a little worried. What could that kind of pain be coming from? Could it be something serious that could be an emergency?
Pain between the shoulder blades, otherwise known as interscapular pain, can have many causes. While this symptom is commonly caused by something as minor as a muscle strain, its important to be aware that it may also be a sign of something more serious, sometimes something as serious as a heart attack or lung cancer.
Pain is your bodys way of letting you know that something is wrong, but its sometimes hard to know if that something is only a nuisance or something that needs urgent attention. One way or the other, however, its important to find a reason for whats troubling you.
How To Control Neck Pain From Anxiety
Generally, when anxiety causes neck pain through muscle tension, the best thing to do is to control the muscle tension first and anxiety second. Most anxiety symptoms require you to respond to the anxiety directly in order for the symptoms to go away, but muscle tension has a tendency to linger. This means that additional treatments might be needed. Consider the following:
- Massage – Massage is one of the best ways to reduce neck pain. It can either be a self-massage or one performed by someone else. Either decision you make, massaging out your tense muscles can genuinely assist in reducing muscle discomfort in your body. This will also help in relieving some of the stress that caused the muscle tension to begin with.
- Hot Bath/Shower – The application of heat is very soothing to tense muscles. A hot bath is ideal however, a hot shower can still be beneficial if you stand in there long enough to have your muscles warm up. Heat forces muscles to relax, making it harder to hold tension. For some, hot water and/or steam can be soothing for anxiety.
- Exercise – If it is not too painful, exercise can improve muscle tension symptoms. Jogging and stretching are especially helpful. When you regularly workout your muscles, it will become harder for them to tense up during times of stress.
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What Causes Chest Pain
It is always a good idea to visit a doctor at least once to rule out any potential heart health issues. Anxiety can cause chest pain, but an important factor in reducing the stress of that chest pain is by making sure you are confident that your heart is in good health. Visiting a doctor is never a bad thing!
Often those living with anxiety and panic attacks will experience chest pain caused by any number of different factors. Some of these include:
- Hyperventilation – Those with panic attacks and anxiety are prone to hyperventilation, or breathing in too much oxygen. It is often due to rapid muscle contractions and excess air in the lungs. Hyperventilation contracts blood vessels and causes considerable chest pain.
- Bloating – anxiety can be connected to excess gas or bloating. Hyperventilation disorder can contribute to this as well. Bloating can cause an increased amount of pressure on the lungs, which in turn leads to chest pain.
- Psychosomatic – most people don’t like to believe the idea that the problem is in their head, but those with extreme anxiety and panic attacks, that are worried about their health, may feel genuine pain even though no cause of pain is present. Psychosomatic means that a physical ailment is aggravated or caused by their thoughts. The anxious mind actually convinces the body that there is a symptom, in this case chest pain.
Stress Effects On The Body
Stress affects all systems of the body including the musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, nervous, and reproductive systems.
Stress effects on the body.
Our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, but when that stress becomes long-term or chronic, it can have serious effects on your body.
Musculoskeletal system
When the body is stressed, muscles tense up. Muscle tension is almost a reflex reaction to stressthe bodys way of guarding against injury and pain.
With sudden onset stress, the muscles tense up all at once, and then release their tension when the stress passes. causes the muscles in the body to be in a more or less constant state of guardedness. When muscles are taut and tense for long periods of time, this may trigger other reactions of the body and even promote stress-related disorders.
For example, both tension-type headache and migraine headache are associated with chronic muscle tension in the area of the shoulders, neck and head. Musculoskeletal pain in the low back and upper extremities has also been linked to stress, especially job stress.
Relaxation techniques and other stress-relieving activities and therapies have been shown to effectively reduce muscle tension, decrease the incidence of certain stress-related disorders, such as headache, and increase a sense of well-being. For those who develop chronic pain conditions, stress-relieving activities have been shown to improve mood and daily function.
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How Do You Know If Theres Something Wrong With Your Lungs
What Are the Warning Signs of Lung Disease? Trouble breathing or shortness of breath: Its not normal to have shortness of breath for no reason, or that doesnt go away after exercise. Feeling like youre not getting enough air: Labored breathing, when its hard to breath in and out, is a warning sign of trouble.
How Does Stress Cause Shoulder Pain
As it turns out, not all stress affects the body in the same way. “Stress in itself is not the issue,” explained Dr. Naresh Rao, DO, FAOASM, partner at Sports Medicine at Chelsea and head physician of the USA Men’s National Water Polo Team. “True stress or ‘eu-stress’ is a good thing.” Dr. Rao explained that it is actually excessive stress and the way you perceive an external or internal trigger that has the ability to wreak havoc on the body. “Once the mind perceives excessive stress, the mind-body connection can create somatic, or physical, pain,” Dr. Rao added, explaining that this imbalance commonly presents itself as shoulder and neck pain.
Dr. Rafael E. Salazar II, MHS, OTR/L, CEO and president of ProActive Rehabilitation and Wellness, also added that cortisol a stress hormone made by the body may be one of the culprits in causing aches and pains in different parts of the body, such as the shoulders. According to research, prolonged cortisol responses by the body could result in cortisol dysfunction. Cortisol dysfunction, in turn, acts as the catalyst for inflammation, which has the ability to cause even more inflammation, pain, and even depression.
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Why Does My Shoulder Hurt
One or both of your shoulders could be in pain for a number of reasons. If you experience sharp but infrequent shoulder pain, it may be a sign that you are doing something wrong, like physical activity or stretching. If you were recently in a car accident, you may be experiencing whiplash symptoms.
However, if you suffer from frequentperhaps constantshoulder pain, it may be caused by anxiety and stress. Anxiety has many insidious ways of affecting the human body. Some of the ways in which anxiety could be causing shoulder pain are by:
- Causing you to tighten your jaw,
- Causing you to clench your muscles around your shoulders and neck,
- Increasing tension in your muscles,
- Enlarging blood vessels and restricting muscle mobility, and
- Increasing your perception of pain.
If you suspect that you are suffering from shoulder pain due to anxiety, you should take steps to naturally reduce your anxiety levels in order to treat the root cause of your pain.
What Are The Causes Of Shoulder Pain
The causes of shoulder pain can vary. The pain can be acute or chronic .
Acute shoulder pain
Acute shoulder pain can be caused by a fall or accident that may have resulted in the upper arm bone breaking . The consequences can be sharp pain, limited mobility up to complete immobility, swelling and bruising . People with osteoporosis also frequently have fractured bones.
A separated shoulder is also caused by trauma. As with a fracture, a separated shoulder also causes sharp pain, but it is rather more localized on top of the shoulder. You can often see the formation of a step on the side of the shoulder, between the humerus and the collarbone, with the naked eye. The acromioclavicular joint is also very sensitive to pressure.
A fall or accident can also lead to dislocation of the shoulder joint . A dislocated shoulder is the most common of all joint injuries. Signs: severe pain and limited mobility. Sometimes, there is also an injury to the joint lip and the joint capsule of the shoulder as well as sensory disturbances due to impaired nerves. A labral lesion often manifests itself through sharp pain, a cracking or snapping sound when moving the shoulder and a feeling of instability.
Chronic shoulder pain
- Impingement syndrome
- Shoulder osteoarthritis
- Frozen Shoulder
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Fighting Flighting Tending And Befriending
The famous fight-or-flight response is a biological response to acute threats, and is more common in anxious people but not synonymous with anxiety. The stress response to threats to life and limb the biology of panix predates anxiety in homo sapiens by about a billion years. But that same response, which evolved to deal with threats like being eaten alive, can be triggered by someone cutting in front of you in traffic. If your brain is complicated enough, it can trigger the stress response with completely abstract threats or even imaginary ones.
But exactly how we respond to stresses whether its the threat of disembowelment or failing a drivers test is as complicated as personality.
Someone suffering from chronic and excessive feelings of worry, nervousness, or unease is not necessarily in a panic. The anxious person is more likely to spend more time in this mode, either because they actually face more threats, or because they perceive more threats than there really are. But we can also worry about threats without ever actually experiencing one. Or reacting as if theres one. My own childhood was a textbook case of that.25
There are other ways to respond to acute stress. We arent limited to fighting and flighting. There is also the much less famous tend-and-befriend response, for instance, a different behavioural strategy in which threats are dealt with more socially: tending to children, or seeking out the safety of the group and befriending people.
How Can I Prevent Back Pain In The Future
While Dr. Williams and the caring team at Interventional Orthopedics of Atlanta are hyper-focused on helping patients become pain-free, preventing future pain is one of their top priorities. Follow these lifestyle and behavioral tips to help ensure you avoid back pain in the future:
- Sleep with your spine in a neutral position
- Practice good posture
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How To Get Rid Of Neck Back Shoulder Tension Anxiety Symptoms
When neck, back, shoulder tension is caused by apprehensive behavior and the accompanying stress response changes, calming yourself down will bring an end to the stress response and its changes. As your body recovers from the active stress response, this tension should subside and your neck, back, and shoulder tension should subside. Keep in mind that it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. But this is normal and shouldnt be a cause for concern.
When neck, back, shoulder tension is caused by persistent stress, such as from stress-response hyperstimulation, it may take a lot more time for the body to calm down and recover, and to the point where neck, back, shoulder tension subsides.
Nevertheless, when the body has fully recovered from the stress of being anxious, this anxiety symptom will completely disappear. Therefore, neck, back, shoulder tension anxiety symptoms neednt be a cause for concern.
You can speed up the recovery process by reducing your stress, practicing relaxed breathing, increasing your rest and relaxation, and not worrying about this feeling. Sure, neck, back, shoulder tension can be bothersome, but again, when your body has recovered from the stress response and/or sustained stress, this symptom will completely disappear.
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