English | Français

Stress and anxiety-related health issues.

        Your body knows how to heal itself. It knows how to restore healthy physiological functions, repair or eliminate damaged cells, and fight infections.

Your body can heal cuts, tears, and injuries, it can repair broken bones, or heal dysfunctional organs! Since these natural self-healing mechanisms are energy intensive, they unfortunately do not work while you are  exhausted from stress, anxiety, trauma, pain or other negative feelings . This is why, chronic stress and anx iety are not only facts of modern life, but also the driving factors of mental and physical health disorders.

It is known that the fear response to a sudden dangerous situation, often called acute stress, activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and stimulates the secretion of hormones such as corticosteroids and adrenaline. The resulting high cortisol level leads to, among other things, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure and high energy levels. While these natural responses can be helpful in truly dangerous situations, over time they can negatively impact health and well-being. 

Long-term, repeated or chronic stress can have negative effects on many physiological processes, leading to anxiety, depression, insomnia, pain, and cognitive problems, as well as cardiovascular disease, immune system problems, digestive disorders, reproductive problems, and many other health issues. Chronically elevated cortisol levels lead to muscle breakdown, deterioration of brain tissue, weakening of immune function, thereby accelerating aging and compromising general health. Under chronic or intense stress and anxiety, many “non-essential” functions are sidelined or even eliminated.

It is estimated that 75 – 90% of all visits to primary care physicians are for problems related to stress, anxiety, and other strong emotions. It is good to know, however, that stress and anxiety are not normative concepts, nor are they diseases in themselves. Although your stress and anxiety are not imaginary, there is no laboratory test to confirm or measure them. However, you do feel them, and therefore you are in the best position to judge whether or not you feel stressed or anxious. However, very intense or prolonged stress or anxiety can fuel various health disorders and medical conditions, situations that require medical attention.

Emotions are not just mental states and emotional feelings. Today's view of emotions is that emotions are experienced at four different, but closely interrelated levels: the mental or psychological level (the brain), the physiological level (the chemistry of your body), the somatic level (bodily emotional feelings), and the behavioral level. These complementary aspects are present in all human emotions, even in the most basic ones like stress, fear, and anxiety.

The scientific study of emotions and of the bodily changes that accompany various emotional experiences, known as psychosomatic medicine, marks a relatively new era in medicine. The central concept of psychosomatic medicine is the scientific fact that mind and body are indissoluble and integral aspects of human life. The term ‘psychosomatic disorder’ is used for a physical disease that is thought to be triggered, made worse, or caused by emotional factors. To an extent, most diseases are considered psychosomatic, as there is an emotional aspect to every physical disease.

As you already know, rather than passively observing what happens to you, your subconscious mind is actually in charge of the proper functioning of your conscious mind and your body through the regulatory mechanisms of your autonomous nervous system. When you feel relaxed and safe, the parasympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system kicks in and your body is nourished, and healed and the energy is restored. Whenever you are facing a threat, the sympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system kicks in and the stress response will mobilize all your resources for your survival inbuilt fight or flight response.

While you are in the middle of a stress response, the stress response will mobilize all your resources for your survival, and your body's nourishing, restorative, maintenance and self-repair functions come to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, when the threat is imaginary, the subconscious mind doesn't realize that there is no real threat. Over time, when this stress response is repetitively triggered by imaginary threats, nature's biological response ends up doing more harm than good.

Long term, if your body is not properly nourished, restored, maintained, and repaired, the effects of chronic wear and tear on your body take their toll and you will end up mentally and physically sick. The holistic concept of helping to heal the human being as a whole rather than helping to cure diseases in itself is based on the fact that the natural state of all living systems is balanced and healthy. Therefore, the quickest and most natural approach to rebalancing a diseased and dysfunctional living system is to eliminate the imbalance factors rather than add new elements in the hope of regaining balance and health.

By releasing stress and anxiety, your body creates a loop of positive feedback through the autonomic nervous system, feedback that can rebalance your sympathetic and parasympathetic branches and lead to improvements in symptoms of autoimmune disorders, addiction, and behavioral issues, skin disorders, cardiovascular diseases, eating and gastrointestinal disorders, pain and idiopathic issues, reproductive issues, multifactorial and systemic diseases, and many other chronic conditions. The degree of improvement you can reasonably expect by relieving your persistent stress and anxiety depends on how much you feel that your emotional state affects your health issues.

When dealing with a fractured bone, the standard medical approach is to align and join the broken parts of the bone and let it heal, as this ancestral approach works for everyone and every time. However, when dealing with stress and anxiety, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach. Therefore psyc hiatry, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic-programming, E.F.T. (emotional freedom tapping), pet therapy, art-therapy, mindfulness, yoga, craniosacral therapy, gravity blanket, mini-horses therapy, and many other approaches based on very contradictory and yet scientific concepts, are all available to solve emotional issues.

As the nervous system modulates the physiological functions, and the brain takes into account the emotional state in all that it does, strong emotions always end up having an impact, not only on the mood and behavior, but also on the proper functioning of the body and the etiopathogeny of all kinds of diseases. Chronic, intense, or repetitive stress and anxiety can lead to various emotional troubles and even psychiatric or somatic medical conditions. According to the American Psychosomatic Society “… there is no such thing as psychosomatic disease. All disease can be looked at from this point of view.”

The following conditions may be aggravated, triggered, or even caused by stress and anxiety, or may be conditions for which you may be at increased risk if you are exposed to prolonged or intense stress and anxiety.

Autoimmune diseases

Addictions and behavioral troubles

Cardiovascular and heart disease

Eating and gastrointestinal disorders

Pains and unexplained (Idiopathic) troubles

Reproductive and sexual  dysfunction

Skin health issues

Multi-factorial and systemic disease

As long as today stressors are some of the leading causes of countless chronic diseases, can conquering this bodily reaction be the answer to all of our health woes?

You are here for a reason and whatever that reason is, don't allow it to cripple your life.

The "No Results - No Pay" principle guarantees my integrity and applies to all my therapies.

Contact me and book your appointment today! Let this be the most exciting experience of your life, and I will be happy to help you on your journey.

Disclaimer: The above article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author. It is intended for general informational purposes and does not constitute psychological or medical professional advice. I don't diagnose medical conditions, nor do I interfere with any treatments given by your medical professional.

If you already are under the care of a doctor or under medical treatment, follow the advice and treatment recommended by your doctor. For any medical emergency, call the Info-Santé service by dialing 8-1-1

*The results may vary from person to person.

Somatic Hypnotherapy - 186 Sutton Pl, suite 104, Beaconsfield, Montréal, Qc, H9W5S3

Contact me