The Link Between Stress and Physical Health

When I was in 7^th grade a strange thing happened to me.

During my yearly basketball season I was struck with a debilitating lower back injury. It was odd as there was seemingly no reason for the onset. No sudden twist, collision, or impact while playing that brought it on. The pain was so great it was sometimes tough to walk around, bend down, or even sit and lay still.

My parents were puzzled. We had it checked out by doctors, but they could see no reason for the pain. They thought it may have something to do with growth spurts, but even that explanation was lacking.

I’d never had back pain in my life prior to that point, so how was it possible for an otherwise healthy twelve year old boy to be hurting like this?

Stress is a Silent Killer

By now, most should know that stress is a silent killer.

It is widely known that stress can have serious implications on your mental health, being a main cause of anxiety and depression among a whole host of other mental and behavioral issues.

What is less known are the long term effects of ongoing, chronic stress, and the physical impacts it has on your body.

Cardiovascular diseases, obesity and other eating disorders, skin and hair problems, as well as sexual dysfunction. Your immune system is also weakened by stress leaving you more susceptible to illness and disease. The list goes on and on.

Though there are no official studies showing a link between chronic stress and cancer (that I have found at least), would anyone be surprised if there was a future study showing that to be the case?

While the lack of exercise and modern office working conditions (sitting in chairs all day) justly get the majority of focus for the physical issues of older people, is it really the combination of this plus chronic stress that results in their rapid physical decline?

We may never get a definitive answer on these questions, but regardless, it’s safe to say that ongoing, persistent stress can be devastating to your health – both mental and physical.

Stress and Physical Health in My Life

After that section would anyone be surprised to learn what the cause of my back injury was?

You got it: STRESS.

With no other answers, my parents did some digging to see if there was anything that was bothering me that I wasn’t telling them about.

Turns out there were a whole bunch of issues: It was the first time I was playing basketball for a coach that was not my dad (I was very fortunate in that my parents supported me growing up like that), and I did not like this new coach.

I didn’t like anything about him and how he treated people, coached, and the like. I also was not comfortable around some of the players on the team as well.

I was experiencing change, and I did not handle it well.

Instead of telling my parents about these changes and trying figure out how we could work to manage and handle them, I kept my thoughts, emotions and feelings bottled up inside and ignored them.

This is not a healthy thing to do people!

Left unaddressed, those negative emotions fed on themselves, and eventually manifested into an actual physical injury… how wild is that.

Leaving unchecked negative feelings and emotions within your body can literally be a poison that slowly eats away at you. It attacks you from the inside, chipping away at your mental health, and can even turn into physical pain in some cases.

I actually feel fortunate that this manifested into physical pain, as it was at this moment that I was either forced to address my issues and face them head on, or deal with the excruciating back pain in perpetuity.

Some of you may not believe this, but I can assure you this was true. Why am I so sure of this?

Because it just happened again last month.

Stress and Physical Health in My Life (Part 2)

After dealing with some stress related illnesses in high school/college, I learned to manage my stress much better once I entered the professional world.

In fact it’s gone so well that I could not even remember the last time I had taken a physical pill (advil, or anything). It had to have been at least 3-4 years.

But that all changed last month when suddenly my lower back flared up again, this time bringing my hips into the fold as well.

I remembered the excruciating pain like it was yesterday – I could not sit or lay still, and had to be constantly moving. I knew immediately this was stress induced. Again, there was no physical trigger to cause this, I’m no longer even playing sports and had not even worked out that week! (I know, shame).

After unsuccessfully trying to figure out the issues causing this for hours, I finally succumbed to taking some advil at 3am to allow me to fall asleep that first night – sometimes you just need help.

It took about a week, and some long talks with my very supportive significant other and timely visit to see my brother and parents in Philadelphia, but I finally figured out the causes behind this pain. Some of these issues had been deeply ingrained, and took some time to sort out. And wouldn’t you know it, once addressed and not bottled up inside me, the pain subsided within a few days and I was back to normal again.

It’s like the event never happened. And on top of it, I feel much more free and loose, like a weight has been lifted of my shoulders.

Change has a funny way of affecting people, and I’ve learned I don’t always handle it too well. This will likely be something I have to work on the rest of my life.

Financial Independence and Stress

The concept of reaching Financial Independence and retiring early (if you so choose) is an appealing and worthy goal to many.

It is why countless individuals have seemingly joined this greater community in the quest to reach this point in their life, where they truly have financial freedom and can do whatever they wish to do with their time.

While this objective is an admirable one, there is something that many people fail to consider along the journey: What is the toll you are placing on your mind and body to reach this goal?

There are many that are trying to reach Financial Independence as fast as possible. They may do so by working extremely hard and long hours trying to grow their income, or on the opposite end scrutinize and worry over every single purchase, giving little thought to the stress this may be causing them throughout.

They may think they can deal with the stress now, so they don’t have to stress later, but that’s not necessarily true. You will always have stress in your life, and that stress builds cumulatively.

The stress you incur when in your 20’s may not appear to have had an effect on you since your body may recover quickly, but it all adds up and it is likely to show it’s ugly side in the future if you aren’t careful.

This is why you should value your mental and physical health above all else on your journey to Financial Independence.

Having the financial freedom to do whatever you want is the goal, but if you don’t have your physical and mental health at that time, what do you actually have?

Combat Stress

Make sure you take care of yourselves people.

If you are having problems or issues in your life don’t hold onto and keep them to yourself like I do. Talk with someone about it, whether that’s a significant other, family member, good friend or therapist, make it someone!!

Sometimes just talking about issues and getting them out into the open is good for you to get off your shoulders. It’s better to have someone to share it with so you don’t have to fight your battles alone. I can be that person if you have no one else!

Another thing that helps me is to surround myself with positivity. There are a lot of negative people and negativity in general in the world.

When you see negativity, you can’t help but think about that. If you see negativity all the time, your thoughts will constantly be negative. That is never a good thing. Limit your exposure to negative people and things, and replace them with positive people and positive things. It’s such a simple thing, but it can help out immensely.

Finally, one other thing that really helps me is to break my problems and put them into two categories:

The things I can control, and the things I cannot control.

If it’s something I can control, great. I list out what I can do to help alleviate and resolve the potential issue. And then I go do them.

If it’s something I can’t control, why stress about it? There’s nothing I can do about it anyways, so stressing about it is literally just harming myself! We don’t like self-harm around here.

Of course, this is much harder to do in reality than that simple logic says to do. In these times I find it helpful to have some faith.

You don’t need to be a religious person, or believe in God to have faith in yourself.

Faith that you will figure things out no matter what life throws at you. Faith that things may not go how you want them to, but you can adapt and thrive. Faith that no matter what life or people or whoever does to get you down you will rise above it all and get to the place you want to be.

It may be naïve to think, but it’s something that gives me peace and helps me through the tough times and in those situations which I have no control over.

I hope you all take this message seriously and I wish you the best on this quest for a low stress and a mentally and physically healthy lifestyle!

.

Can you relate to this post? Have you ever had physical pain that resulted from stress? What are your best stress reducing tips?