THAT'S MEN:STRESS CAN go on building up for months after certain upsetting events – that's according to researchers at Brown University in the US.
We often think of stress as jumping and then falling, but this finding suggests the effects can be more insidious – and it has lessons for all of us.
The events which cause this kind of rising stress, according to the new study, include losing your job, being demoted or having serious arguments with family members.
Eventually this rise in stress can trigger panic attacks. Panic attacks, which can include dizziness, a speeded-up heartbeat, breathlessness and nausea, don’t actually do physical harm – but they are very unpleasant and they badly frighten the people suffering from them.
This slow-burning effect might explain why RAF fighter pilots during the second World War had panic attacks when they were on the ground and not when they were up in the air in danger of their lives.
And it explains why most people don’t have a panic attack when they learn that they are to be made redundant – but some will have one a few months later.
Possibly without them realising it, the anxiety caused by the original event has been increasing all that time. The panic attack that comes eventually can seem quite baffling if the link with the original event, such as the family row or the redundancy notice, is never made.
What this suggests is that after stressful events we need to look after our emotional and mental health for months.
One of the simplest ways to do this is to exercise. Because exercise is such a simple concept, its value in reducing depression and anxiety is often discounted.
Yet it works. It even works in people who get extremely anxious about anxiety itself. These are people whose fear that an anxiety attack will kill them (it won’t) is so great that they actually bring on panic attacks themselves.
The first sign of a speeded-up heart rate, which can happen for any number of mundane reasons, throws them into a state of anxiety which becomes a panic attack.
So this is a very anxious group of people. Yet even they, if they exercise regularly, are less likely to be scared by anxiety. This needs to be exercise which brings on the very reactions that we fear in panic attacks, namely an increase in blood pressure and heart rate for example.
This has all been studied by getting people to do intense exercise and then inducing panic symptoms in them. You do this, if you want to know, by getting them to inhale carbon dioxide mixed with air.
There is more on the issue of prolonged stress following certain life events at http://bit.ly/prolongedstress.
On a different, not unrelated topic, “I need a drink” is a fairly common reaction to stress. Now it seems that alcohol can actually prolong the experience of stress.
Researchers at the University of Chicago induced stress in a group of men by asking them to do some public speaking.
If you’re scared of public speaking you won’t be surprised to learn that this method is often used by experimenters to stress volunteers for study purposes.
Immediately afterwards they were given the equivalent of two standard drinks of alcohol.
The researchers found that the alcohol actually prolonged the sense of tension felt by the men in the study. Moreover, the tension reduced the pleasure they got from the alcohol – this effect can lead to a desire for more alcohol in order to get the required kick.
Alcohol reduces the level of stress hormones such as cortisol in the body. But the release of cortisol, and increases in heart rate and blood pressure, are all part of the body’s natural response to stress.
In the long – and even in the short – run, alcohol makes matters worse not better when it comes to stress relief, according to the study reported in Alcoholism: Clinical Experimental Research.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas.