Signs Of Stress And How To Measure It
STRESS MINI SERIES: PART 2 OF 4
With our earlier article we went over the basics of what stress is so will now touch on how we can start to identify it in our day to day life. If you haven’t read the first article yet - please do have a read first as will answer most questions you might have, and really help you to understand how stress impacts and interacts with the body and mind.
So…how do we know if we are ‘stressed’? A lot of the time if we ask ourselves (or someone asks us) “am i stressed” our answer is ‘no’, ‘not overly’ or something along these lines. If we are admitting to ourselves or others that we are stressed, then I’d say this is actually a good thing as it allows us to move forwards. I also believe that if we are answering the question with a ‘no’ then we can sometimes be convincing ourselves that is the case even when it isn’t. So how can we tell? There are two ways that can help:
Many watches will now give great information on your wrist, 24/7
1. Objective Measurements
There are normally specific measurements we can take that aren’t based on how you feel. The big three that we like to measure for this are our blood pressure, our resting heart rate, and our heart rate variability (HRV).
For the first two, in the most basic sense the higher they are the more indicative of stress it is (don’t forget as mentioned in our earlier article, stress isn’t just that feeling that we associate with hearing the word, but it’s more about the demands we are putting on our body from all angles). For HRV,this is the measure of our heart in between the heart beats, so we actually want this to be as high as possible which means we are better able to respond to fluctuations in heart rate and our bodies to better manage whatever is thrown at us. It’s not an exact science as there are individual factors for everyone to consider, but in terms of healthy numbers, these are the values we’d like to see in an ideal world:
Blood pressure between 100-120 for systolic (the top, bigger number) and 60-80 for diastolic (the bottom, lower number). To highlight why this is so important in our approach, for every increment of 20/10 your blood pressure increases (from our ideal), your risk of cardiovascular disease doubles. Yep, you read that right. So we always put health first, no exceptions.
Waking Heart Rate - under 60bpm. The lower this is usually correlates with how good your aerobic conditioning is. This can often for fit individuals be in the 40’s, but isn’t strictly necessary to be that low unless you have a specific conditioning goal (like running a marathon) where it might drop as a consequence.
HRV. This isn’t as easy to put a number because it is more relative to yourself. So we could say a good score is 60+, and a great score is 80+, but in reality it is more about is it improving in comparison to your own average scores. For example it’s completely possible for someone to be incredibly fit but not be able to get an HRV any higher than in the 60s.
2. Subjective Measurements
The way we feel is just as important to take notice of, as ultimately the brain is the master of our body - what is says, goes. For measurements that have the bigger impact on how we feel are things like our sleep (how long, the quality, do we wake up feeling refreshed or tired), our energy levels, and our digestion. There is a huge list of other feelings and reactions of the body that can be signs of being in a highly stressed state, but these just listed are the ones that generally create the biggest issues in how we feel day to day.
While our body is in a stressed state it will slow down or de-prioritise certain functions in the body like our digestive and immune systems - hence how stress can be a factor in poor digestion, and even part of the reason why you might get ill when you go on holiday! That is because the holiday is actually allowing your body to come out of a stressed state into rest, and then these functions are prioritised again so your body goes into overdrive to fight any lingering infections or illnesses. So then knowing that, is there anything you can change long term so you don’t just put yourself back into the same high stress environment whenever you are not on holiday? One to think about.
All of these measurements feature in our client consultations due to how important they are, as hopefully you now realise too. So if you ever come to work with us, these will definitely come up again in our conversations!
Now we know how to identify and spot signs of high stress, In our next article on stress we will touch on how to manage stress so we can allow our body to still function as it’s best.
Stay Healthy,
Ben
