For centuries, humans have dismissed a variety of aches and illnesses, rationalizing why the knots in our neck are so tight we could anchor a small boat, or why a headache has been camped behind our eyes for three days straight. Once symptoms overpower our denial, we finally haul our defeat to the doctor. After a thorough examination, we often hear the words we just don’t believe, “Your issues are the result of extreme stress.” It’s understandable to question an explanation that doesn’t seem to add up.
But the link between mental and physical health is better understood than it used to be. Modern medicine was slow to take it seriously. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that researchers began studying the connection in earnest, and interest grew through the mid-20th century as early studies tied emotional states to chronic illness and showed how deeply stress affects the immune system. Only in the last couple of decades has large-scale data confirmed what those early researchers suspected: psychological health is woven through nearly every system in the body. So is there enough evidence to suggest that the constant strain in your shoulder could be tied to a strain in your life? There is.
To Give Every Organ Direction, the Brain Relies on the Mind-Body Connection
The processes behind our mental and physical health are complex, but the reason they’re connected is simple: the brain says so. Think of the brain as the bridge that ties the mind and body together. They’re really two expressions of the same underlying brain activity.
- Both mental and physical systems are rooted in brain activity. While the brain handles mental processes like memory, stress, thoughts, and emotions, it’s also regulating physical ones like hormones, stress responses, sleep cycles, and movement.
- When one system improves or declines, the other tends to follow. They move together, either lifting each other up or dragging each other down. The second is where things get chaotic for the brain.
How Can Feelings and Thoughts Create Illness and Knots?
We accept that the heart pumps blood and that several systems work together to bring a baby into the world, yet we hesitate to believe that generating a single feeling or thought is just as involved. Even deciding between a vanilla or hazelnut latte sets off a chain of steps in your brain, including chemical shifts driven by neurotransmitters. If a trivial choice takes that many commands, imagine what significant emotions and mental conditions ask of the body. One of the most common and harmful is chronic stress.
Chronic stress. Chronic stress keeps levels of cortisol and adrenaline, your primary stress hormones, elevated around the clock. Short bursts of cortisol sharpen alertness and help defend the body, but when it’s released for too long, it starts to do damage:
- Muscles: Muscles tense up in a constant state of readiness, especially in the neck, shoulders, and lower back. That steady strain creates painful knots, stiffness, and aches that can spread to the head, ears, or jaw.
- Brain: Brain tissue can shrink, affecting memory, making it harder to regulate emotions, and disrupting the immune, digestive, and cardiovascular systems.
- Bones and joints: Ongoing cortisol fuels inflammation throughout the body. That inflammation releases markers that worsen joint conditions, damage cartilage and synovial tissue, and slow the growth of new bone.
- Pain perception: This study notes that the brain’s pain circuits become hypersensitive, lowering your pain threshold so pain registers sooner and feels more intense.
- Sleep: Chronic stress keeps the body on high alert and unable to power down. The sympathetic nervous system stays switched on, raising your heart rate, keeping your muscles tense, and keeping the brain on patrol. With cortisol and adrenaline still running high, falling asleep gets harder, and that’s a problem, because sleep is how the brain heals: it flushes out metabolic waste, repairs stressed cells, and resets the circuits that support memory, mood, and clear thinking.
Physical Health Affects More Than Mood, Able to Cause Disorders of Great Magnitude
We can’t deny it. Several activities don’t require much action anymore. Kids play football as a virtual avatar on a video game and most movement comes from our fingers because we text all day. But our bodies are designed to move. In fact, they rely on movement to keep our endocrine, immune, cardiovascular, nervous, digestive, and musculoskeletal systems running effectively. There are many causes of poor mental health, but the absence of physical activity ignites a cascade of consequences throughout both the body and the mind, possibly causing more harm than smoking.
Sedentary lifestyle:
Poor physical health impairs our organs, raises the risk of cancers, and creates several other physical ailments. Limited physical movement creates mental harm in the following ways:
- Inflammation
- Inflammation is one of the strongest links between mental and physical condition. It keeps muscles from producing anti-inflammatory chemicals, dysregulates the immune response which can cause mental disorders, slows blood circulation, and increases stress hormones- just to name a few harmful outcomes.
- Inflammation can decrease a foundational hormone and neurotransmitter called serotonin, creating panic disorders, anxiety, depression, and digestive problems.
- Another hormone and influential messenger, dopamine, is decreased by inflammation which impairs physical movement, lowers mood, decreases motivation, and weakens the immune system.
- Brain
- Lack of physical activity alters brain chemistry and its ability to connect to its emotional control region. It can decrease dopamine and endorphins linked to depression, ADHD, and bipolar disorder. The altered chemistry increases inflammation which activates anxiety circuits.
- Inactivity triggers the brain to conserve energy which produces fatigue, mental fog, and social withdrawal.
- Inactivity worsens sleep which is how the brain repairs Sleep loss reduces the brain’s ability to repair mood circuits.
- Organized neural pathways are disrupted in the brain that regulate memory, anxiety, bodily sensations, thinking, feeling, and responses to stress.
- Cardiovascular health
- Limited activity leads to high blood pressure which reduces connectivity in mood-regulating circuits, weakening stress regulation, mood stability, and emotional control.
- Lack of exercise contributes to irregular heart rhythms which trigger anxiety.
- Reduced blood flow from inactivity lessens oxygen and glucose, starving mood-regulating circuits, resulting in memory loss, fatigue, low energy, reduced concentration, and low motivation.
- Heart symptoms such as palpitations, chest pains, and blood pressure suspend clean sleep, vital to all health.
- Gut health
- Inactivity slows digestion and raises stress hormones. These gut changes send distress signals to the brain, increasing the risk of anxiety, depression, and emotional instability.
- Immobility raises inflammatory cytokines which the gut is highly sensitive to. It responds with IBS-like symptoms which are associated with an 83% increase of depression.
- According to Science Insights, more than 90% of the body’s serotonin, a chemical essential for mood regulation, is produced in the gut. An unhealthy gut cannot properly produce serotonin.
- Chronic illnesses
- Many chronic conditions reduce mobility which increase inflammation in the body and weaken mood circuits in the brain.
- People with chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, cancer, or arthritis feel a loss of purpose, leading to anxiety and depression.
- The diagnosis of a chronic illness may create a loss of autonomy or require medical demands. These biological stressors make the brain less flexible, often causing an adjustment disorder.
- According to Healthandme, people with multiple chronic illnesses face a 2.4 times higher risk of depression.
Reverse Effects of Stress and Live Well: Just Be Mindful and Move!
We’re all at different stages of life. Our age, physical ability, health, and goals shape what we’re capable of, and that’s OK. Whether you break out an old VHS tape to work out along with Richard Simmons, lift weights at the gym, or walk the neighborhood to see whose lawn needs some attention, what matters most is that you move. Not sure where to start? Here is a list of 15 exercises that can boost both your mental and physical well-being.
And don’t forget, your mind is a powerful ally. Here are some stress-management tools and mindfulness practices from Healthline to help you ‘rest and digest,’ since the mind and body work in both directions.
And if stress has settled into your muscles and joints as real, physical pain, you don’t have to manage it alone. An Airrosti Provider can offer a comprehensive evaluation and a treatment plan to help you start feeling better. We offer in-clinic and telehealth appointments. Schedule below, or call us at (800) 404-6050 for more information.
