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So check this out.
Explore how workplace stress affects your body, its biological impact, and practical ways to manage and reduce chronic stress for better health.
Key Takeaways
- Chronic workplace stress harms physical and mental health over time.
- Stress management techniques can reduce cortisol and improve well-being.
- Separating work from personal life is crucial for psychological health.
- Enjoying your work can mitigate some negative effects of stress.
- Small lifestyle changes can significantly impact stress levels and health.
Summary
- Workplace stress triggers the body's fight or flight response, releasing adrenaline and cortisol.
- Acute stress is temporary and can be helpful, but chronic workplace stress is prolonged and harmful.
- Common causes include poor communication, unfair treatment, unrealistic demands, and insufficient pay.
- Chronic stress can lead to serious health issues like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and weakened immunity.
- Stress affects mental health, causing mood swings, loss of motivation, and emotional sensitivity.
- Animal studies show chronic stress impacts reproduction and behavior, illustrating biological consequences.
- Simple stress reduction techniques include chewing gum and cold showers to improve blood flow and endorphin release.
- Workaholics who cannot detach from work suffer more than focused hard workers who compartmentalize.
- Loving your work can improve health outcomes even under stress, but enjoyment does not eliminate it being work.
- Practical advice includes right-sizing reactions, creating transition rituals, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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You're at your job, you have a tight deadline to meet, and you're overloaded with work.
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Because you dodged the last round of layoffs, but they gave you the extra work without the pay.
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Oh no.
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Now you're struggling to decompress at night before getting right back to the grind the next morning.
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Most of us have probably felt it, but what even is workplace stress?
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And why is it so bad for us?
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What's happening, good people, I'm Alzo Slade here with Nat Geo.
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To break down how everything you experience and consume can affect your body.
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In ways you may not expect, today we're stressing, what does workplace stress do to my body?
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We toss the word stress around all the time.
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But what is stress?
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Imagine this, you're out on a stroll and suddenly out of nowhere, a dog barks at you.
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You may jump and feel physically startled.
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But once you've walked away and realized nothing's going to happen.
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The fleeting sensations disappear.
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That's a formula for acute stress.
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A stimulus.
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A physical reaction.
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And then normalizing.
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That physical reaction.
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Is when a part of our brain called the hypothalamus signals for the release of stress hormones.
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Like adrenaline.
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And cortisol.
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It's your classic fight or flight response.
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Adrenaline heightens our pulse and blood pressure to give us a little jolt of energy.
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Cortisol increases our blood sugar and suppresses functions our body deems not immediately necessary.
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Like digestion, reproduction, and parts of our immune response.
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So.
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Those guys, y'all take a break while we handle this stressful situation.
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Stress as a biological response is designed to be temporary.
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And it can be helpful.
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Even at work.
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When we're up against the clock, stress is what can give us that extra push we need to meet the deadline.
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So then, what's the big deal?
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Well, more folks are reporting more frequent stress.
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And unfortunately, that's a problem.
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That's grown and worsened over time.
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Some causes of workplace stress are company cultural.
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Like poor communication or guidance.
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Unfair treatment.
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You do all the work.
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And someone else gets the recognition.
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How about those unrealistic demands?
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Believe it or not, I was asked to wrestle a bear for a story once.
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Seriously.
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Many are monetary, like benefits, insufficient pay, or uncompensated and demanding overtime.
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Obviously, mental health plays a big role in these considerations too.
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Work-life balance.
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Lack of perceived respect.
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And effort reward imbalance all take their tolls.
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When these things are happening, we may lose motivation and confidence.
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Or withdraw.
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We may have mood swings or heightened emotional reactions, like aggression.
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Sensitivity or even tears.
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You understand what I'm saying?
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You may be going through it right now.
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So, why does workplace stress tax our bodies in a different way?
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Unlike typical stressors, like that barking dog.
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Workplace stress doesn't dissipate as easily.
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It's often carried home after hours.
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When it's constant and prolonged, stress can create.
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Way more serious problems.
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Even the animal kingdom demonstrates this.
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Check this out.
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Colorado checkered whiptail lizards near a military base were found to stress eat.
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Yes, lizard stress eats.
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As a response to excessive noise from the low-flying aircraft.
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Song sparrows that had audio of predatory birds playing around them.
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Ended up with 53% fewer offspring than the sparrows who only listened to non-predatory bird calls.
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People.
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It's basic biology.
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Constant stress, it ain't good for us.
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Journalist Yudhijit Bhattacharjee wrote a National Geographic lead story on the topic.
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And can tell us more about how this works.
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I think people should be taking chronic stress very, very seriously.
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Not to stress them out, but unlike acute stress, workplace stress is stress that.
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Lasts all the time, 24/7.
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All those systems in your body, they are constantly in overdrive.
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And that will lead to their malfunctioning.
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It can cause damage to the kidneys.
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You might be more likely to develop heart disease.
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Obesity.
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Diabetes.
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If your immune system starts to get compromised over that long of a period.
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Then you're susceptible to viruses, to germs.
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Infectious diseases.
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And if that just becomes your normal way of functioning, that's a little bit like arsenic poisoning.
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You might think it's not killing me right now, but over time.
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It's going to have some very negative consequences for your health.
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Ooh.
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Yudhijit.
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Uh, thank you, that was heavy, but helpful information.
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Excessive stress in the workplace is literally making us sick.
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And stealing precious time from our lives.
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So.
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You probably won't be able to change your boss or get a new job right away.
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But you should know that you have more control than you might think.
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Starting small, just the act of chewing gum can reduce stress levels.
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Scientists theorize that improved blood flow to the brain could be to thank for that.
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Another quick and easy one.
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Cold showers.
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Regular exposure to cold water can reduce stress levels.
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The shock of cold water can jolt our system.
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Increasing clarity and releasing endorphins.
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According to Harvard Business Review, work-related stress.
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And all the stuff that comes with it.
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Isn't correlated to hours worked.
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It really depends on if you're a hard worker.
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Or a workaholic.
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You know those folks who can't shut work out of their minds after a long day.
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Well, they're much worse off than the hard workers who focus on the present and can psychologically detach.
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They're significantly healthier.
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Compartmentalizing work and private life can be a steep learning curve for some.
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But fear not, there is hope yet for those of us who have work stress dreams at night.
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That same study from Harvard showed that within the workaholic umbrella, those who love their work.
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As in, felt fulfilled, rewarded and engaged, were healthier than those that didn't.
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You know, as the old adage goes, find a job you enjoy doing.
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Then you'll never have to work a day in your life.
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I get the sentiment, but to be clear, just because you enjoy it.
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Doesn't mean it ain't work.
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To help compartmentalize, Forbes has a few suggestions.
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First.
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Right size your reaction.
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Odds are that you're worried about your mistakes far more than anyone else is.
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Overreacting benefits no one.
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Second.
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Create a transition ritual.
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It's a simple but effective way to wire your brain into separating work time from personal time.
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Which is especially valuable for those who work from home.
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This should be no surprise.
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But a generally healthy lifestyle will immensely support your body to keep its cortisol levels in check.
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You need to regulate and recalibrate.
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Not accumulate.
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Bars.
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The big picture here.
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Make sure you have methods for release.
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Set aside time to restore, whether that's socializing with friends, playing with your cat, paint by numbers, doing nothing.
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Whatever just makes you happy.
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Whether you're an intern or a CEO, find what works best for you to stop the daily grind from grinding you.
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Let's do our best to keep the stress less.
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That's all for this one, folks.
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Catch you next time.
Topics:workplace stresschronic stressstress managementcortisolmental healthphysical healthwork-life balancestress reduction techniquesNational GeographicAlzo Slade
