Stress affects your health because your body and mind kick in the “fight or flight” reaction. See, stress is something that disturbs your world. Sometimes it is a positive thing, like graduating from college. But most often, when people talk about stress, they are referring to something negative: deadlines at work, test anxiety, fear of job loss. You perceive these negative things as a threat, and you react unconsciously by preparing to “fight” the threat or take “flight” from it. And it is this reaction that needs management stress focused.
In making such preparation, your body floods itself with various hormones and chemicals, including adrenaline. Your mind focuses on the threat, and ignores other things going on. Your stomach floods itself with acid, to better get energy quickly from undigested food. And your heart raises your blood pressure, so that you can react if the threat escalates. If you stay in this state for a long time, you may suffer high blood pressure symptoms.
All of this happens unconsciously. Your stress management techniques are your conscious attempt to regulate your body’s stress reaction. To make sure it’s working, you need to know how the bad health effects of stress are manifested, including high blood pressure symptoms.
Blood pressure is the force with which your blood is flowing through your veins and arteries. It is expressed as the ratio of your systolic (when the heart beats, or pumps blood) pressure and your diastolic (when the heart is between beats) pressure. Your body raises these numbers when under stress, to ensure that blood is flowing to all the parts of your body that need to react to the stressful situation.
High blood pressure rarely has symptoms other than higher blood pressure numbers. By the time you see these symptoms, you could be in serious physiological trouble. Symptoms of high blood pressure may include:
- The above numbers are elevated. You can measure and track your blood pressure at home using a sphygmomanometer, available lat your local drugstore or pharmacy.
- Blurred vision or eye pain. Unfortunately, you may have suffered a lot of damage by the time you see these symptoms.
- Drowsiness or confusion.
- Headache.
- Chest pain.
You should be checking your blood pressure regularly, either at home or at your doctor’s office. Also, if you have any of the above symptoms, you should see a doctor (since this article is not medical advice). High blood pressure can also be caused by factors completely unrelated to stress.
If your high blood pressure is caused by stress, however, then you have several options. You can moderate your internal reaction to stress. This can be by practicing meditation, learning relaxation techniques, or visualizing non-stressful situations. You can eliminate the stressor by attacking and solving the stressful situation. Or you can use either natural or medicinal aids to lower your blood pressure physiologically.
Since high blood pressure symptoms don’t usually appear until your body has been damaged, it is best to monitor your blood pressure if you are under stress. And maybe the best management stress mechanism is to combine internal techniques, to lessen your body’s reaction to stress, with eternal methods of attacking and eliminating the stress. Always check with your doctor if high blood pressure is a concern.
