Always feel unwell and run down when things get overwhelming? Here’s how to handle it, according to science.
After a stressful week, you want your weekends to be free to decompress and enjoy yourself. But when you finally clock off from your pressured job or come out of days of worry and anxiety, do you really go out and let your hair down or do you end up bedbound? If it’s the latter, you’re not alone: new research shows that stress can impact our immune system, explaining why we often feel easily wiped out after overwhelming periods.
In the study, published in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, researchers investigated how various forms of social stress – including stressful life events, chronic stress, everyday discrimination and lifetime discrimination – impacted the health of 5,744 adults.
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They did this by looking at how ‘old’ participants’ immune systems were. As we age, our immunity naturally downgrades, leaving us with a lower percentage of fresh disease-fighting cells and more worn-out white blood cells. But researchers found that stress accelerates this ‘immunosenescence’. After participants answered questions about their lives and had their blood taken, it was found that those who were more stressed had older-seeming immune profiles.
There are obvious and immediate problems with having a poor immune system: regularly catching colds or being susceptible to Covid (which is again facing a peak). But researchers also warned that aged immune systems also leave people at a higher risk of diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.
So what can you do about it? Well, limiting stress is the first place to start. But there are some sources of stress that may be impossible to control, like going through grief or financial worries. In those circumstances, researchers said that there may be a ‘workaround’ to reduce the impact of these worrying life events. And, you guessed it, it’s exercise.
Moving more – as well as improving other lifestyle factors such as eating a nutritious diet – were shown to slow damage to our T-cells, a critical component of immunity, and protect us against stress-related immune ageing.
While the research suggests that improving your diet and exercise routine may help offset the immune ageing associated with stress, this study didn’t have any recommendations for exactly where to start with that. Some other papers suggest that 20-30 minutes of exercise is enough to report feeling more mentally resilient during bouts of stress, but for physical protection and long-term health, the NHS guidelines suggest 75 minutes of vigorous activity or 150 minutes of low-intensity activity a week.
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If you’re worried about fitting that in alongside an already stress-inducing job or personal life, try starting with walking meetings or a morning yoga session before the day gets started and slowly build up a routine that works for you. Not only will you protect your body in the long term, it might also help you feel well enough to enjoy your weekends.
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