Stress

Many people suffer from stress and are unaware of the impact it has on their health in the short and long-term. A source of high stress can depend on the individual and may vary from loneliness, grief, work, home life, organising a party or completing a multi-million pound merger.

Your body reacts to stress by adjusting hormone levels giving you the ability to cope under the circumstances. Side effects from this can vary from headaches, fatigue, gastro-intestinal disorders, insomnia and a reduced sex drive. In the long-term these hormonal changes can have lasting damage to your body. With chronically elevated levels of hormones, your body's coping mechanism has an impact on your nervous system, your heart and blood vessels, your kidneys, respiratory system, liver, gastrointestinal system and reproductive system.

Whilst there are many small changes we can make to our lifestyle to reduce our stress levels, many people believe that they are 'just too busy'. The modern world is indeed busy and highly stressful, however the hormones secreted by your body at times of great or chronic stress maintain this level of anxiety. It takes a concerted effort to provoke a change.

Simple things that we can do to help ourselves include switching our phones and devices off for a while, taking a gentle short walk, drinking more water and learning how to relax.

Osteopaths are used to treating the symptoms of stress, although there are many things we can do to help to prevent the symptoms manifesting. Even if you have no specific musculoskeletal problems, we can help by addressing your posture and various systems to help calm your body and prevent injury.

We will also be able to help advise you about changes you can make to your life to lower your stress levels, although ultimately, these changes will need to be implemented by yourself.

If you notice any slurred speech, facial distortion, sudden loss of control of your arm movements or sudden sharp pains in either your head, neck, arms or chest, it is important that you call 999 or 111 straight away.