El Estrés en Desafío del Sueño

Stress in Sleep Challenge

Stress it is a physical and emotional reaction to life's challenges. Feeling stressed from time to time is normal, and in the right amount, stress can help. For example, if you are in danger or need an extra boost of motivation, stress can activate the body and prepare it for action when it is most needed.

Stress Physical and emotional can be acute or chronic. Short-term stress, which everyone experiences from time to time, is described at an acute level. Acute stress can help you respond quickly to dangerous situations. Chronic stress lasts for a long time and becomes harmful when the body acts as if it is constantly in danger. Unless a person finds ways to manage chronic stress, it can contribute to a multitude of health problems.

Now, chronic stress can increase your risk of health problems, including digestive problems, headaches, stress-induced asthma attacks, and mood disorders like depression and anxiety. Stress can also make it difficult to sleep and increase the risk of sleep disorders.

How Stress Affects

The body's response to stress is an important survival mechanism. Faced with a dangerous or stressful situation, the brain initiates a series of processes that help respond to a threat. Although the stress response is helpful, when it continues for an extended period of time, stress can adversely affect the body. Here are some of the effects of stress on the body, and the ways chronic stress can lead to health problems:

At the Level of Hormonal Functioning

When faced with a threat, the body increases the production of stress hormones, such as adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol, which trigger other physical changes and put the body in a fight or flight state. In chronic stress, these hormones can be activated when they are not needed.

At the Muscular Level

In response to stress, muscles throughout the body reflexively tense. If stress is not reduced, chronic muscle tension can lead to painful conditions such as headaches and back pain.

At the Respiratory Level

Stress can make breathing shorter and faster. For people with pre-existing respiratory conditions, such as COPD and asthma, the body's stress response can trigger their symptoms.

Similarly, the impact on blood pressure is significant as hormones triggered by stress cause certain blood vessels to dilate and can also cause blood pressure to rise. Ongoing stress can lead to inflammation and increase your risk for heart attacks and strokes.

Traumatic stress is a type of chronic stress. It can occur when a person is exposed to a traumatic event. While most people will eventually recover from the effects of trauma, sometimes the body's response to stress lasts longer than normal and begins to interfere with other parts of a person's life. If left untreated, traumatic stress can turn into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Sleep and Stress

Stress and sleep have a two-way relationship. Stress can lead to loss of sleep, and conversely, loss of sleep can increase stress. While the links between stress and sleep are complex, research has shown several effects of stress on sleep.

Sleeping problems

Stress often increases the time it takes to fall asleep, people with higher stress levels and more chronic stress are more likely to experience insomnia, a common sleep disorder. Chronic insomnia can develop in response to prolonged stress.

Altered Dream Architecture

Sleep architecture describes the structure of sleep, although researchers are still learning about the effects of stress on sleep architecture, it appears that stress can reduce a type of sleep called slow wave sleep. Slow wave sleep is important for maintaining physical and mental health. Stress can also affect rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, although research has shown that REM sleep can increase or decrease during times of stress.

Nighttime Awakening and Dreams of Stress

Feeling stressed can make people wake up more often at night. Stressful events can affect dreams. Some research suggests that stress can increase the frequency and severity of nightmares.

Insomnia isn't the only stress-related sleep disorder. Sleep bruxism is a sleep disorder that involves clenching and grinding your teeth at night. Chronic stress and muscle tension can increase the risk of sleep bruxism. Fortunately, using healthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress can reduce teeth grinding at night.

Tips to Reduce Stress

It may seem like something unimportant, but with this particular situation that occurs with this pathology that affects sleep and rest, it is necessary to take into account and with great relevance, the timely and appropriate use of clothes to sleep and to reconcile rest. A set pajamas for men, it is an ideal garment to begin that path towards the development of an improvement therapy, derived from this situation of stress and sleep anxiety.

Having a plan for dealing with stress can help prevent stress from interfering with your sleep. Undoubtedly, the appropriate clothing to collaborate in the search for the solution is a key point in this therapy.

As an important and prominent recommendation, the disciplined use of a good Pijama, clearly defining the design and material of adequate constitution, according to the degree of magnitude of the pathology in question.

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Sleep

Serious sleep disorders, including insomnia, have long been recognized as a common symptom of anxiety disorders. People who are plagued with worries often reflect on their worries in bed, and this anxiety at night can prevent them from falling asleep.

In fact, a state of mental hyperactivity, often marked by worry, has been identified as a key factor behind insomnia. People with anxiety disorders tend to be more responsive to sleep, which means they are much more likely to have trouble sleeping when faced with stress.

Sleeping difficulties have been found in people with various types of anxiety, including generalized anxiety disorder. In several studies, more than 90% of people with PTSD associated with military combat have reported symptoms of insomnia. Anxiety about falling asleep can complicate things itself, creating sleep anxiety that reinforces a person's sense of fear and worry. These negative thoughts about going to bed, a type of anticipatory anxiety, can create challenges for healthy sleep schedules and routines.