How stress affects YOUR BODY

If you constantly feel you're racing against the clock, it may be time to regain control

- AMBER BRAMBLE

Have you ever felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day? Between family commitments, career, household tasks and everything in between, it can often feel like we're running on empty.

Around 38 per cent of Aussie women report that they feel chronically stressed, according to research by the University of Melbourne. While it would be easy to blame the effects of the pandemic, those rates have remained virtually unchanged since 2001.

WHY IT'S HAPPENING

"What's unfolded for a lot of women is a frantic double shift of work day and night, with very little, if any, rest," says biochemist and author of Rushing Woman's Syndrome, Dr Libby Weaver. "When women do paid work and household work and childcare, it's really the equivalent of three jobs."

In small doses, stress can be good for us. But when we become too stressed it can trigger a hormone cascade that affects our bodies in a number of ways. "Chronic overload due to the over-activation of the stress response can sometimes push us beyond our natural capacity to bounce back," Linda Manoukian, a clinical psychologist at Vityl Medical says. "Women also tend to experience more stress than men. In fact, not only do women experience their own stress, but they tend to internalise their partner's stress, too."

Symptoms of chronic stress can include everything from fatigue to sugar cravings to mood swings and difficulty focusing, to allergies and eczema, insomnia, low sex drive and weight gain.

THE SCIENCE OF STRESS HORMONES