Psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé indicates the physical symptom that shows that you suffer from stress: “People don’t fall for it”

With this definition on the table, we can conclude that stress can be normal in a person’s life but, as is usually the case, we must control in what context, quantity and intensity it occurs to identify when we need to treat it with professional help.

Although not all people respond the same to stress or find the same things or situations stressful, there are professional beliefs that reveal aspects of stresss that are met in most cases.

For example, the way in which it manifests itself, since some may believe that it is only noticeable in the person’s mind, but it also does so in their physical appearance and in their behaviors. A clear defender of the relationship between the health of the mind and the body is psychiatrist Marián Rojas Estapéa graduate in Medicine and specialized in Psychiatry who has collaborated with several NGOs and worked in different parts of the world, in addition to having written several books related to psychotherapy.

In one of his interventions in COPE’s ‘Weekend’ program, Estapé addressed the issue of the relationship between stress and the body and how it manifests itself in our physical health. «For years, medicine only looked for physical answers to pain. When there was no alternative, they talked about psychological causes. However, over time this has been left behind thanks to research. For example, a study from Harvard University indicates that 80% of medical consultations in Primary Care they are related to repressed emotions or stressful situations. Something that Estapé reaffirms by indicating that when we have stress for a long time we can notice its direct impact on physical health.

The importance of cortisol

As the psychiatrist has stated, one of the effects of stress on physical health has to do with cortisol, known as the stress hormonewhich remains at very high levels when we experience situations of prolonged tension, such as having a relationship problem, things going badly at work, or our economic situation is getting worse: “We become alert when our emotional survival, socially or economically is at risk,” says Rojas Estapé.

That our body responds with stress to a specific moment of tension is normal, the problem comes when this state lasts over time and lasts: “When I am constantly in a state of survival due to sustained stress… I I get cortisol poisoning, I get inflamed», he explains. Therefore, inflammation is one of the physical symptoms that show that someone is suffering from stress and their body is showing it.

This signal is joined by other body conditions such as headaches and joint pain, discomfort in the back or neck or digestive problems, which can occur both from stress and anxietyin addition to other reasons. Rojas Estapé even talks about how stress manifests itself physically in her case: “My gums become inflamed and bleed,” she says.

With these statements, the psychiatrist puts on the table the importance of not overlooking certain physical symptoms that we believe are normal: «Many times people don’t fall for it»points out Rojas, who insists that many times our body is trying to warn us that it is suffering from stress but we do not know how to recognize it, so we cannot find a way to solve it until it comes to light.