Fun With Stress 2.5
Muscles Under Stress: The Effects Of Chronic Stress On Skeletal Muscles
Reading time: 6 minutes
As soon as we start moving, our muscles are placed under stress. Yet moving our whole body in various ways is healthy and incredibly enjoyable. Image: djedj
The human and animal ability to move from one place to another is facilitated by that large organ called skeletal muscle. The development of the human body leads to a phenomenal range of movements we are capable of making. Just think of various ways of dancing, playing musical instruments, any kind of sports or arts, yoga, or taiji (tai chi) for example. This shows that a lot of pleasure can be experienced by sheer movement.
Moreover, it’s the skeletal muscles that provide us with the ability to either flee or fight our way out of a dangerous or potentially life threatening situation, as we have seen in the first chapter of part 2: the brain perceives a dangerous situation; that pushes our buttons and triggers our stress response; our muscles contract (tense up) and are able to deliver enough force to free ourselves from the car in the pileup and run towards safety. The actions of slamming the car door open and running towards safety, releases the built-up tension in the muscles and once safety is obtained, they can return back into the relaxation and recovery mode.
Skeletal muscles thus provide pleasure and safety, but they can become stiff and even painful when they come under chronic stress. Let’s discuss two situations where that can occur: in jobs that require excessive (chronic) repetitive movements and when someone is under chronic psychosocial stress.
Chronic repetitive and one-sided movement patterns during the workday can develop into repetitive strain injuries. Image: Pexels
Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) are one of the less pleasurable side-effects of civilisation, because it goes together with specialization of work. If dance or gymnastics showcase the incredibly versatile range of movements the human body is capable of making, then many of today’s work environments cannot feel anything less than a prison. That is because when it comes to physical movement, many of today’s jobs require only very restricted patterns of movements, which immediately shows that in the boss’s time we’re not allowed to make any other movements. The result is often stiffness and/or pain due to overuse in those body parts required to do the job, and weakness and/or pain due to underuse in those which are required to be mostly inactive during the workday. The imbalance this creates is clear.
Therefore, if you are in a work environment that requires a lot of repetitive physical movements, allow yourself multiple 10-minute breaks every workday to walk around, jump, dance, throw your arms in the air, do taiji or yoga, or sing; anything to activate your whole body and balance yourself. Because if you don’t, and you sustain an RSI, then all of a sudden your workplace can potentially become a stressor and push your buttons. The subsequent stress response will in that case be anything but conducive to your recovery, because it will tighten your already tightened muscles even more.
If your work requires chronic, repetitive, and one-sided movement patterns, or if you’re in a sitting-down job; give yourself plenty of breaks to move around and enjoy all the movements your body is capable of making. Image: JillWellington
Which brings us to the second situation where our skeletal muscles can turn against us: chronic psychosocial stress. When our buttons get pushed, our shoulders move up and forward, the face hardens, hands become fists. Our skeletal muscles contract because our brain perceives danger, hence we need muscular activity to either flee the scene, or fight, if fleeing proves impossible. So the muscles tense up to get ready to perform an action, in the same way as drawing back an arrow tenses up a bowstring to give the arrow the velocity it needs to hit its target. Muscles or bowstring, when they tense up, an action is needed to release the built up tension and return to their relaxation mode. In other words, built up tension needs a physical action to return back to balance.
Now imagine that you’re sitting all by yourself in the comfort of your own living room. Nothing and no one is threatening to hurt you or worse, but merely thinking about everything that can go wrong pushes your buttons relentlessly. Your muscles tense up all the time, but since there’s no physical stressor, there’s nothing to flee from or to fight. No physical action is necessary to provide for your safety, hence with every pushed button, you tense up more in more, thereby drifting farther and farther away from balance, instead of returning back to it.
We suffer most by the suffering we fear. Immage: Pixabay. Text: Erik Stout
How does that work on the physiological level? Skeletal muscles are made up of elongated muscle fibres. In-between muscle fibres run strings of nerves and blood vessels. Nerves give bundles of muscle fibres orders to activate, or contract. Blood vessels supply muscles with oxygen, nourishment, and fuel, and drain carbon dioxide and waste materials back to the lungs and intestines for disposal.
When muscles contract, the space between the muscle fibres reduces, causing oppression of the nerves and blood vessels running through. Naturally this shouldn’t cause problems since our bodies grow and develop to move. This works via the on-and-off principle: we turn ourselves on by tensing up for a particular action, say a sports event. Then the tension is released during the sports event by means of which we return back to balance into the off-mode, until we’re turned on again for a new event. In this way we follow the way of nature, where balance consists of a pendulum-like dance between on and off, day and night, summer and winter, wake and sleep, and full and new moon, for instance.
Let’s now return to the situation where our buttons are relentlessly and mainly pushed by psychosocial stressors. Every time our buttons are pushed, the stress response is triggered which turns us on by, among other effects, contracting (or tensing) our skeletal muscles. Yet since no action is needed to provide for our safety there’s a good chance our muscles remain tense, or at least they don’t completely relax back to the off-mode until the next button is pushed. We keep drawing back the bowstring without ever releasing the arrow, and an emerging disbalance becomes obvious.
If the arrow is relentlessly pulled back without ever releasing it, it’s quite evident what will happen with the bowstring. Illustration: Prettysleepy
When muscle fibres are in a contracted position for too long, in time they become stiff because they tend to develop into a permanent cramp. They then remain in a contracted, or tightened, position and won’t return back into their relaxed (or: off) mode anymore. Then, due to continuous oppression, nerve signals get a tougher time getting through to the muscle fibres, and the deteriorating blood supply can turn into local poisoning because waste materials are not properly drained anymore. This is when most people begin to experience muscle aches and pains, either when local bundles of muscle fibres become chronically cramped (called: triggerpoints) or sometimes even whole muscles.
We’ve already established that the physical aspect of repetitive strain injuries can be counterbalanced by full body movements at regular intervals during the workday. Extraordinary, however, is that if psychosocial stressors are the main cause of muscular stiffness or pains, due to relentless unnecessary firing of the stress response, also becoming physically active can actually work miracles, because then at least the undertaken physical action can utilize freed energy and release some of the built up muscular tension, and hence cause muscles to relax again. You then literally enable your whole organism to balance back towards a recovery mode.
It’s quite amazing how mere awareness of the immense variability of our movements can literally brighten our day. Illustration: RichardsDrawings
It goes without saying, however, that when our buttons are relentlessly pushed by our own thoughts, many more factors can inhibit the ability or will to get up and move around. Furthermore, it’s equally obvious that every individual who experiences chronic psychosocial stressors is a unique case, and therefore needs a tailor-made treatment. Yet if they can be made enthusiastic for any kind of physical activity, whether it is a walk in the park or dancing in their living room, especially when they become engaged with it, that can provide a wonderful turnaround in their process.
Finally, in order to begin to understand and appreciate how any kind of balance consists of moving back and forth between opposites, then you can read here how taiji can be a wonderful means to combine pleasure in movement, understanding of balance, and learning to move like nature.
In the next chapter we’re going to investigate how our immune system reacts when our organism comes under chronic stress. For now,
Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout
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