Transcription:
Stress and Women’s Health

Caitlin Whyte (Host): Especially right now during these pandemic times. And for women, it can be even more difficult to manage. So, to give us some tips and tricks to make life a bit easier for us is Danielle Sawrey-Kubicek, a Primary Care Physician Assistant at WakeMed. This is WakeMed Voices, a podcast brought to you by WakeMed Health and Hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm your host, Caitlin Whyte. So, Danielle, we'll start here with a pretty broad question. Just what is stress?

Danielle Sawrey-Kubicek, PA (Guest): So, stress is really the way how your body reacts to certain situations like sudden danger or a long lasting challenge that's bothering you. During these kind of stressful events, your body often releases chemicals, which some people may know as adrenaline or cortisol. Adrenaline is that thing that gives you a burst of energy in response to stress, the kind of thing where say a car pulls out in front of you, and then you have to slam on the brakes. You get that storm of adrenaline that helps you do that. And so stress really comes from those chemicals.

Host: So, you kind of just touched on it with that car example, but what causes stress?

Danielle: There are a lot of different kinds of stress. There's things of short-term stress like the car pulling out in front of you or being stuck in traffic, that feeling of being frustrated, it may be an argument with your spouse or a dispute at work. It could be your upset child crying and demanding a lot of things at once. And then things like that, that are short-term can then compound to long-term stress. So, say like financial worries that you are, you're not making enough money to make ends meet, or you have a traumatic event in your life and that leaves you with some lasting trauma. Or even something as like a discrimination that you can experience at work, which tends to happen to a lot of women that then that, that lasts with you and can lead to a long-term source of stress.

Host: Now, what are some symptoms of stress in women, specifically?

Danielle: Yeah. So, women tend to have more physical symptoms than men do, which is why this is so important to talk about. Women tend to have physical symptoms like back pain or stomach pain. They can have more kind of chronic headaches, daily tension headache, or migraines. And some women even end up with skin conditions like acne or stress hives. And then there's also those mental symptoms you feel, that either forgetfulness, the feeling distracted, lack of energy, changes in your appetite, and then all those things can lead to trouble sleeping cause you're worried about your day. And unfortunately, sometimes people do cope with turning to alcohol to turn their brain off. So, it can lead to substance misuse.

Host: Now it's no surprise that stress does affect our health and you just listed off some other issues, but are there any more like chronic ways that stress affects us?

Danielle: Yeah. So, women tend to end up with this longterm stress, which unfortunately can lead to depression and anxiety. These mood disorders are more common, unfortunately, in women than men. And these kind of stress in women tends to be like I mentioned earlier, these long-term kind of headaches and migraines, like chronic health problems that women then have to deal with.

Tension headaches are really common in women. And then as I said, depression and anxiety. Women have increased risk of depression and anxiety so much so that even in this past year of pandemic, when people are isolated and so stressed as a whole, women are still twice as likely than men to have symptoms of depression or just kind of depressed mood. Women are also more likely to have IBS. And so that's a condition called irritable bowel syndrome, which is due to stress, unfortunately, that people get so worried that their stomach ends up kind of feeling so nauseous or you have diarrhea and women get that so much more than men, unfortunately. And then lastly, that stress of being kind of your way of coping can sometimes be overeating.

And so women can end up with more obesity due to stress than men because that cortisol, that hormone of long-term stress stays in your body and can unfortunately lead to people overeating and then storing more fat on them. And as we all know, obesity in and of itself has so many health conditions. And so women are more predisposed to these sorts of chronic health conditions when they deal with stress on a daily basis.

Host: And what can someone do to manage their stress and try and keep it under control?

Danielle: There are certainly short-term things. So, say you're dealing with the acute anxiety of a car pulling out in front of you or an argument. You can take some deep breaths, trying to focus on your breathing can slow it down, relax your body, calm your mind. That can be as simple as just kind of taking a few long, deep breaths, or it can be something more focused, something called square breathing, where you inhale for four seconds. Hold for four seconds. Blow out for four seconds and hold for four seconds, that can calm you down because you're focusing on something other than the stressor in your life, and also kind of focuses your mind, calms your body.

You can stretch. So, just relaxing your muscles, stretching can make you feel less tense. And lastly, you can try and keep a journal to kind of write down your thoughts, things that are triggering you. A great tool for that is a gratitude journal. Where you can write down three things you're grateful for that day, and it can help you handle the acute stressors better. Other things kind of in terms of stress management as a whole, so, these long-term stressors that we all have in our lives.

Things to kind of reduce your stress level in general, are things like daily exercise, trying to do that physical activity to relax your muscles and boost your mood. Exercising releases endorphins. And that helps you keep kinda those happy chemicals that you want to feel better. Exercise can also increase self-esteem. So, it's always, it's a good all around, takes care of your mind and your body. It's important to find time for yourself throughout the day. So, that can be exercise, that could be talking to a friend, reading a book, listening to music. Something that you enjoy on a daily basis to take your mind off everything else in your life.

It's important also to get enough sleep. A lot of adults are really sleep deprived. We need around seven to nine hours of sleep at night to feel rested. Women tend to not get that. Lot of women have children. You're up in the night with kids. It's important to really try and aim for those seven to nine hours a night. Something important for everyone, is eating a healthy well balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables, really trying to avoid processed foods. It's important to talk about things. So, whether that's with a family member or a therapist or just kind of writing down your thoughts, getting your feelings out.

So, when you are stressed about something, trying to tackle that in some way. Also just regular things of being organized. So, having things cluttered, having kind of your mind spread too thin on many things, is a source of stress for a lot of people. So, being more organized, making to do lists, figuring out what you need to tackle first in the day can help kind of shift your energy. And then same as that, is asking for help. Women carry so much of the invisible mental load, making appointments, children's schedules, meal planning, grocery, laundry, things generally still aren't equal as they should be. And so women are dealing with that. It's important to ask for help, ask a partner, ask a friend to help out when you can just to help divide up some of the tasks during the day and week so that you're not doing it all alone.

Other things is if this still isn't helping, certainly important to talk to a professional, talking to your PA, your physician, or a therapist to help really figure out if you need something more in your life to deal with stress if it's becoming a true chronic problem for you.

Host: Absolutely. Well, some great tips here, Danielle, is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up?

Danielle: I would say it's really important to carve out some time for yourself each day. If there's one thing you can do, it can be as little as 15 minutes, but find time for yourself, making sure that you can have a bit of decompression time, boost your mood, just to allow you to give things back to every one else around you. Because so many women really do take care of others before themselves, and it is important to find some time for yourself and take care of yourself every day.

Host: Absolutely. I feel like we don't. We definitely don't turn inwards as women enough.

Danielle: We really don't and I'm guilty of it too. It's really hard, but it's so important.

Host: Thank you for these tips today, Danielle. So important these days to keep our stress under control. To learn more about WakeMed Primary Care, please visit wakemed.org. And thank you for listening. I'm Caitlin Whyte with WakeMed Voices brought to you by WakeMed Health and Hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina.