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7 Places Your Body Holds Stress
Chronic stress can aggravate symptoms throughout the body. Here’s how to find relief
10-minute read
The neck and shoulders are only one area of the body that holds tension and stress. Chronic stress can manifest in surprising ways.
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Key takeaways
- Chronic stress can intensify symptoms in areas affected by a prior injury, chronic condition or heightened sensitivity.
- Stress-related symptoms may appear on the skin and in the shoulders, neck, eyelids, jaw, digestive system, bladder, knees and hips.
- Relaxation exercises, regular movement and targeted self-care may provide relief, but persistent or concerning symptoms warrant medical attention.
Many of us are all too familiar with the stress response — the way our bodies physiologically react to perceived threats. Your eyes widen as your heart rate increases, your breathing speeds up and your muscles tighten.
The brain pulls the alarm, which triggers the release of cortisol, a high-alert hormone that prepares the body to defend itself.
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A hardwired survival mechanism, the fight-or-flight response readies us for action. Over time, too many of us learn to shift into this emergency gear easily and often.
While most of us recognize that tight shoulders and headaches can be caused (or worsened) by stress, tension can manifest itself throughout the body, especially in areas involved in vital functions.
“Chronic stress can affect body systems that regulate automatic functions, including digestion, bladder activity, breathing and skin blood flow,” says Dr. Darshan H. Mehta, medical director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It can also increase muscle tension and heighten sensitivity to pain or other bodily sensations.”
Symptoms are often most noticeable in areas where someone has an underlying predisposition for injury or a prior one, chronic condition or heightened sensitivity, he says. Stress may not create a problem out of nowhere, Mehta adds, “but it can turn up the volume on symptoms in a system that is already more susceptible.”
In addition, there are indirect, bidirectional effects (where two factors influence or intensify each other). “When you’re under more stress, you don’t sleep as well, and when you don’t sleep as well, you tend to be under more stress,” he says.
Over time, chronic stress can lead to serious health conditions, but you aren’t defenseless against it. “We’re living in a stressful world, and it is important to learn to cope with it,” says Dr. Badr Ratnakaran, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Geriatric Psychiatry. If you have pain in your joints, jaw or belly, strong urges to urinate, itchy skin, a sense that your whole body feels tense or other symptoms complicated by stress, consider it a sign that you will benefit from stress management or relaxation exercises.
Here are seven parts of your body vulnerable to chronic stress and ways to reduce their ill effects.
1. Shoulders and neck
If you’ve ever felt your shoulders creeping up toward your ears during a stressful day, there’s a physiological reason for it. When the brain perceives a threat, whether it’s a looming deadline or a terrible traffic jam, it activates the body’s fight-or-flight response.
One result is increased tension in the trapezius muscles that run across the neck, shoulders and upper back. According to the American Psychological Association, muscle tension is a reflexive response to stress, designed to protect the body from injury and pain, but when stress becomes chronic, muscles can remain tight.
Chronic muscle tension in the shoulders is also associated with tension headaches. Research has found that psychological stress can increase activity in the trapezius muscle, helping explain why people often “carry” stress in their shoulders. That sustained muscle contraction can lead to stiffness, soreness and the feeling of having knots or tight bands in the upper back and shoulders.
What to do: Gentle stretches can provide temporary relief. Check out this video: 5 Stretches to Help Your Neck and Back (it’s below too). You can also try a heating pad, warm compress or warm shower to increase blood flow and help muscles relax, or roll a tennis ball against a wall with your back, aiming for trigger points on the upper back and shoulders.
And try not to sit at your desk for long stretches. Get up and move around every 30 minutes or so. Strengthening the muscles in your shoulders can also help. Here’s a video with shoulder workouts: Get Stronger Shoulders With Denise Austin.
VIDEO: 5 Stretches to Help Your Back and Neck
2. Dry, itchy, paper-thin skin
Signs of health disruption and stress show up on the skin, according to Dr. Saranya P. Wyles, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Aesthetic Medicine and Surgery in Rochester, Minnesota. “Skin is your ‘check engine’ light. If you see early signs of stress on your skin — dryness, cracking and irritation — it could mean that there are early signs of stress on your heart and early signs of stress on the brain,” she warns.
Protective hormones like estrogen and testosterone start to decline after 50, so once stress hormones kick in, you may see rapid acceleration of dryness, resulting in crepey or paper-thin skin that feels dehydrated and loose.
What to do: For stress mitigation, Wyles suggests moisturizing your body twice a day. She recommends using products containing colloidal oatmeal (finely ground Avena sativa), an ingredient that she says has great skin barrier benefits for older adults. “It is also highly effective at soothing irritated skin conditions like eczema, dermatitis and itching,” she notes.
If things calm down stresswise but your skin doesn’t, a dermatologist can help support skin barrier integrity and give you the right tools for more stressful times, she says. “When your skin barrier breaks, changes are more obvious and you become more susceptible to skin infections, including fungal infections,” she says, adding that you should get persistent rashes checked. “Think of stress reduction like healthy ways of eating and sleeping and moving, as something you could do for your skin,” she says. “Just try to do something 1 percent better than the day before.”
3. Twitching eyelids
While eyelid twitching can be caused by disease, it is usually triggered by stress. Too much caffeine, too little sleep or conditions such as dry eye may also contribute to the spasms. When the body’s stress response is triggered, the thin muscle around the eye becomes hypersensitive.
The twitch, known as myokymia, an involuntary movement of the upper or lower eyelid, is common and usually resolves on its own.
What to do: The National Eye Institute recommends going to your eye doctor if twitching lasts for more than a couple of weeks, if vision is affected or if your eyes close completely when they spasm.
4. Jaw pain
Pain in the jaw, face or muscles involved in chewing, restricted jaw movement, and clicking, popping or grinding sounds when opening or closing the mouth are symptoms that affect the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). Temporomandibular joint disorders (TMD) usually refer to problems around and related to the complicated joint and surrounding muscles and tissues, with the joint acting as a hinge connecting the lower jaw to the skull in front of each ear.
“The TMJ permits movement in three dimensions and combines rotational and translational motion. It is one of the most frequently used and biomechanically complex joints in the body and is challenging to study,” says Allen W. Cowley Jr., president of the TMJ Association and a research scientist and professor of physiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “The causes and biological mechanisms underlying many TMDs are poorly understood,” he says.
For many years, symptoms were often dismissed as psychological or related to stress or dental issues because the pain was not understood. In the past 20 years, however, scientific studies have suggested that TMDs may be complex pain disorders associated with localized orofacial pain, and sometimes regional or widespread pain, with multiple contributing factors, rather than simply symptoms of stress or misaligned teeth.
“Coexisting conditions suggest that TMD may be associated with dysfunction involving multiple systems of the body,” says Cowley. He says some conditions that occur more frequently among people with TMD include headaches, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, osteoarthritis, sleep disorders, tinnitus and low back pain.
Newer research suggests that stress may be one of many potential risk factors for TMDs.
What to do: According to the TMJ Association, the best approach to deal with TMD pain is to avoid hard and chewy foods, eat softer foods as needed and rest the jaw. Use heat packs or over-the-counter pain relievers to ease symptoms. If those self-care treatments don’t work, consult your primary care physician. Avoid “quick fix” interventions such as dental procedures or devices, which may worsen symptoms. Some studies suggest that certain jaw and neck or exercises may help ease symptoms, but much more research is needed.
5. Gastrointestinal problems
The gut-brain axis refers to the strong connection between the gastrointestinal (GI) system and the central nervous system. The gut talks to the brain, and vice versa.
Stress can affect both your brain and your gut because they use some of the same chemical messengers, such as serotonin. Chronic stress can throw these chemicals off balance, affecting your mood and causing digestive symptoms.
Stress hormones may slow down or speed up the process of breaking down foods and absorbing nutrients by altering gut motility, triggering diarrhea, cramping, constipation or pain. “When you’re stressed out, you’re very anxious and your muscles are tense, even the muscles in your gut that you cannot control,” says Ratnakaran.
“Many people with irritable bowel syndrome [IBS] have trouble with stress,” he notes, pointing out that normally, the muscles in the GI tract move food forward automatically. “Stress doesn’t cause IBS,” he says, “but it may exacerbate symptoms in people who have IBS.”
Indirectly, stress can cause nausea or abdominal discomfort and fuel the inflammation cycle, which is when stress-triggered symptoms lead to more anxiety, which triggers more symptoms, and so on.
What to do: Research suggests that regular meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy or exercise can help protect against digestive dysfunction, while bland foods such as toast may settle symptoms. You can also try hot chamomile or ginger tea. Relaxation exercises such as deep breathing may help you feel better in the moment.
6. Overactive bladder
Ever feel a sudden, hard-to-control urge to urinate? Or wake up frequently at night to urinate? The risk of overactive bladder (OAB) increases with age in men and women.
Stress can exacerbate OAB symptoms, says Dr. Marisa Clifton, associate professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and chief medical officer at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore.
While the exact link is not understood, one theory suggests that when hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are released, they cause the muscles in the pelvic floor to tighten. Since the pelvic floor supports the bladder, tense muscles may prevent the bladder from fully emptying, causing irritation and sensitivity that tells the brain that the bladder is full even when it is not. This triggers a strong urge to urinate.
Be aware that an overactive bladder can be due to causes other than stress, including urinary tract infections, medications, enlarged prostate, pelvic floor disorders, diabetes and other bladder conditions. So make sure to check in with your doctor about your symptoms. (Also see 5 Quick Ways to Build Pelvic Floor Muscles.)
What to do: In addition to following familiar advice such as reducing fluid intake and avoiding caffeine and alcohol, Clifton says that tibial nerve stimulation is a great acupuncture-like therapy for overactive bladder. She also encourages people to consider solutions for urinary problems, such as pelvic floor physical therapy, to strengthen the muscles that help stop leakage or support recovery from a prostatectomy. Find a therapist via aptapelvichealth.org/ptlocator. For more expert advice, read Gotta Go? 9 Strategies to Stop Peeing So Much.
7. Knee and hip pain
Stress causes the release of hormones and inflammatory markers, leading to increased inflammation in the joints, which can cause joint pain and swelling, says Dr. Mouhanad El Othmani, assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Brown University and an orthopedic surgeon at Brown University Health Orthopedics Institute in Rhode Island. “On the flip side, stress affects daily habits,” he says. “We’re not going to sleep as well, which means the body won’t recover and heal itself. We’re not going to exercise as well, and we’re gonna tend to move less. When we move less and exercise less, the joints are going to become more stiff.”
What to do: If you have underlying joint conditions or an injury, get a diagnosis from a specialist. Multiple problems, such as tendon or ligament injuries, for example, can present in the same way as pain in the same area, but the treatments are very different. It’s important to know what you are dealing with, he says. Exercise, whether guided by a physical therapist or part of a home exercise program, are important for both healing and for stress reduction.
If you have pain, rest, apply ice and take it easy, he says. “Try to elevate the joint or the limb,” he says. If these approaches do not work, consider anti-inflammatory medications such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) or ibuprofen (Advil).
As a surgeon, El Othmani sees people on the brink of knee surgery every day. He recommends they “intervene and try to do something before you get to that point,” he says. “Every decision in terms of diet and exercise can make a major difference in how you age.”
Relieving Your Body of Stress
If you are experiencing the symptoms described here, you might want to break out your yoga mat, download a guided meditation podcast or enroll in an evidence-based program such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction or the Stress Management and Resiliency Training Program (SMART). New neuronal connections are always forming, says Mehta, who is also the medical and education director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It’s never too late to start doing stress reduction work.” Check out 7 Simple Stress Busters to Try Today.
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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