7 Ways Seniors Can Manage Chronic Stress and Cortisol
Written by TYE Medical on Apr 25th 2024
More than any other age group, seniors gain the most benefit from stress management. Stress is an everyday part of life that is unavoidable, but not all stress is created equal. Something is bound to trigger a stress response, whether it’s heavy traffic, lost keys, or a disagreement with your spouse. And sometimes it’s more serious like health issues, looming retirement, or the struggle to live on a fixed income. We all have to learn to manage this kind of stress in a healthy way.
But too much stress for long periods, known as chronic stress, is what causes emotional, mental, and physical problems. How long you’re under stress and how much you’re able to control it plays a huge role in your overall health. Even though chronic stress isn’t good for anyone, it’s especially problematic for seniors, as it dramatically increases cortisol levels and triggers serious health conditions. Here are 7 ways seniors can manage chronic stress and cortisol.
What Is Cortisol?
Cortisol is an important natural chemical your body produces in response to stress. It plays a crucial role in many bodily functions but gets a bad wrap because of its stress connection. If you’re healthy, cortisol helps regulate inflammation and provides immune system support. It also ensures you’re prepared to react more efficiently to high-stress situations or potential dangers.
If you’re faced with a bear in the woods, you want the hormone cortisol to give you the physical energy and mental acuity to react. It’s what allows you to act quickly and get away. Cortisol gives you the energy to fight or flee from threats or push through stressful situations.
Cortisol is about balance. Appropriate doses of cortisol keep you healthy and safe. But when it’s chronically elevated, the benefits reverse. This is when your immune system becomes less sensitive, and therefore less reactive, to viruses, bacteria, and other attackers. As your immune system slows its response, inflammation increases. In other words, chronic stress leads to a sluggish immune system and chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation is a big deal. It’s been linked to many chronic health conditions like cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, depression, and anxiety.
How to Tell if You’re Experiencing Chronic Stress
It’s not always easy to notice chronic stress, because it’s something you’ve been living with for a while. Chronic, high levels of stress can begin to feel normal. You just get used to it. But physical and emotional symptoms usually appear at some point. Here are some chronic-stress warning signs to look for:
- Appetite changes (eating more or less)
- Frequent headaches
- Upset stomach
- Heart palpitations
- Depression
- Low energy
- Feeling overwhelmed or agitated
- Difficulty concentrating
If you have been experiencing several of these for a while, it’s possible you’re living with chronic stress and high cortisol levels.
How Chronic Stress Affects Seniors
Older adults are more sensitive to the cortisol’s effects. Chronically high levels of cortisol more negatively impacts cognitive performance and the memory areas of your brain. This could be because it takes older adults longer to recover from surging cortisol. The hormone doesn’t come back down to normal levels as quickly as it does in younger people.
In general, cortisol’s effects are exaggerated in seniors, causing a greater increase in inflammation, cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and blood sugar. All of these are risk factors for heart disease.
Some studies suggest that chronically high cortisol levels could be linked to the progression of dementia.
What Causes Chronic Stress in Seniors?
Different seasons of life come with different stressors and stress triggers and the “golden years” are no exception. Here are some common reasons older adults experience chronic stress:
- Chronic health conditions
- Caregiving
- Financial insecurity
- Loneliness
- Retirement or other major life change
- Loss of a spouse or loved one
- Moving
- Cognitive decline (thinking or memory changes)
If you’re experiencing any of these circumstances, consider what stress symptoms you’ve been experiencing and for how long. Also remember that people handle stress and different levels of stress in different ways. Just because your neighbor never stressed over impending retirement doesn’t mean that it won’t affect you.
Moving or caregiving doesn’t stress everyone, but if it’s affecting you, it’s best for your health and well-being to address it.
7 Ways to Lower Cortisol Levels
You don’t have to live with chronically high cortisol and chronic stress. You can improve your health by taking these steps to achieve a healthier lifestyle and help you improve stress management.
1. Eat Healthier to Lower Cortisol Levels
There are all kinds of reasons for adopting a healthy eating plan, and managing cortisol levels is another one.
What you eat affects your cortisol levels. Processed foods and foods with a high glycemic index (GI) have been found to elevate cortisol. This means you’ll want to avoid sugary drinks, fast food, refined carbs, and other highly processed foods.
Your calorie intake also affects cortisol. High-calorie foods immediately increase cortisol, and not eating enough calories disrupts cortisol levels and can even cause an increase.
It’s as if unhealthy eating affects your digestive system, stresses your body, and triggers cortisol.
2. Be Physically Active to Manage Chronic Stress
Regular, intentional exercise is best, but if that is too much of a stretch for you, any physical activity will help. This means that anything that gets you up and moving is more helpful than remaining sedentary. You might not think of walking, gardening, or yoga as exercise, but these count as physical activity. Experiment with what works best for you.
Exercise is known to relieve stress, making it very helpful for managing cortisol levels.
3. Dealing with the Past Drops Cortisol
When it comes to past failures, your first reaction is probably avoidance. Who wants to dwell on it? But there is another option–dealing with it! If you’re carrying a previous failure or stressful experience, believing that it’s not affecting your present—think again.
Evidence suggests that if you write about that past event, processing it in a healthy way, it will reduce your cortisol levels even as you deal with your current stressor.
4. Meditation or Prayer Helps Manage Stress
Meditation and prayer have proven effective stress management tools. If you remain consistent in practice you are better able to manage anxiety and uncertainty. Managing stress this way brings down your cortisol levels and has a notable long-term impact as this habit becomes part of your daily life.
Even highly stressed people see an exceptional difference in their stress levels after successfully practicing prayer or meditation for a period. It’s a practical stress management tool for seniors who might have physical limitations that make exercise difficult. Anyone can meditate or pray, and it can be done anywhere.
5. Stay Socially Connected to Manage Cortisol
It’s important for seniors not to lose their social connections. Not only does social engagement help keep cortisol levels down, it also helps keep your mind sharp and can ward off dementia. Much research suggests staying connected to people you love can improve your well-being and overall health.
When you know a loved one is nearby, it puts you more at ease, especially if you’re going through a stressful time.
6. Good Sleep Keep Cortisol Levels Down
Getting adequate, quality sleep cortisol lower, especially when faced with a stress-triggering task. One study assigned a group of participants to a normal night’s rest and the other group to a night of sleep deprivation. The next day, everyone had to perform stressful tasks like giving a speech and solving a math problem in front of an unfriendly audience. The sleep-deprived group showed higher cortisol levels than the rested group.
And it’s not just the next day that you can feel the effects. Other findings indicate that elevated cortisol levels can continue into the second day after getting poor sleep.
This can be a challenge for seniors, especially if you struggle with physical or health problems that make sleep uncomfortable. Discuss sleep aid options with your doctor to give yourself the best opportunity for a good night’s rest.
7. Music and Art Help Manage Stress
If you haven’t had much exposure to art or classical music, it might benefit your health to experiment and discover what you enjoy. When you enjoy art or music, stress and cortisol ebb away.
One study indicates that cortisol levels drop faster after you experience enjoyable art. Specifically, the study directed a group of participants to listen to relaxing, classical music, while another group listened to rippling water. The third group listened to nothing at all. Afterwards they were asked to perform a stressful task. The group who had listened to the classical music had faster dropping cortisol levels than the other two groups.
Seniors Who Manage Chronic Stress
Maintain Better Health
While good stress management is important at any age, it’s especially important for seniors. When you understand that stress is directly linked to physical reactions involving cortisol, it can remind you that stress has very real physical effects. These effects are so “real” that they can cause serious health conditions and promote chronic disease.
Managing stress is managing health. And implementing some or all of these stress-reduction tips can help you manage the stressors that you cannot change.
