Chronic stress puts your mouth and overall health at risk. Saratoga Springs’s dentist, Dr. Moreau can offer you comprehensive stress management suggestion for a healthier mouth and improve the quality of your life.

Chronic stress reduces the body’s nutrients, destabilizes the brain and endocrine chemistry. It can cause anxiety, addictions, sleep deprivation, Irritable bowel syndrome, compulsive disorders, ulcers, low energy, constant fatigue, irregular menstrual cycle in women, decreased testosterone in men, depression, headaches, muscle tension and pain, insomnia, heart disease, occlusal disease, weight gain, decreased sex drive, osteoporosis, increased risk for infections and skin conditions, just to name a few!

What happens during stress?

In times of stress, our sympathetic nervous system is stimulated. It controls your fight, flight or freeze response and causes elevated levels of hormones such as cortisol, norepinephrine and adrenaline, which have a damaging effect on the body when they persist too long. During times of stress, people tend to hold their breath or breathe from their chest; tighten their muscles and experience an increase in heart rate. If there is a pause in the periods of stress, people are able to take a deep breath and if deep breathing continues the heart rate decreases, muscles relax, lungs expand, and a sense of relief is felt. At this point the parasympathetic system has been triggered and provides a state of equilibrium restoring calm to the body as well as the mind.

Comprehensive Stress Management Program

A comprehensive stress management program would begin with identifying the stressors, the things that can trigger the stress response of your body, and adopting a non-catastrophic perspective to those stressors. A stress management program may include: examination of your bite relationship (occlusion); a dietary review; sleep review, exercise component, and relaxation practices.