Body Aches and Pains Anxiety Symptoms

Why Does Anxiety Cause Body Pain And Aches?

Chronic stress, such as that caused by overly apprehensive behavior, takes a toll on the body. As a result, body-wide aches, pains, tenderness, and soreness can occur.

Some of the most common ways stress causes body pain include:

1. The stress response

Stress, including anxiety-caused stress, causes the body to secrete stress hormones into the bloodstream where they travel to targeted spots to bring about specific physiological, psychological, and emotional changes that enhance the body’s ability to deal with a threat—to either fight with or flee from it.

This is the reason the stress response is often referred to as the fight or flight response, the emergency response, the fight, flight, or freeze response (some people freeze when they are afraid like a “deer caught in headlights”), or the fight, flight, freeze, or faint response (since some people faint when they are afraid).[1][2]

Visit our “Stress Response” article for more information the many changes it causes.

One of the tasks stress hormones perform is cause muscles to contract (tighten).[1] Tight muscles make the body more resilient to attack when in dangerous situations.

When stress is caused by anxiety (worry, fretting, anticipating the worst) and not by a real physical threat where tight muscles could be beneficial for survival, the body still prepares against danger the same way…by causing muscles to tense and tighten.

Tight muscles can be painful.

Body pain due to an active stress response is a common cause of the anxiety symptom body pain.

2. Hyperstimulation (chronic stress)

When stress responses occur infrequently, the body can recover relatively quickly from the many stress response changes.

However, when stress responses occur too frequently, such as from overly apprehensive behavior, the body can’t recover.

Incomplete recovery can leave the body in a state of semi-stress response readiness, which we call “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are stimulants.

Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “hyperarousal,” “HPA axis dysfunction,” or “nervous system dysregulation.”[3][4]

Visit the “Hyperstimulation” article for more information about the many ways it can affect the body and how we feel.

Hyperstimulation can cause the changes of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated.

As such, hyperstimulation can cause persistent muscle tension that presents as muscle aches, pains, tenderness, and soreness. As chronic stress increases and persists, so can muscle-related problems increase and persist.

Muscle tension problems can also affect the body’s joints, which can cause joint problems and pain, tenderness, soreness, and achiness.

Hyperstimulation is a common cause of chronic body pain and aches.

3. Nervous System Excitation and Dysregulation

Hyperstimulation (chronic stress) adversely affects the body’s nervous system, including its nerves and how they function.

The nervous system is responsible for receiving and sending sensory information to the brain. Neurons (nerve cells) are the main component of the nervous system.

These specialized cells communicate with each other using an electrochemical process (the combination of electricity and chemistry).

For example, when a nerve impulse is received from one of our senses, such as from the nerve endings in the dermis layer of the skin, neurons relay this nerve impulse information through the nervous system network to the brain for interpretation.

This system of communication works efficiently when the body and nervous system are healthy. However, hyperstimulation can disrupt the normal functioning of the nervous system, causing problems.

For example, because of their electrochemical properties, neurons are particularly sensitive to stress hormone stimulation. When they become overly stimulated, they can act erratically, causing them to “misreport,” “over-report,” and send “errant” nerve impulse information to the brain.[4][5]

These anomalies can cause many unusual sensory-based sensations and symptoms, including those associated with pain.

“Overactive nerves” is another term used to describe the cause of this symptom.

Hyperstimulation can negatively affect any part of the body, including the skin, muscles, nerves and nerve endings, joints, and bones. As such, body pains can occur anywhere on the body, including externally and internally.

For some people, the pain and tenderness are also accompanied by general fatigue and muscle weakness.

Since each body reacts uniquely to stress, each experience may be somewhat different. And because many anxiety symptoms are “sensory-based” — having to do with sensations and feelings — there can be many ways this symptom can be experienced and described.

Sometimes, these symptoms are caused by physical problems, such as infections, muscle tension or strain, sensitive nerves, or inflammation. Other times there is no physical cause.

Since the nervous system is responsible for how we receive and interpret sensory information, a stressed nervous system can cause odd and abnormal sensations and feelings even though there is no physical cause.

This is one of the reasons why medical tests can come back normal, yet anxiety symptoms can persist. We FEEL symptomatic even though there isn’t anything medically wrong.

4. Psychological stress can negatively affect pain modulation (the body’s ability to regulate pain).

The inability to regulate pain normally can cause issues with body pain.[6][7] You can read more about this here.

5. Inflammation

Hyperstimulation (chronic stress) can cause chronic inflammation problems.[8][9]

Inflammation can occur anywhere on or in the body, including joints, muscles, and organs. While inflammation doesn’t necessarily have to produce pain as a symptom, it often does.

Moreover, anxious and chronically stressed people often consume an unhealthy diet comprised of high sugar, high fat, and high-calorie foods, which fuel inflammation problems.

It’s the combination of elevated stress and an unhealthy diet that can create chronic inflammation and pain issues.

6. Pain

Chronic pain is often circular, meaning stress causes issues with pain, pain stresses the body, that stress fuels issues with pain, and so on.

7. Other Factors

Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:

• Medication
• Recreational drugs
• Stimulants
• Sleep deprivation
• Fatigue
• Hyper and hypoventilation
• Low blood sugar
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Dehydration
• Hormone changes

Select the relevant link for more information.