Doctor’s Insight: Listen to the physical warning signs before burnout takes hold.

 

Dear Andrea Csilla,

 

A client once said to me:

“I’m not burned out… I’m just tired. And forgetful. And I can’t sleep. But it’s fine — I’m just busy.”

But as a doctor, I know that burnout doesn’t start with exhaustion or frustration.
It starts with your body’s early warning system — and most people ignore the signals.

🧠 Burnout Isn’t Just Mental — It’s Biological

When your stress system stays activated for too long, it starts to dysregulate.
This leads to subtle but measurable physical changes, like:

  • Sleep disruption (especially early waking or shallow sleep)

  • GI symptoms (bloating, acid reflux, appetite loss or cravings)

  • Increased resting heart rate or palpitations

  • Muscle tension, headaches

  • Cognitive fog: word-finding difficulty, forgetfulness

  • Low-level inflammation (you feel “off” but can't name why)

Often these signs appear weeks or months before people report feeling “burned out.”

🧪 The Science

Burnout is associated with dysregulation of the HPA axis — the body’s stress-response system (Maslach et al., 2001). Chronic cortisol elevation can impact immune response, digestion, sleep architecture, and cognitive control (McEwen, 2006).

Your body tries to warn you — long before your motivation crashes.

💡 Doctor’s Tip: Track the Early Signs

This week, take inventory. Look at the past 10 days:

✅ Are you waking up feeling tired — even after 7+ hours of sleep?
✅ Are you craving sugar, caffeine, or emotional escape more often?
✅ Are you “on” all day — but struggling to remember what you achieved?

Don’t wait for a breakdown. Respond to the bio-feedback now.

Simple steps like restoring 90-minute focus cycles, adding walking breaks, or protecting your evening wind-down can shift your system out of chronic stress mode.

 

🎯 You Deserve to Perform — Without Burning Out

Burnout isn’t a failure of resilience.
It’s a failure of recovery.

Protect your focus. Protect your health.

👉 Book a 30-minute Team Productivity & Well-Being Strategy Session with me — and let’s design a week that fuels you, not depletes you.

📚 References

  • Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 397–422.

  • McEwen, B. S. (2006). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179.

     

    Have a productive day!

    Andrea

  

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Andrea Csilla Szabó
Stress-free Team