The Stress Effects on Your Health
Chronic stress can affect badly on both your body and mind. So take steps to control your stress immediately.
Your body is hard-wired to react to stress in ways that are meant to protect you from threats from predators and other aggressors. Threats like that are rare these days, but that doesn't mean that your life is stress-free.
On the other hand, you may face many demands on a daily basis, such as carrying a large workload, paying bills, and taking care of the family. Your body treats these so-called minor annoyances as some kind of threat. As a result, you may feel as though you are constantly being attacked. But you can always resist. You shouldn't let stress control your life.
Stress is a natural, physical and mental reaction to life's experiences. A lot of people express stress from time to time. Anything from day-to-day responsibilities like work and family to serious life activities like a diagnosis of illness, war, or the death of a loved one can trigger stress. For immediate, short-term situations, stress can be very beneficial for your health. This can help you cope with potentially serious situations.
Your body responds to stress by releasing hormones that increase your heart rate and breathing and prepare your muscles to respond.
But if your stress response doesn't stop firing, and this stress level stays elevated for much longer than it takes to survive, it could have a bad impact on your health. Chronic stress can cause a wide range of signs and symptoms and affect your normal well-being. Chronic stress symptoms include:
anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression, headache.
Stress Affect Your Body
The immune system is an intricate group of cells and organs that protect the human body from disease and infection. The healthy immune system remains in homeostasis (balance), much like the accelerated and slowed relationship between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems that was described earlier in the section of this document related to the fight-or-flight response. Because of this similarity, the immune system is sometimes known as our "fluid nervous system."
Stress can trigger some of the cells and organs that make up the nervous system to release hormones that stimulate the production of white blood cells (which fight infection) and other disease-fighting elements. The release of this stress-triggered hormone is essential for strengthening your immune system to respond quickly to acute (short-term) injury and illness.
However, these activities are of no benefit to your health if they continue for more than a few moments. Chronic stimulation of the immune system causes the system to become depressed overall, and as a result it becomes less effective at warding off disease and infection.
Chronic stress, or constant stress over a long period of time, can contribute to long-term problems for your heart and blood vessels. A consistent and persistent increase in heart rate, as well as elevated levels of stress hormones and blood pressure, can have a negative effect on your body.
Researchers have studied that cells in the immune system release chemicals known as cytokines which act as messengers. These messengers allow cells to "talk" to one another and instruct one another to raise additional cells to fight infection. Hormone release during chronic stress can also inhibit cytokine production, thereby thwarting the body's ability to effectively coordinate the fight against infection.
Due to the decrease in these cytokines, the proliferative response of the immune system (its potential to successfully combat disease) is reduced by 15% or more during chronic stress situations. It's no surprise, then, that people who are highly stressed are more likely to succumb to colds, infections, and herpes pimples (a viral infection that causes infected people to increase sores on their mouths or genitals).
The disconnect between various immune system factors that occurs during times of chronic stress may also be responsible for triggering attacks (or new cases) of various autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's disease, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, partner sclerosis (MS) and other similar conditions. An autoimmune disease is a disease in which the immune system gets confused, and starts attacking the body's own healthy cells instead of what it should be doing, which is attacking the body that causes foreign diseases.
Once a stressor (such as an injury or illness) has been dealt with, the immune system normally secretes extra hormones that trigger decreased white blood cell production, allowing the system to relax and rejuvenate itself. This usual rejuvenating and decreasing response is delayed during times of chronic stress.
Stress Management
The good news: much of the stress you face in your day-to-day life can be managed through a variety of techniques. Some of them are quick fixes and others require a firm commitment to stress management.
When To See a Doctor
If you're not sure if stress is the cause or if you've taken steps to control stress but symptoms persist, see your doctor. Your specialist may wish to examine other potential causes. Or consider seeing a professional counselor or therapist, who will help you identify the causes of stress and work on them. (mayo clinic) Also, get emergency help right away if you have chest pain, especially if you are also experiencing shortness of breath, jaw or back pain, pain radiating to your shoulders and arms, sweating, dizziness, or nausea. These may be warning signs of a heart attack and not just a sign of stress.
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