The Effects of Stress on Your Health

What Happens When the Body is Stressed?

Stress is a huge topic in health, but usually what we are told in regards to stress is a bit oversimplified: Reduce your stress; too much stress is bad for your health. This isn’t bad advice, but stress can be such a vague and overwhelming idea that it is hard to know where to start.

Understanding what actually happens when the body is stressed can help you to be more aware of what is going on during times of increased stress.

When your body is responding to a stressful situation – whether that is a stressful environment or thought or feeling – your body goes into “fight or flight” mode, meaning it prepares itself to handle the stress by either confronting it or avoiding it. There are a number of physiological changes that happen in the body during stress:

• Heart rate, breath rate, and blood pressure are increased.


• Smooth muscles in the body, such as in the digestive system, slow down. More energy is sent to the skeletal muscles used for movement.


• Glucose and fats are released into the blood stream for increased energy.


• Energy is diverted away from growth and sexual function.


• Memory and concentration is increased in the short term, but over time both are decreased.


• The immune system is weakened to save energy to deal with the stressful situation.


• Pain signals are decreased.


• The brain signals the body to release hormones to deal with stress, such as cortisol, adrenaline, and endorphins.

On a short term basis, these physical changes pose no real harm to the body, and in a real stressful situation can help you to effectively deal with it. But in the long term, constant stress in the body poses a number of health risks.

Physical Effects of Stress on the Body

The long term effects of stress on the body are far reaching and can have a negative effect on health in general. Because the chemicals released in the body during stress effect a number of systems in the body, many possible health issues can arise from prolonged stress:

• Fatigue: Stress demands the production of energy. Whether the stress is real or imagined, your body will try to produce energy to try and deal with stress. Long periods of stress deplete the body’s hormones used in energy production, leaving you feeling “burned out.”


• Weakened immune system: Because stress diverts energy away from your immune system, it can lead to more incidences of cold or flu, or increase the risk for autoimmune conditions such as allergies or rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, a weakened immune system is less able to fight off potentially cancerous cells, so stress can increase the risk for cancer.


• Cardiovascular disease: Stress causes the entire cardiovascular system to work harder, leading the blood vessels to wear out more quickly. More fat enters into the blood stream for energy, and this can accumulate in the blood vessels leading to an increased risk for atherosclerosis and heart disease.


• Digestion: The smooth muscles in the digestive system are deactivated during stress, making digestion much slower. This can lead over time to symptoms like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcers, and constipation. The digestive system is full of nerve endings and closely connected to other systems of the body, so the negative effects of stress on digestion can be hard on your overall health and vitality.


• Diabetes risk: When stress occurs, it activates the pancreas to release glucagon, which increases blood sugar levels for energy. It also reduces the production of insulin – a hormone in charge of storing sugar in the body – and promotes insulin resistance. Over time this can lead to an increased risk for developing insulin-resistant (Type II) diabetes.


• Reduced memory and concentration: For a short period, stress improves memory and concentration. But in the long term, the area of the brain in charge of memory and concentration loses its ability to respond to the hormones released by stress, and memory and concentration decrease.


• Aging: The life span of the cells in your body decreases in response to long-term stress. This speeds up the aging process.


• Muscular tension: If the body is undergoing constant stress, it is sending energy to the muscles in your body. But since the body isn’t using those muscles, the energy stagnates and leads to chronic muscle tension, and symptoms such as persistent back or neck pain can develop.

Because of the damaging effects of long term stress, it is important to recognize that stress is much more than just a mental or emotional feeling, but a very real physical response in the body. This can help you in dealing with stress as a way to take better care of your health.

Recognizing and Dealing With Your Stress

The first step in dealing with stress is being able to recognize when it is happening, and what it is you are stressing about. This is often the most difficult part, as stress can become such a regular part of life that it becomes a challenge to even recognize it is there.

Your body can’t tell the difference between a real stressful situation in the environment, or a perceived situation of stress. This means that whether you are thinking of or imagining a stressful situation, or are actually going through one – the body responds the same way. Most often, people who suffer from long-term excessive stress have a hard time differentiating between real stress and perceived stress. They are unable to let go of stress when it doesn’t serve them.

Tips for recognizing and understanding your stress:

• Recognize when you are stressed. Note physical symptoms that can be related to your stress – for example, increased heart rate, irritability, fatigue, anxiety, or depression. People respond differently, so get to know your own unique response.


• What kind of stress do you have? There are different kinds of stress out there. Hyperactive, type-A, anxious stress? Depressive, “giving-up” type of stress? Getting to know how your unique personality manifests stress is helpful in dealing with it. For example someone who is stressed from too much activity would could slow down some and find time to relax. Someone who is stressed from high expectations and a desire to give up may benefit from taking a more realistic and easygoing approach to their life.


• Get off the train. The mind has a tendency to run like a freight train, oblivious to how much energy it is burning or what it is running over in its path. Recognizing when this is happening and taking some time out for a pit stop can help give you some perspective on the stress you are feeling as well as give your body a break.

In addition, there are some basic things you can do to reduce stress in your daily life:

• Exercise: Light exercise is a great way to get out of your head and enjoy your body. Doing something you enjoy such as going for a walk or playing a sport you like can be a great way to get out of a stressful mindset as well as help the body release some pent up stress and energy.


• Natural medicines: Adaptogens are natural medicines that help you to “adapt” to stress by balancing the levels of stress hormones in the body. Examples are ginseng, ashwaghanda, and rhodiola.


• Avoid stimulants: Stimulating substances like caffeine, or activities like too much television or computer usage can increase the activity of the body’s nervous system, making it harder to come down and relax.


• Talk about it: It is easy to get wrapped up in our own little worlds, so talking to someone you trust about the stressors in your life can help you to see more clearly what particular ways of thinking are increasing your stress.


• Do what you enjoy: In addition to taking care of life’s responsibilities, it is helpful to remember to use your energy doing things that are relaxing and enjoyable. Reducing stress doesn’t just involve reducing stressful activities, it is also about doing other more fun things instead.

As scientific understanding of stress grows and we begin to understand more about the adverse effects of long-term stress on the body, it is becoming more apparent how important it is to reduce the amount of chronic stress we have in our lives in order to improve our health. This is a challenging thing to deal with, but understanding the nature of stress, recognizing when it is happening, and doing some simple things to reduce it will be of great benefit to your health in the long run.

Source by Jason Petersen ND

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