How Stress Affects Your Mental Health – Let’s be honest. Not all stress is bad. Stress can be an exhilarating motivator, and a hard-hitting coach pushes you to push and challenge yourself. Stress can help you perform at your best and spring into action when a fight-or-flight situation arises. But when stress becomes severe or chronic and leaves you feeling tired, fatigued, and just plain sick, it can become a real problem for your physical and emotional well-being. With that in mind, let’s take a deeper look at how stress can harm your health.
Stress refers to the stress caused by the demands placed on us in our daily lives. Stressful events can pop up when you’re running errands at home or at work, or stuck in traffic during your commute.
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It is not possible to avoid stress all the time, even in small amounts, it is not bad. That might be a good thing. But when it becomes a chronic presence in our lives, stress begins to wreak havoc on our physical and mental health.
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Beyond stress as a broad concept, there are many subtypes that we may experience, each of which is helpful to familiarize ourselves with.
This type of stress is short-lived and can be motivating or irritating. You may experience extreme stress on a daily basis due to unfortunate situations like getting stuck in traffic, being late for a meeting or reaching home after curfew. Acute stress usually does not cause long-term negative effects.
When acute stress is more frequent — affecting more days of your week, for example — it’s known as episodic acute stress. If you’re constantly running late or saying yes to too many obligations, the stress is annoying. Being under this type of episodic stress can start to affect how you interact with people at home or at work.
When short-term stress becomes more or less constant and intense and lasts for a long time, it becomes chronic stress. When your body is constantly reacting to incoming stress – ready to fight or flee – it can negatively affect your health and lead to other problems.
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Eustress is positive, beneficial stress—the kind you feel before riding a roller coaster, going on a first date, or swimming in the ocean for the first time. Eustress makes you confident, capable and ready for anything.
Like other animals, we humans have a built-in fight-or-flight response that helps us sense danger, determine whether it is a threat, and decide how to respond. When we perceive something stressful in our environment, our body releases hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, which cause our breathing and heart rate to increase, digestion to slow down, and muscles to tense up. In other words, we are ready to fight or flee.
Although the threats we face today are very different from those faced by our ancestors, our bodies still respond in the same way. These responses to stress can be very helpful in some situations, but when they never turn off and stress hormones are constantly rising, our bodies can wear out very quickly.
In fact, chronic stress can affect almost every organ system in the body and lead to more serious problems. Thankfully, though, our bodies let us know when they’re suffering, so we can take immediate action if we’re paying attention. Some of these signals include:
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When stress becomes a constant player in your daily life it starts to affect your health. In fact, a 2015 study found that chronic stress can actually change pathways in your brain and throw off your immune system so it can’t function effectively.
Chronic stress can affect your body much like an infection, increasing inflammation within tissues, muscles, and organs. When this high stress and chronic inflammation continues for too long, certain conditions can begin to develop. These include:
Also, when we are under constant stress, we tend not to follow a healthy lifestyle. For example, we may start eating poorly, stop exercising, sleep, smoke, and drink alcohol, all of which can actually increase the stress we experience and worsen its effects.
You may have noticed that when you are stressed, your heart starts beating faster and you start breathing faster. This is because the fight-or-flight hormones released in your body during a stressful event cause your heart and breathing rates to increase so that more blood and oxygen are available to your muscles.
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Your blood pressure rises and your blood vessels constrict, both of which help deliver the extra oxygen your muscles need to fight or flee. When you’re under constant stress, persistently high stress hormones put you at increased risk for heart disease, heart attack, and stroke.
Your fight-or-flight response is directed by your central nervous system (CNS), which tells your brain via the hypothalamus when to release cortisol and adrenaline. When the threat passes or the stress subsides, the hypothalamus gives the “all clear” and your body returns to normal. When stress is constant, your central nervous system never turns off the flow of hormones, and your body can’t return to a relaxed state.
When you are under a lot of stress or feeling extremely nervous, you may experience stomach and digestive problems. This is because the surge of stress hormones, increased heart rate and increased breathing can cause problems in your digestive system.
Some sources say that the stress response causes an increase in stomach acid, which can lead to ulcers, acid reflux, and heartburn, while others point out that during a severe stress response, digestion slows down, meaning the production of stomach acid. actually decreases.
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Therefore, some scientists now theorize that rather than causing an increase in stomach acid production, stress actually causes your body to become more sensitive to small amounts of acid. Why is this?
Researchers hypothesize that stress may change the way the brain communicates with pain receptors, making it more sensitive to acid levels. Stress can cause a decrease in prostaglandins – which normally protect the stomach from the effects of acid.
Stress may cause you to experience frequent abdominal pain or cramping and diarrhea (irritable bowel syndrome). And high pressure can lead to nausea and vomiting.
In addition, researchers have found a link between high stress in men and the risk of developing diabetes.
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In the short term, physical stress, such as an injury or illness, can trigger your immune system and help your body recover. But if stress is constant, your immune system never has time to recover, reducing its ability to fight disease and infection.
Stress can trigger your immune system to attack healthy tissue, which can lead to autoimmune disease. If you get sick or injured, stress may even prolong the time it takes you to recover.
As mentioned earlier, when stress hormones are released, your body sends blood and oxygen to your muscles, preparing them to fight or run. Once the stressor is gone, your body relaxes and your muscles soften. But if you’re under constant stress, your muscles never allow themselves to relax, which can lead to muscle aches, pains, and tension headaches.
High levels of stress can cause changes in libido and reproductive systems in both men and women.
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In men, prolonged stress can cause erectile dysfunction and lower testosterone levels. Researchers have also found that stress can affect a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer. In addition, studies have shown that increased stress is associated with the occurrence of prostatitis.
Multiple studies have indicated a link between stress levels and infertility. For example, one study found that stress can reduce sperm count and sperm quality. Another study showed that women with high levels of the stress-related enzyme alpha-amylase were less likely to become pregnant than women with low levels of the enzyme.
In women, chronic stress is known for its ability to alter the menstrual cycle, making periods heavy, painful, and irregular. Studies have also found a link between stress levels and the occurrence and severity of premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
Stress is also known to affect the transition through menopause, exacerbating symptoms such as hot flashes and irritability. Several studies have also indicated a link between early menopause (occurring before age 40) and stress.
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Perhaps most alarming is the effect chronic stress can have on the brain. Traumatic events such as war and childhood abuse are widely known to cause changes in brain structure.
In fact, research suggests that chronic stress can increase anxiety and depression and increase the risk of developing mental health problems, including personality disorders, anger problems, bipolar disorder, and other cognitive and personality conditions.
A study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley demonstrated that chronic stress actually causes the brain to lose neurons (nerve cells), which may explain why stress affects learning and memory.
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