Consequences of stress
Stress is something most of us are going to suffer at some point in our lives. Usually, we identify stress as a psychological or emotional condition, but you should also know what happens to your body every time you feel stressed. Stress is a condition that affects more than just your mind. It can negatively impact your social relationships and work performance and can worsen the effects of chronic diseases.
Resting and sleeping are very important part of your life. Stress stimulates a wave of hormones which makes your sleep and relaxation moments worthless. After a long and busy day, your exhausted body needs a good rest, but if your stress levels are too high, this becomes difficult and you may start to feel headaches, moodiness, and memory loss, inability to concentrate and even aggressive behavior.
Constant stress weakens your immune system. The immune system is a complex group of cells and organs that defend the body against disease and infection. Stress causes the immune system to release disease-fighting elements. However, this activity is not beneficial to your health if it continues for more than a short while. Chronic over-stimulation of the immune system causes the system to become suppressed overall, and thus become less effective at warding off diseases and infections. Therefore, you are always in danger to get colds, the flu or other dangerous health issues.
Stress is commonly related to heart disease risk. It is discussed if it is an "independent" risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, acute and chronic stress may increase other risk factors and behaviors, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, smoking, physical inactivity, over drinking and overeating.
Stress can cause muscles to tense and spasm causing an achy feeling. Stress raises stress hormones, which cause muscles to contract, especially muscles in the shoulders and the back of the neck, although stressed people can also develop muscle knots in gluteus and legs. This tension and contractures will reduce your mobility. In certain occasions the tension in the muscle is so painful that it might not aloud you to sleep.
Stress may cause bad breath and mouth. While you are feeling anxious your mouth dries. Bruxism, clenching your jaws or grinding your teeth in your sleep, can be precipitated by stress. It is a clear sign that you are stressed and that your body cannot relax even while you are sleeping.
Constant tension has a great effect on our skin. Increased acne, rashes and itchy patches are symptoms that you need to relax and avoid nervous tension. If your skin is very sensitive, greasy or has some defects, it might get worse if you're stressed.
If you have shingles, tension may cause a real outburst. Although common place of this virus is lips you may end up with whole body covered with it. Not enough while you're stressed it'll heal very slowly.
The effects to your digestion may be constipation, diarrhea or even spastic colon. Constant stress activates the parasympathetic nervous system which diverts blood from the digestive tract and decreases the secretion of gastric enzymes, which effectively slows and difficults your digestion. If nervous tension is part of your every day life, you can develop colitis and irritable bowel syndrome.
If you notice small things in your behavior as becoming irritable and intolerant of even minor disturbances, loosing temper or getting irritated for no reason, feeling exhausted all the time, you find it hard to concentrate on tasks, worry too much about insignificant things, doubt yourself in doing something, you imagine negative or terrifying scenes, you probably have a serious stress problem and if you continue with this patterns, you can develop serious physical illness.
Photo: Bob Smith
