It’s one thing to occasionally feel stress, but constant pressure increases your risk of developing serious illness. Here’s what you need to know about the long-term effects of living a stressed-out life.
What is Stress?
Stress can be anything that disrupts the status quo of your daily life. Examples of stress include: a conflict at work, a disagreement with a family member, internal pressure you may put on yourself, an extra-hard workout, financial worries, and more.
Stress is designed to help us but can become harmful if it’s constantly present and affecting your ability to be happy and productive. In short bursts, stress can be positive, and the human body is designed to deal with it, such as when you need to avoid danger or meet a deadline.
When stressful events occur, your body responds with a fight or flight response, spiking your adrenaline and preparing you to face danger. If you experience stress over a prolonged period of time, your nervous system can get “stuck” in fight or flight and you may then have a hard time regulating your emotions, causing you to be more reactive and irritable with others.
The Physical Effects of Stress
While small bursts of stress can be motivating and increase your productivity temporarily, prolonged stress can be harmful to your health, increasing your risk of stroke, high blood pressure, and heart disease, as well as depression and anxiety.
Unfortunately, chronic problems like heart disease and high blood pressure don’t typically have symptoms until the problem reaches a critical level. However, common physical symptoms of stress include headache, muscle tightness, flutters in your chest, depression and appetite changes either leaving you ravenous for comfort foods or robbed of your appetite.
But these stress symptoms are merely signals of the deeper impact that chronic stress can have on every organ and system in your body, from your nervous and circulatory systems to your digestive and immune systems.
The Good News About Stress
Not all stress is bad, and the hormones that the body produces in response to stress aren’t, either. These hormone levels actually fluctuate throughout the day as you adapt to challenges like waking up (yes, that’s an example of stress), getting stuck in traffic, or being surprised on your birthday.
Probably the best news about stress is that you can manage it by doing small things like deep breathing, taking a walk, listening to a meditation app, or even grabbing your child’s fidget spinner to distract yourself from whatever is stressing you out. Any of these strategies can help short-circuit the body’s fight-or-flight response, stopping the flood of stress hormones from revving up your blood pressure and heart rate.
Creating a morning routine will help you manage your stress throughout the day. How you start your morning sets your mood and intention for the rest of the day. For example, do you sleep through your alarm and rush out the door 5 minutes after waking up? Or do you intentionally get up and have a slow morning? Making small adjustments in your morning routine may have a big impact on how you handle stressors that come up throughout your day.
Ask yourself:
- Can I wake up earlier to do some breathing or meditation?
- Can I take a minute to walk the dog and put my feet on the grass?
- What activity would make me feel grounded & at peace going into the day?
Even Short-Term Stress Can Affect Your Body — Especially Your Hormones
When you’re stressed, your heart rate goes up and so does your blood pressure. Most people can take these kinds of physiological changes in stride. Cortisol is one of the hormones released when you feel stressed, but your body can typically return the level of this hormone to normal when the stressful event is over. The problem occurs when the stress doesn’t end. If you never feel a break from stress, your body can’t regulate your hormones, resulting in imbalance that can cause all kind of uncomfortable symptoms, like fatigue, mood changes, GI issues, unexplained weight gain or loss, anxiety hair loss, and hot flashes or night sweats.
Why Long-Term Stress Is So Bad for Your Body Systems
Left unchecked, severe stress, the kind that goes on for months or years, can lead to serious illness and chronic diseases.
Here are a few ways chronic stress can impact the body:
Stress causes inflammation.
Studies have shown that chronic stress is linked to increased inflammation in the body because it increases cytokines, or immune cells that are part of the body’s defense system. Inflammation is thought to underlie many diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis, and even pain. The good news is that stress management techniques, such as meditation, have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects, lowering cytokines in the body.
Stress affects your digestive tract.
The gastrointestinal tract is filled with nerve endings and immune cells, all of which are affected by stress hormones. As a result, stress can cause acid reflux as well as exacerbate symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. Not to mention create butterflies in your stomach. Additionally, stress can affect your appetite, causing you to avoid food altogether, or binge on your favorite comfort foods.
Stress messes with your immune system.
A number of studies have shown that stress lowers immunity, which may be why you’re likely to come down with a cold after a crunch time at school or work, or on the first day of your vacation.
Stress can muddle your brain.
Brain scans of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show more activity in the brain region associated with fear and emotion. But even everyday stress can affect how the brain processes information. Studies have shown actual structural, functional, and connectivity-related brain changes in people who are under chronic stress, which can affect cognition and attention, making it hard to focus or learn new things when you are stressed.
Stress can make you feel crummy all over.
Stress increases your sensitivity to pain, and it can also cause muscular tension. People under chronic stress tend to perceive pain differently. Stress will also affect your sleep, which doesn’t help matters, robbing you of the time your body needs to reboot your immune system, which helps decrease the symptoms of depression, irritability, and exhaustion that accompany chronic stress.
The Bottom Line
While it’s tough to link stress directly to a specific disease, we know that stress does contribute to serious illness. Since stress makes you more likely to smoke, drink excessively, and eat in ways that cause obesity, it’s fair to say that there is a link between stress and disease.
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