Stress, an unavoidable aspect of life, can have profound impacts on your body. Unravel the intricate relationship between stress and physical health, exploring how chronic stress can lead to serious health complications and ways to mitigate its effects.
Chronic Stress
Stress is a natural physical and mental reaction to life experiences
- For immediate, short-term situations, stress can be beneficial to your health
- It can help you cope with potentially serious situations
- Yet if your stress response doesn’t stop firing, and these stress levels stay elevated far longer than is necessary for survival, it can take a toll on your health
Stress causes tight muscles
Your muscles tense up to protect themselves from injury when you’re stressed.
Stress is exhausting for both the body and mind
It’s not unusual to lose your desire when you’re under constant stress.
- Short-term stress may cause men to produce more of the hormone testosterone, but this effect doesn’t last. If stress continues for a long time, a man’s testosterone levels can begin to drop, which can interfere with sperm production.
Anxiety
Your adrenal glands release stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which rev up your heartbeat and send blood rushing to the areas that need it most in an emergency.
- When the perceived fear is gone, the hypothalamus should tell all systems to go back to normal. If the CNS fails to return to normal, or if the stressor doesn’t go away, the response will continue.
Chronic stress is also a factor in behaviors such as overeating or not eating enough, alcohol or drug abuse, and social withdrawal.
Stress hormones affect your respiratory and cardiovascular systems
- During the stress response, you breathe faster in an effort to quickly distribute oxygen-rich blood to your body
- Under stress, your heart also pumps faster
- When your blood pressure rises, so do your risks for having a stroke or heart attack
