Between round-the-clock demands of responsibilities and commitments, it is natural to experience stress. It is common to feel exhausted with intimidating responsibilities coming on the way.
However, a temporary stress from daily activities can take a form of unexplainable emotional outbursts impacting both physical and mental health.
Yes, in long term, too much stress can cause negative effect on physical health. In fact, both clinical and experimental evidence supports the occurrence of medical aliments as downstream consequences of stressful exposures.
Stress and health impact
Psychological stress can take various forms and impact health of an individual at various levels.
One of the most noticeable impact is feeling tired and low on energy all the time. It is an indicator that your body is not getting enough rest.
Your immune system takes a major hit when you experience stress. In order to respond to stress, your body sends various defensive signals to your endocrine system which releases certain hormones to prepare your body for an emergency. Among them the cortisol is the main hormone that decreases immune components, including white blood cells. This weakens immunity, triggers inflammation and overall rate of infection. Ultimately, you start to experience frequent illness in the form of flu and cold. You might feel aches and pain (headaches, back pain, muscle pain).
This exhaustion can manifest in the form of frequent change in appetite. Psychological stress has marked impact on gut sensitivity, motility, secretion and permeability. All these factors are responsible for abdominal cramping, imbalance in gut bacteria and inflammation of digestive tract. Chronic stress for an extended period of time results in serious illness such as irritable bowel syndrome. This could be a reason for indigestion.
A restless mind trigger anxiety making it hard for a person to get to sleep or stay asleep. A disturb sleep further perpetuate stress, irritability and physical exhaustion.
Stress and lifestyle diseases
A stress hardly allows you to maintains a healthy lifestyle that enhances your susceptibility for development of lifestyle diseases such as high blood pressure, rapid weight gain, heart diseases and diabetes.
Psychological stress has long been shown to play an important role in the natural history of lifestyle diseases such as high blood pressure, rapid weight gain, heart diseases and diabetes. Stressful thoughts hardly permit to maintain a healthy lifestyle and people get indulges in bad habits such as smoking, drinking, overeating and sedentary lifestyle. Moreover, in response to stress, body starts to produce cortisol, a type of stress hormone predisposing to lifestyle diseases.
A restless mind and anxious thoughts delay the onset of sleep or disturbance to stay asleep. Insufficient night sleep fuels further stress and irritability. Thus stress-disturb sleep- stress becomes a never ending vicious cycle.
Long-term stress can upset the coping ability of an individual. Research studies observed the association between stress and occurrence or exacerbation of mood disorders such as depression and anxiety, personality changes, bipolar disorders, cognitive problems and behavior issues.
Overcoming stress
Stress that results into bad feelings not only consumed your precious time but affect your overall health also. Though a small amount of stress is always good to keep your focus on your priorities that lead to productivity and creativity. However, overwhelming stress level may affect your overall wellbeing.
This is the time you have to realize that you are burnt out inside and agreed that your body is not happy with the way you are living. It is important to care more about what you think of yourself than what others think.
Eliminating stress from your life isn’t feasible. Anything from everyday responsibility like family, relationships and work to a serious life events such as war can trigger stress. You can’t control the outside world and therefore, triggers for stress too. But you can invest your time in learning and adopting stress management skills which help you to stay mentally resilient in challenging times.
Ultimately, the mental clarity is one of the important things that determines your quality of life and overall well-being.
Also Check : Some People Worry More Than Others, Here Is Why?
Disclaimer : The purpose of this blog is to create mental health awareness. This information is not a replacement for medical treatment or counseling therapy.
