A common misconception that stress only ruins your mental health is prevalent all around us. However, once you are unable to manage your stress and it becomes long-term and chronic, then this is where everything goes downhill.
Many people don’t consider stress a critical issue. They brush it off by saying phrases like: “I am just in a bad mood”, “I had a rough week”, “I wasn’t able to sleep properly”, “I’m just a little tense, but I’ll be fine.” However, the truth is that stress not only affects your mental health but also your physical health.
In this blog, let’s discuss the top ways stress is quietly destroying your physical health and what you can do about it.
Acute vs Chronic Stress
When you are facing life challenges, it is normal to be stressed until that stress becomes long-term.
Generally, there are two types of stress. Acute stress comes on quickly and is crucial to activate your body’s fight or flight response. This type of stress also has a benefit as it boosts your performance by motivating you, helps you in quickly reacting to danger, and strengthens mental stamina. Once you are out of the situation, your body gets back to normal.
For example: near-miss car accidents, public speaking, meeting a deadline, and so on.
Chronic stress is different as it is not temporary. It is long-term, persistent, and stems from unabated pressures such as long-term financial problems, unhappy relationships, or job dissatisfaction; it can last for months to years. Moreover, it can have detrimental effects on your brain and body, i.e., affecting your sleep cycle, memory, and concentration.
| A UK-wide stress survey found that 74% of adults have felt so stressed at some point over the past year that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope. Source: priory group |
The Link Between Stress and Physical Health
The scariest part is that many people are suffering from chronic stress, yet they don’t realise it. They blame the physical symptoms of stress on lack of sleep, food, work, or age.
It is quite disappointing how the world has normalised stress and how the hustle culture is celebrated all across the world. Moreover, social media has provided us with thoughts like if I rest, I will fail in life.
When you are stressed, your brain signals the adrenal glands to release cortisol and adrenaline. It prepares your body to deal with stress as your heart beat races, your muscles get tensed, and you feel something in your stomach.
However, chronic stress impacts your musculoskeletal system, respiratory system, cardiovascular system, endocrine system, gastrointestinal system, nervous system, and even the reproductive system. Let’s discuss the major ways in which stress is impacting your body:
1. High Blood Pressure:
When you face a stressful situation, your body releases some hormones that lead to an increase in heart rate and narrowing of the blood vessels. In the case of chronic stress, your heart may need to work harder. This creates high blood pressure.
High blood pressure has serious implications, including type 2 diabetes, stroke, inflammation in arteries, heart attack, kidney diseases, and dementia.
2. Heart Diseases
One of the most serious effects of chronic stress is heart damage. The reason why many people turn to smoking, alcohol, overeating, and oversleeping is stress. This is considered a coping mechanism by individuals who are stressed. However, in the long term, these habits also lead to the risk of heart-related diseases such as cardiac arrest and even death.
Stress directly impacts your physical heart.
3. Constant Fatigue
Both acute and chronic stress affect your quality of sleep. When facing life challenges, it is really difficult for your mind to relax. As a result, you are awake till 4 am, and you feel lethargic in the morning. Or if you fall asleep, you frequently wake up in the night because of nightmares.
Before you realise the problem, you’re caught in this vicious cycle of insomnia and waking up lethargic. As your brain is alert, tense, and overstimulated at all times, it leads to physical fatigue, mental exhaustion, brain fog, weakness, low motivation, lack of concentration, mood swings, and reduced productivity.
Therefore, it won’t be wrong to blame stress for laziness, as it consumes the energy in your body. Furthermore, nursing students also struggle with studies and exams. Therefore, they seek nursing assignment help or practice some tips to handle exam stress.
4. Muscle Tension
If you are frequently facing neck pain, jaw tensions, headaches, or back pain, then it is a sign of stress. It is natural for your body to tighten up in stress, as chronic stress prevents muscles from relaxing. As a result, it leads to shoulder pain, neck stiffness, tension headaches, back pain, body aches, jaw clenching etc.
Moreover, muscle tension in the neck and shoulder leads to eye strain, sensitivity to light, tension-type headaches, and migraine headaches with or without nausea.
5. Poor Gut Health and Digestion
The gut contains over 100 million nerve cells. It directs everything in your body from your digestion to your mood. Moreover, when dealing with chronic stress, your gut motility is also affected. This is because your blood flow shifts from the digestive tract and slows the digestive functions.
This can cause acid reflux, bloating, stomach pain, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, and appetite changes (over-eating or under-eating).
Moreover, it interferes with your daily routine because you feel nausea and heartburn when stressed out. It also interferes with your ability to think and regulate your emotions.
6. Weight Gain or Weight Loss
Chronic stress also affects metabolism in multiple ways. Due to stress, the cortisol levels get high, which encourages fat storage in the abdomen. Moreover, it also increases the cravings for high-calorie comfort foods. This is because the brain seeks quick dopamine and energy. It leads to emotional overeating, binge eating, belly fat accumulation, and slow metabolism.
On the other hand, some people also lose weight due to stress because of the suppression of appetite.
Stress disrupts healthy nutritional balance and body weight regulation.
7. Poor Immune System
It is quite common for people to become sick during stressful periods. This is because stress also affects your immune system. Due to the release of high cortisol levels, your body becomes less effective at fighting viruses, infections, and inflammation.
It means you will have to endure frequent colds and flu, slow wound healing, increased infections, inflammation, and reduced disease resistance.
Long-term stress can increase your body’s vulnerability to chronic illness as the body becomes too busy to manage stress instead of defending itself. If you are unable to complete your assignments due to illness, then you can get assistance from any reliable nursing essay writing services.
8. Hormonal Problems
Stress also disrupts the hormones in both men and women. High cortisol levels affect the hormones responsible for energy, reproduction, growth, mood, and metabolism.
In women, chronic stress can cause irregular periods, worsened PMS symptoms, acne, or fertility problems. In men, stress can lead to low testosterone, reduced energy, decreased motivation, and muscle loss.
9. Blemished Physical Appearance
Chronic stress becomes visible physically. It may cause acne breakouts, hair loss, wrinkles, dark skin, dark circles, and dry skin conditions.
Furthermore, chronic stress also exacerbates respiratory health in people who are already victims of asthma, bronchitis etc.
What can you do about stress?
These are some stress management measures you can adopt:
- You must prioritise your sleep. Each day, aim for 7-8 hours of sleep.
- Exercise regularly to lower stress hormones.
- Reduce your screen time to avoid constant stimulation.
- Spend some time in nature.
- Eat healthy meals.
- Have an emotional support system
- Practice relaxation techniques.
- Attend behavioral therapy sessions,
All in all!
Stress is not something to be proud of; it signals that your body needs help, and you must do something about it. Start from today by focusing on the signs your body is showing and changing your behaviors. Being one of the quietest destroyers of physical health, it affects your body from your heart to hormones, touch, skin, weight, reproductive health, and memory, etc.
Just remember, you are not built to remain in survival mode and stop letting stress control you.