How Does Stress Affect Health?

The Impact of Stress On You Inside and Outside

How does stress affect health?

Hassles, deadlines, worry, frustrations, fear, and demands, sound familiar to you? In modern life, stress becomes so common that it is part of our routine life. Stress can affect you positively or negatively. In moderate, it can help you perform under pressure and motivate you to do your best. However, when stress goes beyond a certain point, your health pays the price.

Is stress affecting your life? If you constantly feel overwhelmed, you can protect yourself by learning how to recognize the stress warning signs and taking stress relaxation techniques to minimize its harmful effects.

How Does Stress Affect Health? Find Out The Impact on You...

• Stress can damage body organs.

• Affect the immune system, thereby increase your chance of getting sick. Your body can be weakened by stress and you are more susceptible to allergies and infections. Stress can worsen migraines, arthritis, degenerative bone, diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

• Nervous system breakdown leading to depression or mental illnesses. Depression can seriously affect how you function, get along with others, eat and sleep.

• Deplete certain vitamin in your body.

• Hair loss. The effect of stress has an impact on the hair growth pattern. When you experience the stress, chemicals in the body will transmit signals to the hair follicles and enter a period calls “resting phase”. During this phase there is no new hair growth while existing hair will be shed normally. Hair appears thinner and result in hair loss. This uneven pattern can cause hair to appear thinner and eventually result in hair loss.

• You may feel an increased in your heart rate and blood pressure and eventually can increase the risk of stroke or heart attack. Your lungs and heart are going to work harder. The rate of breathing will increase, the lungs take in more oxygen and the blood flow increases. You may feel your mouth is dry because the blood flow will decrease to the areas that are less critical for surviving. The dryness of the mouth means you will have difficulty in talking and swallowing.

• It can also cause an elevate cholesterol levels, and cause tense muscles.

• Increased sweating in skin. Also, hormone irregularities cause skin problems like acne. Chronic or long term stress can cause other forms of dermatitis like psoriasis and lichen planus.

How Does Stress Affect Health? Find Out How it Affects You Inside Your Body...

There are 4 types of hormones linked to stress: Cortisol, Serotonin, Noradrenaline and Dopamine. How does stress affect health from hormone point of view (inside your body)?

• Cortisol: This stress hormones helps you cope with day to day situations. Surprise, anger, shock, fear, - all these feeling trigger the release of cortisol within your body. This hormone influences the breakdown of proteins, carbohydrates and fats in your diet, it helps to maintain your blood pressure, combat allergy, inflammation and pain. An elevated level of cortisol are linked to exhaustion, high blood sugar, abdominal fat, heart disease, memory loss and bone loss.

• Serotonin: It is responsible for your quality of sleep by regulating your sleep cycle with daylight and darkness. Stress can disturb the production of this hormone, affecting your sleep cycle.

• Noradrenaline: This hormone gives you the energy. Too much stress drains your energy and deprive you of any motivation.

• Dopamine: This hormone helps you experience the feeling of joy. When you experience too much stress, it decreases the production of dopamine resulting in the loss of joy.