Stress can be both a good thing and a bad thing but what is
it really doing to our physical health if we are stressed on a constant basis
day after day?
Most of us know that certain lifestyle habits
such as smoking or lack of exercise could jeopardise our health but what we do
need to pay more attention to his stress. If switched on for too long stress
can wreak havoc on our physical and mental wellbeing and by learning how
chronic stress affects our mind and body our awareness will identify the
importance of finding ways to reduce the stress load.
Hormone levels
The stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline,
speed up your heartbeat and send blood rushing to the areas where it is needed
most in an emergency. Typically, this will be muscles, heart and other important
to organs. But when these hormones remain high due to persistent low level
stress, they do affect most areas of the body.
Digestion
Most of us occasionally suffer from butterflies
in the stomach! This is caused by nerve endings and immune cells in the
digestive tract when they’re affected by stress hormones. It is no surprise
that stress affects your digestive system in other ways as well therefore, for
instance, acid reflux as well as exacerbating symptoms of irritable bowel
syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease.
Heart
Under stress your heart pumps faster. The stress hormones
cause your blood vessels to constrict and divert oxygen away from the
extremities and towards your muscles to help you move quickly. This raises your
blood pressure. When your blood pressure rises so does your risk of stroke and
heart attack.
Sleep
When you’re stressed you’re probably not
sleeping well, but stress can affect sleep in other ways - in particular if
you’re producing stress hormones. Normally cortisol rises in the morning to
wake you up and declines through the day but when you’re constantly under
stress this pattern can change, meaning that you wake up tired but can be
buzzing at bedtime. Has this happened to you?
Diabetes.
Although little is known about how stress
contributes to the diabetes risk, one theory is that cortisol alters the body’s
sensitivity to insulin which makes stress a risk factor for diabetes. Studies
have looked at stress as a pathway to developing diabetes and found evidence
that chronic stress can initiate changes in the immune system that may result,
or increase the likelihood of, develop developing type two diabetes
Cancer
Health experts can’t agree whether or not stress
causes cancer and most of the large-scale studies are inconclusive. However,
stressful situations can lead us to develop unhealthy habits such as smoking,
overeating and heavy drinking, these are habits which do increase the risk of
cancer.
Brain.
As anyone who has frozen in the middle of a speech
knows, stress reduces your ability to recall information. What is less known is
that over time, chronic stress can lead to memory impairment; in fact they can
shrink your hippocampus which is the part of the brain that regulates in
motion.If you are stressed about your stress levels then please visit
your doctor.
Remember, Mayfair we care.