Most people experience stress with common symptoms like tensed muscles, frequent headaches, sleep disturbances, loss of sex drive and mood swings. But there are many other physiological and psychological consequences to chronically high stress levels that should not be ignored. In fact, immune system health, and its ability to ward off illness and disease, is greatly reduced by stress and can ultimately lead to increased chronic disease susceptibility. Stress has been linked to the six leading causes of death including heart disease, cancer and suicide--high stress hormone levels can have a major impact on your overall well-being.
Physical Symptoms
Stress hormones increase your heart rate and your blood pressure, increasing your risk of chest pain and heart attack. In addition, stress causes spilling of stored fat into your bloodstream, increasing your cholesterol level and your susceptibility to heart disease. Stress can also increase the clotting factor of your blood, raising the potential for strokes and pulmonary embolism, both caused by blood clots interrupting blood flow to the brain or lungs.
Anxiety affects your digestive system and not simply with the expected, like stomach ulcers. When you are stressed, blood is diverted away from your digestive tract and to your heart, lungs and skeletal muscles. This leads to poor digestion, poor assimilation of nutrients and irritable bowel syndrome with alternating constipation and diarrhea. Stress also increases your blood sugar levels, which raises your risk of developing diabetes.
High levels of stress also affect your outward appearance. Constriction of blood vessels in your skin produces an aged appearance, including thinning skin and wrinkles. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, stimulates appetite and increases fat deposits around the abdomen, the most detrimental area to carry extra weight due to its strain on the heart.
Mental Symptoms
Stress affects your mental health, leading to symptoms like poor memory, difficulty learning, inability to concentrate and poor judgment. Stress and stress hormones, like cortisol, affect your brain's capacity to regenerate neurons, the cells of your brain and central nervous system. This occurs in the hippocampus, the area of your brain responsible for memory and affected by Alzheimer's disease. If stress levels can be eliminated, the neurons will continue to grow and memory remains intact, otherwise, stress can cause significant age-related memory loss.
Emotional Symptoms
Stress also affects your emotions and can cause symptoms like mood swings, depression, irrational fears, anger and irritability. These can ultimately lead to a loss of self-confidence and isolation, which can increase potential for addictions including alcohol, drugs and even anorexia or bulimia.
References
- "Medical Physiology"; Rodney A. Rhoades and George A. Tanner; 2003
- "How Does Stress Affect Us?"; American Psychological Association
