How can stress physically affect us?
How can stress physically affect us?
Currently, stress and the inability to handle pressing or intense situations is one of the problems that most frequently threaten the integrity of people, a clear and unambiguous example of this is that more than 75% of adults in the USA said they suffer stress, according to the survey conducted for the article Stress in America. In most cases, the consequences for the suffering of excessive stress occurs when we ignore this, that is why as someone who personally deals with a high degree of saturation and constant stress; I would like to take advantage of this and explain some of the most significant problems that could result from ignoring this condition.
Source
CC0 1.0 – Public Domain
Digestive problems.
One of the most visible and problematic consequences occurs because the brain and the digestive tract are closely connected; stress can generate many negative effects in the latter. Among the most important problems, irritable bowel syndrome, one of the most widespread stress digestive sequelae, although not the only one, because there are also inflammations in the stomach, ulcers, and reflux, especially when stress is chronic.
Source
Author: CDC
Our cells.
All cells have chromosomes. The chromosomes, in turn, have telomeres and these, with chronic stress, are reduced. Causing that when the telomere is finished, the cell dies. In that sense, we could say that stress disturbs us at the cellular level, accelerating our aging or making its signals more noticeable.
Source
Public Domain – Author: NIAID/NIH
Vulnerability.
When a person experiences constant stress, the hormone cortisol behaves in a somewhat strange way, increasing its presence in the body. And as a result of this, the immune system begins to ignore it. Then when that system, which is the one that protects our body from external threat, begins to fail, the body becomes more vulnerable.
Source
CC0 1.0
On the one hand, everything is achieving failures in our system increases the danger of colds. It also diminishes our ability to heal from common wounds. As a consequence, the longer we take to heal our wounds, the more we are exposed to the threats to the environment. Not to mention that the effectiveness with which vaccines act on our bodies is greatly reduced.
Heart diseases.
It is well known that stress can generate or cause heart problems, although it is not well known what are the determining factors. On the one hand, it has been related to high blood pressure, in addition to that, it also affects indirectly; people with stress tend to smoke more or eat less healthily than people without stress.
Source
Public Domain
Among its different consequences, stress can also cause the almost unknown broken heart syndrome. Even a woman was diagnosed with that syndrome after the death of her pet.
Mental problems.
Traumas in childhood can cause mental illness in the future. Even Professor Alan Brown of Columbia University found that certain early life events increase the risk of suffering schizophrenia in adult life.
But, taking up the issue of physical changes, stress can cause severe changes in tonsil, especially at an early stage of our lives. Those changes, moreover, have often been related to anxiety and depression.
Source
Public Domain
Distortion in the metabolism.
The high levels of cortisol manage to make the cerebral response to stress rise and produce a distortion in our metabolism. In that sense, eating disorders or sleep disorders can arise, in relation to changes in the circadian rhythm, also called the internal clock. On the other hand, stress and its modification in cortisol levels can cause damage in the hippocampus and potentiate memory or concentration problems and even eventually become one of the causes of Alzheimer's.
Insomnia.
The most notable and recurrent consequence of stress is undoubtedly the loss of sleep and that, stress can generate changes in our metabolism and also affect our circadian rhythms. In that sense, problems sleeping can begin to manifest, especially when we follow a routine that requires us to get up early.
Source
CC BY 2.0
It should be noted that stress can also cause other sleep disorders, such as nightmares. In this sense, changes in metabolism make the brain more active at night and nightmares become more recurrent.
Remember that before the symptoms of stress, anxiety or depression, the best decision is to consult a specialist doctor: stress should not be underestimated otherwise as I explained above could lead to not so depreciable consequences.
References.
- http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/index.aspx
- https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/symptoms-of-anxiety-disorders/
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590630/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5042391/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4281833/
- http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/StressManagement/HowDoesStressAffectYou/Stress-and-Heart-Health_UCM_437370_Article.jsp
- http://obesity.imedpub.com/sleep-disturbances-of-sleep-stress-and-obesity-a-narrative-review.php?aid=7453
If you want to read more scientific articles of good quality, do not waste your time, and visit the hashtag #steemstem.
Disclaimer: All the images used are correctly labeled for reuse.
I think the most noticeable in my case is digestive problems, because every time I have stressful days those issues always appear.
The aging is probably more common in people about 40 yo I think, because that's the decade when people start having a lot of white hairs, and I think the younger the person getting white hairs, the bigger the stress.
The digestive and sleep problems are perhaps the most recurrent and also the ones we usually avoid, not being aware of the high cost of accumulating stress can be really serious. In the particular case of people who are around 40, is that they usually contain and accumulate a great pressure product of the life they lead, but like you also consider that while there are greater amounts of stress and less is the age of the Elderly people will be the consequences, perhaps also this due to the poor management they can give to these situations.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Ideas-abstractas from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
This is very educative @ideas-abstractas. I have been under much stress of late and your post came in handy. I didnt know that stress causes digestive problems and heart diseases.
I'm glad that you like it. We all go through periods of stress for different reasons, the secret is to find times and correct ways to handle it.