How Stress Affects Your Health

You know you're stressed. Your heart beats faster, your muscles tense, your stomach gets tied in knots. But the effects of stress don't stop there. Stress could be affecting your health in ways you haven't even considered. Chronic stress is a vise gripping your body. It's only natural that your body is going to react.

Unrelenting stress can increase your risk of obesity, depression, anxiety disorders, sleeplessness, digestive complaints and heart problems. Here's how:

• Digestion. You may have a stomachache right before a presentation at work or you may have one that lingers every day. Stress hormones slow the release of stomach acid and interfere with how well the stomach can empty itself. These same hormones cause the colon to work faster and may lead to diarrhea.

• Cardiovascular system. High levels of cortisol can raise your heart rate and your blood pressure. Cortisol can also have an affect on your cholesterol levels. This, in turn, increases your risk for heart attacks and strokes.

• Immune system. Study after study has shown chronic stress can make you more vulnerable to colds and infections. Normally, your immune system responds to infections by releasing chemicals in the body that cause inflammation. This is part of the healing process. Cortisol, the stress hormone, is produced to turn off this system when you are better. However, because it is elevated during times of stress, cortisol keeps your immune system suppressed and makes you more vulnerable to colds and infections.

• Weight. Cortisol stimulates fat and carbohydrate metabolism, which boosts your appetite. Cortisol can also affect where on your body you put on weight. If you have high levels of stress, you are more likely to put on weight in your abdominal area, which puts you at higher risk for heart disease and diabetes than people with pear shapes.

• Mental health. The constant flood of stress hormones puts you in a constant state of anxiety, worry and helplessness. This eventually may set you up for depression and anxiety disorders, especially when they run in the family. Some people are just more sensitive to stress than others. Also, because your body is in a heightened state of arousal, you will probably have trouble sleeping.

• Insomnia. If you've had plenty of nights where you stare at the clock and wake up groggy, depression could be partly to blame, since one of its symptoms is insomnia. Stress keeps your brain active, too, so it's likely that constant stress will keep you up.

So now what? Your best defense is to de-stress. Here are some ideas:

• Pay attention to your body. Are you clenching your jaw, knitting your eyebrows, tensing your stomach muscles? Those are the cues your body is giving you that you are stressed. Concentrate on relaxing each of these areas.
• Exercise. This is an excellent stress buster and releases endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. It also lowers blood pressure.
• Listen to music to help unwind.
• Call a friend for a chat or to set up a lunch.
• Practice deep breathing.
• Get lost in a good book.

Related Articles Do You Need a Retreat? Relaxing Ways to Ease Stress Get a Grip on Stress Zip-Lock Your Stress Eating

External Sources The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health The American Institute of Stress

This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.

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