Stress, the word itself suggests tension, anxiety…But firstly, let’s demystify the myth. Stress means the feeling of unhappiness.
In our routine life, sometimes, we work tirelessly to meet the deadlines and find ourself saying “oh god! I feel so stressed out”. You may experience the positive or negative forms of stress from your surroundings. For example:
Negative site: family illness, job problems, money troubles, workload are the negative side of stress.
Positive site: baby born, work pressure due to promotion and many more.
In fact, without stressors, we would not have survived as these things keep us more energetic, more attentive and improve our performance.
How Our Body Reacts When You Feel Too Nervous?
When our mind is under pressure, our body switches to fight or flight mode and adrenal gland release the stress hormones known as adrenaline, cortisol, noradrenaline to cope up with the situation. These hormones increase the blood flow in the required organs such as the heart, lungs and muscles. Once the perceived fear is gone, all systems come back to normal. Therefore, indeed, stress affects you mentally, physically, and your behavior.
Be alert as to when the severe stress keeps firing you, it could put your health at risk and shows the following symptoms.
Signs Of Illness On Your Body When Stressed
The Role Of Stress In Skin Problems
Skin is the mirror of our overall health, and when there is prolonged stress, skin, nails, and hair-like tissues are hit the hardest. So how the skin is more susceptible to get diseases? As discussed earlier, cortisol is a stress hormone that increases the blood flow towards the heart, muscles, and brain and low blood circulation suffer our skin.
Cortisol also increases the number of free radicles and decreases the collagen production which gives wrinkles, fine lines, pimples, and makes your skin dull. Chronic stress also weakens our immunity results in an inflammatory disease Psoriasis rises.
Another possibility could be that when you get too anxious, you touch your faces more often, which results in spreading bacteria and cause acne.
The Connection Between Headache, Chronic Pain, And Stress
The most common trigger of stress is a headache. When you feel worried, restless, it causes pain in the head or neck area and its frequency also increases. Another reason for body pain due to insufficient hours of sleep, ageing, injuries, nerve damage.
You can get relief by taking some pain killer but it gives you temporary relief until you treat its root cause.
Bodyweight Fluctuation
As we know stress increases the cortisol level, it raises the insulin amount and drops the blood sugar level. It results in higher craving for sugary, fatty food and turns your overeating into a habit. The cortisol in excess level does not burn fewer calories which leads to weight gain.
However, in some cases, stress can cause weight loss when coupled with anxiety. The stress hormone adrenaline prepares your body for more physical activity and reduces your appetite, which affects digestion and immunity.
Extreme Hair loss
Yes, there is a direct link between stress and hair loss and this has been proved by many experiments. Stress causes immense changes in your body due to hormonal imbalance. The key factor is the high amount of androgen that increases the dihydrotestosterone causing the hair loss to save your stresses, cut down on stress, and take enough rest with proper food pattern.
Experiencing Heart Problems
Having too much tension invites various chronic diseases, and the cardiac issues are the most expected among all these.
There are various possible reasons for heartache such as too much stress activates your stress hormones and raise your blood pressure. Secondly, if you don’t have any good ways to manage the stress, then the person may get addicted to bad habits such as smoking, drinking, overeating etc which makes the situation worst.
On the other hand, try to handle the situation by getting engaged in your hobbies, workout, an outing with friends may relax your mind and ease the condition.
Also, some people get depressed because of their worrying nature that must require medical attention.
Suffering Through Insomnia
Do you remain awake like an owl at night and not able to sleep properly? As we know stress disrupts your sleep, it results in minimizing the energy levels and makes you feel lethargic all day.
Adequate sleep is much required for your mental and emotional resilience. Chronic insomnia decreases your workability and gives negative thoughts.
Lack Of Sexual Desire
Many people lose sexual desire during their stressful periods. If this stress continues for a longer time, men could suffer through impotence, less number of sperm count and erectile dysfunction due to testosterone begins to drop.
For women, stress affects the menstrual cycle which causes irregular, heavy blood flow or chronic painful periods. Chronic stress also aggravates the symptoms of menopause.
Frequent Sickness Due To Weakening Immune Power
You frequently getting struck down by cold, cough or some other infections for no matter what the season is then you can blame your stress levels.
Our brain and immune system intrinsically work with each other. Therefore, when the person is mentally disturbed, physical symptoms show up.
The weekend immunity is only because of stress hormones being pumped around the body which reduced the white blood cells count and the person gets more prone to catch infections.
Eliminating the worries in life helps you to curb frequent illness.
Tightening Of Your Muscles
More stress makes your muscles tense up, and therefore, muscles try in a way to get relaxed. But if you keep yourself completely under pressure, muscles may not get the chance to relax, which can cause neck pain, shoulder pain, and body aches. Over time, the person can set off an unhealthy lifestyle and take pain killers for relief.
If you ever feel to deal with the core issue, then take massage, follow healthy food pattern, do exercise, and drink plenty of water.
Improper Digestion
Always street food or greasy food is not the culprit. Stress could also be the reason for diarrhoea and constipation and other gastric problems.
Under stress, our liver produces extra glucose to boost up an energy level. But under stressful condition, our body not able to keep up with extra glucose surge and may increase the chance of type 2 diabetes.
The rush of hormones, the rapid heartbeat may upset the digestive system and may cause heartburn. Also, it may affect the way food moves through your body, leading to diarrhoea and constipation. Also sometimes experience nausea, vomiting, and stomachache.
