How Stress Affects Your Body

Stress affects just about everyone’s daily lives. It can affect your body in ways that can have a long-lasting impact on your health. In my book, The Stress R.E.L.I.E.F. Method: A six-step guide to creating a life with less stress, I shared how stress “lead to depression, anxiety, and a load of health issues”. Here are some ways that stress can affect your health:

• The Effect On Your Brain - Stress can cause you to lose your concentration and memory abilities. When you are under stress, parts of your brain associated with memory, such as the hippocampus, do not work well and you cannot turn short-term memory into long-term memory. You can also fail to concentrate on things you hear or things you are reading.

 

• The Effect Of Stress On Your Gastrointestinal Tract - Stress triggers the body’s fight or flight response so that epinephrine and norepinephrine are released from your adrenal glands. This has multiple effects on the body. One thing this phenomenon does is shunt blood away from the gastrointestinal tract and toward the muscles of the body as a way of gearing up to “fight or flee” from a real or imagined opponent. This can lead to a decreased blood flow to the gastrointestinal tract, which translates into indigestion and poor uptake of nutrients. Fortunately, this can be short-lived unless you live under situations of chronic stress. Then the GI system will be affected more permanently.

 

• The Effect Of Stress On Your Cardiovascular System - Stress causes the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine, which automatically raises your blood pressure and heart rate. This puts more stress on your heart and puts you at higher risk of suffering from hypertension-related diseases like heart failure, stroke, and heart attack. These kinds of things do not happen overnight but if you suffer from chronic stress, the long-lasting implications of heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, heart failure, and stroke are real possibilities.

 

• The Effect Of Stress On Your Immune System - Excess stress also causes the release of cortisol from the adrenal cortex. Cortisol has many effects on the body but one of the main ones is that it suppresses the immune system. High levels of cortisol mean that you are at greater risk of getting colds and the flu and have a harder time healing from open sores, cuts, or wounds. Cortisol can suppress several aspects of the immune system so you will find yourself sicker more often when under stress.  

Want to learn effective strategies to beat stress, grab your copy of The Stress R.E.L.I.E.F. Method: A six-step guide to creating a life with less stress and starting living a more peaceful life.