It has been known for years that stress can affect your health but we are only now starting to properly understand precisely how stress can affect the body. Several of the myths surrounding stress, like the fact that stress can produce ulcers, are finally being exposed and others are being confirmed.

Several of the obvious effects of stress on the body like muscle tension, a rapid heartbeat, headaches, high blood pressure and digestive problems are easy to recognize and well known, but there are also several long-term and potentially serious conditions which can be produced by chronic stress.

Studies which have been done at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere for example strongly suggest that stress affects the body’s immune system. Interestingly these same studies also show that the affect on the immune system can be both bad and good.

Since one particular definition of stress is that it is simply an individual’s ‘flight or fight’ response to an apparent threat, it can have a beneficial affect. It can, for example, trigger the release of chemicals which help heal infections arising from bites. This makes sense when you think about just how evolution might have tailored the body’s immune system to deal with these events.

But, when this response lasts for a long time period, the affects can be detrimental and one result is that the body’s immune system actually reduces in effectiveness leading to a higher susceptibility to infection and a lowered resistance to flu and other virus induced illnesses.

Another result is a general feeling of tiredness and sometimes even depression. When a person suffers stress for long periods of time then a feedback loop develops between the cause of stress (the belief that it is not possible to solve the problem which is creating the stress) and its affects. This results in a cycle in which your belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Chronic stress can also impact your health by compromising you circulatory system. When stress hormones which are released by the ‘flight or fight’ trigger are not used up by some form of physical activity like fighting off an infection then they can lead to actual physiological stress on the body.

High blood pressure increases the pressure on the walls of blood vessels and can lead to small tears appearing in the blood vessels. When the body then reacts to repair these micro-tears, scar tissue is generally produced and this lowers the flow of blood through these vessels.

If stress levels are very high or remain for long enough then heart attacks can occur. The likelihood of heart attack is also higher in older individuals or in individuals who are carrying specific genetic characteristics. With narrowed blood vessels, the heart may not be able to deliver enough blood and oxygen at moments of high demand.

It has also been known for a long time that stress can exacerbate the affects of rheumatoid arthritis and this is now also explained by the affect which stress has on the immune system as there is a proven and well documented link between rheumatoid arthritis and the immune system.

It is important for all of us to avoid stress to maintain good health and, fortunately, as we gain a better understanding of stress we are also developing a number of extremely effective ways to relieve stress.

Filed under: General Health

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