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Do you continually feel that you are stressed out? Stress is something we all encounter on a regular basis, but when it starts to have a negative effect on your body and mind, it means you are distressed. 

What many people don’t know is that stress is a state of being that negatively impacts the body. In fact, stress has a bigger impact on our bodies than most of us realize or care to acknowledge.

Facts About Stress and Your Body

Many disturbing facts about the bad effects of stress on our bodies exist which are quite scary. When you look at these facts it is hard to deny that we all need to learn how to manage our stress more effectively.  Some of these facts include:

•    43% of all adults have health problems related to stress
•    75-90% of all doctor visits are stress-related
•    82% of workers are at least a little stressed in the workplace
•    Stress is known to cost American businesses more than $300 billion each year

Seven Ways In Which Your Body is Affected By Stress

When talking about stress, there are basically 2 forms. The “good” stress is called eustress but we generally only hear about the “bad” stress known as chronic stress or distress.

Chronic stress gradually affects your health at first; in fact, you may not even notice the symptoms at all! And if the stress is not managed, the symptoms will get worse and its effects may even be irreversible.

Seven ways in which stress may manifest itself in your body are:

1.    Depression. Stress and depression are often believed to go hand in hand. There are only so many chemicals in the brain to help a person deal with stress, and when they are used up, they’re used up.  This can lead to a person becoming profoundly depressed in what seems like a relatively short period of time.

2.    Anxiety.  Those who are stressed are likely to deal with uncontrollable levels of anxiety.  Anxiety and depression often go hand in hand, and this can cause many different changes in the physiological functioning of the body.

3.    Heart disease.  Stress is very closely linked to heart attacks and death associated with cardiovascular disease.  If left untreated, high stress levels will wreak havoc on our bodies and the heart is potentially in danger if this happens.

4.    Diabetes.  Type 2 diabetes is one of the fastest growing epidemics in the world and both mental and physical stress can cause rapid fluctuations in blood sugar levels. The long-term effects associated with this include heart disease, blindness, liver problems, kidney disease, and more.

5.    Hair loss.  We often tease our friends and family when they begin to lose hair, but this can be a symptom of unmanaged stress.  If your hair is falling out prematurely don’t blame genetics, look closely at how you are dealing with the stress in your life and see if there are things you can do to control it more effectively.

6.    Obesity. A lot of us take it for granted that eating as a response to stress (which is really common) can be bad since eating too much of the wrong kinds of food can harm you and make you fat. Plus, stress prohibits the control of necessary chemicals that are needed to break down fat, which can lead to obesity.

7.    Sexual dysfunction. One of the commonly given reasons for male impotence is stress.

Surely you will now agree that stress can seriously affect one’s health in numerous ways. This is by no means an all-inclusive list of how stress affects your body and health.  You may also suffer from hyperthyroidism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, tooth and gum disease, ulcers, and even cancer. Seriously, stress is a big issue! This is all the more reason to start to actively managing stress today.

Tags: managing stress, stress management

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 2:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.