When you’re stressed, it’s easy to spiral out of control and begin talking negatively to ourselves. Once you’ve gotten in the habit of noticing your body’s stress response, such as feeling your blood pressure start to rise, you can begin using these tools for stress management. If you don't, you're likely to develop stress-related health problems. If you’re noticing these symptoms, pay attention! This is your body telling you that you need to take a break and practice stress management. What does chronic stress feel like for you? Physical symptoms of stress might be: The first step in stress management is noticing when your stress levels start to rise. Too much stress causes your immune system to work less effectively, making you vulnerable to a range of diseases. When you're stressed, you're more likely to catch the common cold. As a result, high perceived stress is a risk factor for neurological problems like Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, chronic stress and elevated cortisol can damage the brain’s memory structures. Inflammation associated with chronic stress has a negative effect on the brain. As a result, you may find it hard to get to sleep, or you may wake up too early and have difficulty getting back to sleep. Stress can affect levels of other hormones and disrupt your body’s sleep-wake cues. This can lead to chronic worry that is difficult to control, a primary symptom of anxiety. However, our brains may begin to create a fight or flight stress response when faced with normal (non-stressful or threatening) situations. When we feel stressed, it is often due to life circumstances beyond our control. Stress and anxiety are related to each other. One of the most common physical health problems associated with chronic stress is severe fatigue. The fight or flight response makes your body keyed up, meaning you will crash later. Over time, this can raise your risk of a heart attack or cardiovascular disease. This leads to increased blood pressure, stiffness of blood vessels, and build-up of plaques in the vessels. Over Time, Chronic Stress Response Can Lead to the Following Physical Health Problems: Increased Risk for Cardiovascular DiseaseĬhronic stress and elevated cortisol cause an inflammatory response in your body. Cortisol flows throughout your body, meaning it affects all aspects of your physical health. Although cortisol is helpful in the short term, it can cause damage to your body when you experience chronic stress. Instead, that fight or flight response is triggered by normal stressful events. In modern life, we rarely face threats where our life is truly in danger. Cortisol temporarily improves memory and immune functioning, helping you to survive the threat. Your body gets keyed up and your blood pressure rises, preparing you to fight the threat or flee to safety. This fight or flight response is evolution’s way of keeping you safe during a dangerous or stressful situation. Cortisol is an important hormone for the “fight or flight” response. That is because too much stress causes levels of the hormone cortisol to increase. High rates of perceived stress causes health issues in every major organ system in your body.
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