Effects of Stress on Your Body

Stress is a normal part of life. But the effects of stress on your body, if they're traumatic or chronic, can be serious, causing numerous health problems.

Everyone experiences stress from time to time, even children. Stress is a normal part of life and can be beneficial. It triggers physiological reactions that help you think and act quickly when you need to focus on an immediate task — or when you’re faced with a threatening situation.

Stress can result from an exciting and positive event — like preparing for a wedding or heading out on a dream trip — or a happy, sudden occurrence you didn’t expect, such as winning money or getting a huge promotion.

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Difficult, unexpected changes can also cause stress, such as being diagnosed with a serious illness, losing a spouse through death or divorce, or being laid off from your job without warning. Stress can also occur when you witness or experience a traumatic event — such as a life-threatening natural disaster, war, car accident, or criminal assault.

Usually, stress due to daily stressors (like job or school pressures or responsibilities at home) isn’t recognized as quickly as sudden or traumatic stress. But if stress becomes a frequent or ongoing part of daily life, your mental and physical health can suffer.

It’s important to recognize the effects of stress on your body and work to reduce the stress in your life. Without effective coping mechanisms, stress can cause symptoms in multiple parts of your body. Over time, unrelenting stress may even result in serious medical problems.

Understanding the effects of stress on your body

It's normal for your body to have physiological reactions to stressors. For example, if you are nervous before a job interview or giving a speech, you may experience some obvious but usually not overwhelming effects of stress on your body. Your heart may beat faster than usual, and you may feel “butterflies” in your stomach.

But if you find yourself in a dangerous situation, stress hormones flood your body as you go into survival mode, preparing to fight or flee. Your breathing and pulse rate speed up dramatically, as your brain uses more oxygen and muscles tense, ready to act.

If your daily life comes with a chronic level of stress due to your job or family issues, you may not even notice your body’s ongoing stress response. But it can be causing both emotional and physical symptoms.

Despite the fact there are different kinds and levels of stress, all of them can put mental and physical health at risk, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) — especially if you suffer a serious trauma or stressors are constant in your life.

If you are unable to recognize and cope with stress adequately, the resulting effects of stress on your body can include suppressed immune, digestive, sleep, and reproductive systems. When those areas of your body don’t work properly, physical and mental symptoms can develop.

Ongoing stress can make you sick

People may feel the effects of stress in different ways. For example, some who experience traumatic stress, including the shock of losing a loved one or experiencing or witnessing a violent or frightening event, often experience temporary symptoms of mental illness, but most recover soon afterwards, the NIH points out.

Others may develop short-term or ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with symptoms including nightmares and flashbacks of the stressful event and physiological reactions as if the body is still in “fight or flight” mode — including being easily startled and over-reactive to anything that reminds the person of the trauma.

Far more people suffer from chronic stress than PTSD, and many of them don’t recognize their physical symptoms could be the result of ongoing stress.

When the cause of the stress is constant, compared to acute or traumatic stress, your body stays revved up in stress mode to some degree. It doesn’t get a clear signal to return to normal functioning, the NIMH explains.

Symptoms of ongoing stress may include:

• Digestive problems (nausea, heartburn, or diarrhea)
• Headaches
  
• Insomnia
• Emotional symptoms, such as depression, anger, or irritability

What’s more, living with chronic stress can make you more susceptible to frequent and severe viral infections, such as the flu or common cold.

More common health problems linked to stress

You should never assume new or troublesome symptoms are due to stress. Always see your doctor. But you should consider how stress may be causing or contributing to your symptoms.

The American Psychological Association (APA) notes these common health problems can be triggered or worsened by chronic stress:

• Musculoskeletal tension and pain. Millions of people suffer from chronic painful conditions, and often an accident or injury started the pain. But the effects of stress on you body can also play a role. Muscle tension is a way your body automatically guards against injury and pain when faced with stress, causing your muscles to be in chronic state of being guarded, taunt, tense, and even painful if your life is stressful.
• Breathing problems. Being under stress makes you breathe harder. If you have asthma or other lung problems, you may experience more difficulty breathing due to ongoing stress.
• Heart and blood pressure problems. Chronic stress increases levels of hormones and elevates your blood pressure. That can take a serious toll on your cardiovascular system over time, increasing your risk for hypertension, heart attack, or stroke.
• Reproduction and sexual problems. The stress hormone cortisol can negatively impact sperm production and cause erectile dysfunction in men. In women, stress can result in irregular or absent menstrual cycles, worsen premenstrual syndrome symptoms, and make menopause symptoms more severe. Chronic stress can also lower sexual desire.
• Type 2 diabetes risk. Blood sugar levels increase substantially after stress triggers the release of the hormones cortisol and epinephrine. The resulting high blood sugar can cause type 2 diabetes to develop in people who are susceptible to the disease, the APA notes.

Get help for ongoing stress

The negative effects of stress on your body aren’t inevitable. First, you must recognize the signs of stress, including difficulty sleeping, volatile moods, and having low energy. Then use these tips to take control and soothe the effects of stress on your body:

• Get moving. Just walking 30 minutes a day can lower stress levels, according to the NIMH.
• Eat healthy. Skip fast food and concentrate on eating well-balanced meals.
• Don’t skimp on sleep. Keep your room dark and quiet and stick to a specific bedtime.
• Open up. Talk to friends, family, or your doctor about ongoing stressful problems. Seek counseling with a psychologist or therapy, if needed.
• Don’t try to cope with drugs and alcohol. Turning to drugs and alcohol won’t relieve stress; instead, you’ll increase the effects of stress on your body.
• Give yourself a break. If news events are increasing your stress level, give yourself permission to stop listening or watching the news for a while.

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