The PHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES of mental/emotional STRESS

Stress is something we all encounter in our lives. Whether we are cramming for a test, trying to finish a work project on time, shuffling the kids around, or simply become overwhelmed by the basic demands of living.

We needn't have major stressors in our lives for the cumulative effect of stress to begin to become detrimental to our physical health. Stress particularly long term stress, under-managed stress, or too frequent stress can make you physically sick.

Stress isn't merely a psychological state or emotional feeling; but neurochemical and hormonal physical changes that are transmitted throughout the entire body system.

Stress can change the brain itself along with affecting many organ systems.

In response to stress the adrenal gland releases cortisol, epinephrine, and nor-epinephrine; as these hormones travel through your system adrenaline courses through your bloodstream into your heart, causing your heart rate to speed up in the short term, and in the long-term may lead to hypertension. Cortisol begins to change the surface of the cell membranes eventually these type of changes lead to atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a disease of the arteries characterized by the deposition of plaques of fatty material on their inner walls. Atherosclerosis and hypertension are risk factors for stroke and heart disease.

The brain sensing stress turns on the autonomic nervous system and it communicates with the digestive tract. In the short term this may cause nausea, diarrhea, or cramps. In the long term this makes you more sensitive to acid, and to produce more acid, hence more likely to have heartburn and eventually GERD. It also effects the flora and fauna of your microbiome: which scientists now know is a key factor not just your digestive health but your overall health; our gut is said to be our second brain. 80% of our serotonin, a happy hormone, is produced in the gut. Dysbiosis of the gut microbiome can lead to a wide array of downstream health and mental health disturbances and conditions.

Stress hampers the effectiveness of our immune system making us more vulnerable to colds and viruses. This is believed in part to be due to the immune systems response to cortisol levels rising in the bloodstream indicating to receptors in the immune system that the body is under stress and it needs to ramp up in order to defend against this stressor. However if you have had prolonged or extreme exposure to stress , hence long exposure to cortisol, the immune receptors responsible for responding to the stressors signal of the cortisol triggered when you catch a cold infection or virus becomes resistant to responding to this signal after being bathed in it for a long duration due to psychological or emotional stress. The immune system on whole is already weakened by the extended exposure to unmanaged or accumulated stress. As its cascade of response is triggered in part by cortisol, even if you are not exposed to a cold, virus, or infection: your immune system is chronically activated due to the high cortisol circulating in the blood stream. This leaves you more prone to getting sick as your immune system is already taxed even if you are still responsive to cortisol receptors; as well as leaving you systemically feeling exhausted and fatigued a general sense of malaise as your body believes it is fighting something when nothing is there. It takes alot of metabolic energy to operate the immune system and if yours is always actively "ON", it will leave you feeling fatigued and lethargic .

Cortisol causes the accumulation of fat to be stored around the middle belly region. This is not just subcutaneous fat, the fat just beneath the skin, but visceral fat, the dangerous fat that wraps around and can wrap into our organs causing organ damage. Having a majority of your excess weight stored around the middle puts you at increased risk for type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, especially compounded in women. Stress eating is more than just a negative coping mechanism, stress itself alters our hormone regulation, causing us to eat more and gain weight. This coupled with the cortisol's propensity to put that weight down in the most dangerous places further emphasizes the real impacts of mental and emotional stress on the physical body increasing the risks of the aforementioned diseases to a greater extent.

"According to several studies, chronic stress impairs brain function in multiple ways. It can disrupt synapse regulation, resulting in the loss of sociability and the avoidance of interactions with others. Stress can kill brain cells and even reduce the size of the brain."
-Touro University-

"Chronic stress has a shrinking effect on the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning.

While stress can shrink the prefrontal cortex, it can increase the size of the amygdala, which can make the brain more receptive to stress. “Cortisol is believed to create a domino effect that hard-wires pathways between the hippocampus and amygdala in a way that might create a vicious cycle by creating a brain that becomes predisposed to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight,”
Christopher Bergland writes in Psychology today

To hit a superficial nerve, stress not only impacts your interior health but your exterior health as well. Beyond accumulating a belly and generally gaining weight, via chronic poorly managed stress levels, it can also cause acne, and grey your hair.

Further stress causes changes in the proteins of your skin and reduces it's elasticity, causing wrinkling and premature aging.

This is by far not a comprehensive list of the detrimental impact of psychological and emotional stress on the physical body and state of your immediate and long term health.

I am not a doctor or an expert the above facts have been acquired throughout the years from a wide  variety of sources if you wish to verify the accuracy of these statements or search further into the topic I highly encourage you to do so.

Most people do not take stress that seriously.

They know they are under stress on a daily basis. They can "feel" it. But they do not do anything to attend to it as they presume it is just an uncomfortable mental or emotional state that is harmless to be endured and moved past without processing addressing or coping with it. They do not realize it has real and dangerous implications on their physical health.

I wanted to write this article for the blog this month to draw attention to the fact that the uncomfortable state you are feeling is neither purely emotional or mental, nor harmless, that it creates real detrimental impacts on your physical health in the short and long term.

Don't just PUSH THROUGH or PUSH DOWN your stress.

Learn to cope with and process stress in a healthy manner as a priority. As a cornerstone to your physical well-being not simply to "feel better"; but to live better, and longer in a healthier state.

Hopefully the examples I have laid out here will make you take a second glance at your own stress levels, sources, and management styles in your life to see if perhaps you could make management of stress more of a priority for your overall well-being.

Emotionally, psychologically, and physically.