How Does Stress Affect Health?

How does stress affect health, your body and overall wellbeing? The emotional effects and physical effects of stress can be damaging, and prevention is the best way to minimize the effects of stress on health.

Stress is a natural reaction of the body, and stress (fight or flight reaction) is necessary for survival and to motivate us into action.

However, chronic, prolonged stress suppresses our immunity and makes us vulnerable to illness and disease.

It is difficult to be productive when you are over-stressed and exhausted. Every tasks seems a struggle. In fact, your body is telling you that you need to slow down!

Stress and Health - Related Topics

• Effect of Stress on Health
• Healthy Eating
• How Does Stress Affect the Immune System?
• How Does Stress Affect the Nervous System?
• Stress and Pregnancy
• Stress Health
• Stress Induced Asthma
• Stress Illness

What Makes Stress
Affect Your Overall Health?

Long term stress is different. You experience long term stress when you are in the middle of a nasty divorce, when you have a family member who is critically ill for months, or when you have a job that you hate and you work with people who are mean to you.

Long term stress can affect the immune system, and you can actually develop a serious illness. Under stress, your body has the same reaction it would, if you were actually being physically attacked. Your body interprets stress as “attack”.

When your body, mind and spirit are continually stressed, over time, your sympathetic nervous system shuts down “un-needed systems” like bowel movements and digestion.

If this happens for a long time, you can really have some serious stress-related physical problems!

How does stress affect health? In many, many ways. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to limit the amount of stress in your life. The effects of stress on health are complex--and serious.

And, if you are going through a particularly stressful period, make sure that you have some good relaxation techniques and stress management ideas to minimize the effects of stress on your body!

If you are experiencing short term stress you might get a headache or migraine, feel tightness in your shoulders, feel nauseous or dizzy, have difficult concentrating on simple tasks, feel irritable and moody.

With Long term stress your immunity is not functioning properly and you might suffer from colds, flus, get high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancers, etc, etc. There are many stress symptoms.

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