No matter how old and young you are, even a fetal can undergo stress. It happens to everyone and might be because you are too stressed from being pressured at work, when you’re broke, facing uncertainty, things don’t go as planned, to your bad relationship with others, and many other reasons to mention. We find stress in little things we do, in every aspect of life, and the hard truth is you would want to best prevent it from happening. Too much stress makes you sick. From what exactly is stress? How stress makes you sick – 5 signs of stress, stress-associated illnesses, and how to mitigate stress. We are going to explain it further in the following.
What Exactly Is Stress and How Stress Makes You Sick?
What exactly is stress? Why do we bother stressing out? Stress is actually a chemical reaction that happens when your body feels in danger. It allows you to drive in a certain manner for the sake of preventing harmful situations. You see, it is natural. So, how stress makes you sick? Several symptoms of your body responding to stress include a spike in blood pressure and heart rate, a quicker breathing pace, and tight muscles. Your body prepares you for a fight to protect yourself. Small doses of stress are beneficial for you and some are better at handling it. However, our body is never ready for chronic kinds of stress.
READ MORE: Monitor Your Blood Pressure during the Pandemic
How Stress Makes You Sick – 5 Emotional Signs of Stress
Severe stress makes you sick by degrading your immunity. If not treated, it may lead to some diseases in the long run. It won’t be surprising that a study presents an estimation reach of 60-80% from doctor visits are related to stress.
How do you know you are going through stress right now? Stress is a blow-up of emotion. Before learning how to mitigate stress, it’s best to be aware first of these 5 key signs of stress that we can identify as follows:
- You may feel so sensitive and grumpy that you need to withdraw from others
- The struggle to keep up with your emotion prevents you from concentrating on what you are doing at the moment
- During stress, people might find it hard to sleep or they can sleep too much
- Stress eating may occur or the opposite
- You might feel under the weather with a slight fever, stomachaches, fatigues, and terrible headaches
Stress-Associated Illnesses
As mentioned above, stress does not only affect our mental stability but can also bring about stress-associated illnesses. So what happens to your body in this horrible situation?
Psychogenic fever
It is a condition where one experiences fever through psychological causes that his temperature can even reach from 38 to 41°C.
Feeling Cold
A surge of emotion can interrupt the inflammatory response. In that regard, your body will be prone to germs that cause cold.
Stomach Problems
Research evidences how stress-related illnesses also have something to do with stomach problems like stomachache, constipation, diarrhea, and many more. Stress makes you sick and intensifies your stomach acid. You might get heartburn with an increased risk of ulcer and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
Stress Linked to Heart disease
As your blood pressure heightens up, it automatically affects your heart as well. At some point, people experiencing the emotional surge will be at great risk of having a heart attack.
Aching Body Parts
As the muscles tensed, the condition leads to aching body parts like the back, neck, and shoulder. This is because stress intensifies your pain sensitivity.
How to mitigate stress
Learning how to mitigate stress will be very helpful to elevate the symptoms and from getting you to catch stress-related diseases. Some ways you can apply include indulging in fun exercise and yoga sessions, blasting happy music, practicing deep breathing, hugging your dearest friends and relatives, sharing your story to others, snuggling with your pet or loved ones, and taking a relaxing walk.
If in any way, the things above cannot help you lower your stress level, please find a professional to sort out the issues to get further medication regarding strategic stress management to handle it.
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