Health: 35 Things To Know About Stress and How it Affects You

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Health: 35 Things to know About Stress and How it Affects You

Stress can be described as a state of worrying or mental tension that is triggered by a difficult situation. It is a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives. Stress affects both children and adults. Animals have also been tested and found that they too get stressed.

Stress can come from physical causes like not getting enough sleep or having an illness. Other causes can be emotional for example worrying about not having money to pay bills or even the death of loved ones.

Some factors that may lead to children becoming stressed include negative situations at home violence in either school or home or even exams. As a parent, you can help children control any kind of stress by looking after them and helping them learn how to manage them since some of them such s exams are unavoidable.

1. Stress Affects Everybody Including Children

As long as one is alive he or she is at risk of experiencing stress. It occurs naturally as one is facing a dark situation in life. Some situations in that children are likely to experience stress include Negative thoughts or feeling about themselves, changes in their bodies especially during puberty problems with friends at school and socializing chronic illness financial problems in the family or the death of a loved one unsafe environment at home or in the neighborhood may also trigger stress.

Parents can help them overcome stress by spotting the triggers and responding to them with love, they can also be role models, promote positive thinking, and also support healthy habits.

2. Stress Can Lead to Weight Gain or Loss

So much stress can lead to weight gain for some people. This is a result of the body producing a hormone called Cortisol. This hormone stimulates fat and carbohydrate metabolism creating a surge of energy in the body.

The process is essential for the body and causes a high rate of appetite. As a result, you are likely to eat a lot of food mostly unhealthy. In some cases, some people will not eat hence the loss of weight.

3. Stress Can Weaken the Immune System

Photo by Usman Yousaf on Unsplash

Stress can highly damage your body’s cells and trigger responses from your immune systems which include elevating inflammation hence making one more susceptible to viruses and infections. Stress also raises the level of Cortisol levels which has been proven to weaken your immune system if they stay high for too long

4. Stress Can Make it Worse for Existing Health Problems

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

A person living with diabetes can deteriorate their health fast as a result of stress. Stress hormones make blood sugar rise or fall unpredictably and this causes diabetes. If not wee managed can complicate the situation and lead to other health problems or even death.

5. Stress Can Lead to a Variety of Physical and Mental Health Problems

Chronic stress or a constant stress experienced over a long time contributes to long-term problems for the heart and blood vessels. The consistent and ongoing increase in heart rate and the higher levels of stress hormones and blood pressure can take a toll on the body.

6. Stress Can Lead to Emotional Problems

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

Stress affects your mood depending on what is bothering you. Stress is medically evaluated to have a psychological impact that manifests as a feeling of loss of control, insomnia, fatigue, sadness, tears, or concentration problem. As a result, it makes one feel anxiously irritable, or even depressed.

7. Stress Interferes With Sleeping Patterns

High levels of stress affect sleep by prolonging how long it takes to fall asleep and fragmenting sleep. When you stay awake thinking a lot triggers the body’s stress response system hence they release the hormones which further disrupt sleep.

8. Stress Leads to Cardiovascular Disease

The hormone released as a result of stress called Cortisol is said to have an impact on increasing blood cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure. They are common factors for heart disease so stress can affect these heart diseases by causing changes that promote the buildup of plaque deposits in the arteries.

Minor stress also can trigger heart problems such as poor blood flow to the heart muscle. The body’s response to stress is supposed to protect you.

9. Stress Can Lead to Drug Abuse and Addiction

Image by Social Butterfly from Pixabay

Stress is a risk factor for developing an addiction. Science has it that it is riskier if one gets exposed at an early age.

There are those people who have stress the only option they have to help them overcome stress is by using drugs.

10. Stress Decreases Productivity and Work Performance

When something is bothering someone, they spend most of their time thinking about it, worrying how it will end and so their productivity and work performance will be reduced. The relationship between stress and work productivity is complex.

11. Stress Affects One Social Life

Stress affects one social life. When you are faced with stress, you are likely to retract from social interactions and become irritable and hostile.

12. Stress Can Make You at Risk of Accidents and Injuries

Image by Netto Figueiredo from Pixabay

Some of the road accidents you see are caused by stress. Stress reduces the level of concentration and you know exactly what happens when you have low concentration you are highly likely not to give the best services triggering accidents or even injuries.

13. Stress Affects Your Physical Appearance

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay

Stress can cause wrinkles on one’s face. This is because they cause changes to the proteins in your skin and hence reduce the elasticity.

The loss of elasticity contributes to wrinkling formation. Stress may also lead to furrowing of your brow that may also contribute to the formation of wrinkles.

14. Stress Can Cause Muscle Tension and Pain

Stress can cause Temporomandibular joint dysfunction. This dysfunction is a group of health problems that affect the joint where your jaws connect to your skull. It is caused as a result of repeated clenching of teeth.

15. You Can Cope With Stress by Scheduling Time for Relaxing Activities

Image by 5132824 from Pixabay

One way of coping with stress is by scheduling time for relaxing. Time for doing exercise when you feel overwhelmed and by the time you are done your mind will have relaxed.

You can also be cool by taking nature walks visiting cool places and doing what you feel it’s necessary like swimming running cooking depending on you.

16. You Can Cope with Stress with Good Lifestyle Habits

We have seen that n hormone called cortisol is released when you are experiencing stress. It can cause you to eat too much and also it leads to cardiovascular diseases.

To cope with stress it’s advisable to eat healthy food and avoid the use of drugs as they may result in other causes of health diseases.

17. You Can Overcome Stress by Talking to Others

Another way of overcoming stress is talking to others. When one is stressed he/she has a tendency of excluding themselves from people which leads to depression. And hence it’s good for one to talk to others or even visit a counselor and expose what is bothering you.

18. Stress Causes Stomach Issues

Image by Darko Djurin from Pixabay

It has been tested and proven that stress stops the gastrointestinal system from working properly thus affecting the stomach and large bowel.

Some of these conditions caused by gastrointestinal systems include nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, and indigestion. If it is not controlled, inflammation from the stomach leads to the risk of peptic ulcers.

19. Chronic Stress Leads to Depression

When people experience stress, they stop engaging in healthy activities. They cut off all social activities and stay alone.

Staying alone without speaking out about what bothers you puts you more at risk of depression. Also, stress increases your cortisol level which is also linked to depression.

20. Stress Causes Headaches and Migraines

Image by Владимир Берзин from Pixabay

Stress is linked to being the main cause of headaches and migraines. Headaches occur when neck and scalp muscles become tense or contract. Bodies react to stress with a ‘fight or flight’ response.

It involves the release of certain chemicals that can cause physical changes such as in the blood vessels. This in turn brings headaches.

21. Stress Can Worsen Allergic Reactions

Prolonged levels of stress can worsen and lead to allergic reactions. This causes skin symptoms such as hives or rashes.

Stress also causes other allergy symptoms such as watery eyes and runny nose. Nit as well triggers an asthma attack in people living with asthma.

22. Listening to Music is Also a Way of Coping with Stress

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Most music affects both emotions and the body. Music is effective for relaxation and stress management.

Research confirms that music can quiet your mind and relax your muscles and hence making you feel soothed while releasing the stress that you may be experiencing at the moment.

23. Getting Enough Sleep is a Way of Coping with Stress

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

We saw that one cause of stress is lack of sleep which is caused by the result of Cortisol that is released in the body making you stay awake. A reversal of this is getting more rest reduces the Cortisol levels and hence restores balance to the body’s system.

It’s advisable to have seven to nine hours of sleep a night to avoid the rise of the hormone Cortisol.

24. Stress Leads to Violence

Stress is said to be one of the factors of social problems.  Social stress leads to the development of psychological problems which range from exaggerated anxiety and depression to antisocial and violence-related behaviors.

25. Everybody Responds to Stress Differently

Stress is common to every person as long as you are breathing, however, every person experiences stress differently and their reactions are different. Some stress can be positive when it helps overcome challenges and also motivate.

26. Stress Can be Caused by Financial Problems

In the world we are living today, everything is all about finances to pay off the bills. And when the bills are running after you and you don’t have the means to sort them you start overthinking, getting worried about what will happen or what you are supposed to do hence leading to stress.

27. Stress Can be Both Acute and Chronic

Acute stress is referred to as short-term stress while chronic stress is defined as long-term stress. Acute stress when it occurs severally always leads to chronic stress. Both should be managed as they have consequences.

28. Stress Affects the Ability to Manage Time and Prioritize Tasks

When you are experiencing stress you spend most of your time overthinking and worrying. With these, it will not be easy for you to manage your time to do what is expected of you at a particular moment or even prioritize what is important at the moment.

29. Stress Makes One Feel Overwhelmed

Image by Tep Ro from Pixabay

As we know, everyone experiences stress and sometimes the stress makes one feel overwhelmed.

Sciences have proven that one may be at risk for an anxiety disorder if it feels like one can’t manage the stress and if the symptoms of your stress interfere with your everyday life.

30. Stress Can Make You Lose Interest in Everything

Once you suffer chronic stress, it leads to burnout where one loses motivation and interest and they tend to withdraw from people. At this time one loses interest in everything they used to love doing before.

31. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Helps Manage Stress

Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps individuals to eliminate avoidant and safety-seeking behaviors that prevent self-correction and faulty beliefs which thereby facilitates stress management to reduce stress-related disorders and enhance mental health.

32. Social Support Can Help Reduce Stress

Social support can help reduce stress. There are possible ways in which social support can buffer stress and including; preventing the individual from negatively reacting to stress by showing them how it is not stressful, increasing an individual ability to perceive and reactively cope with the stressor, or even providing supportive solutions for stress.

33. Taking Breaks and Ranking Self-care Help Manage Stress

In situations where maybe work in an organization is too much and you are working extra harder, and you feel overworked you can opt to take a short break to relax or even look for ways in which you will not overwork by looking for tactics that will help you do your work without damaging yourself.

34. Medication Can be Used to Treat Depression Which is Associated with Stress

The right medication has been found to help treat depression and anxiety some of the things which are associated with stress.

These medicines are called Selective serotine reuptake inhibitors which include Paxil, Prozac, and Lexapro. They are the prescribed anti-depressant medications for anti-stress purposes.

35. Stress During Pregnancy

Image by huzhe from Pixabay

Pregnant mothers should avoid being stressed as it leads to high blood pressure during pregnancy.

Stress puts a pregnant mother at risk of a high blood pressure condition referred to as preeclampsia, preterm birth, and having a low- birth weight infant. Stress may also lead to miscarriage.