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Is It Really True That Stress Is Bad For Your Health?

It has been known for years that stress can affect your health but we are only now starting to fully understand precisely how stress can affect the body. Some of the myths surrounding the subject of stress, such as the fact that stress could lead to ulcers, are finally being exposed and others are now being confirmed.

A lot of the more obvious affects of stress such as, muscle tension, headaches, a rapid heartbeat, hypertension and digestive problems are easy to recognize and well known, but there are also several longer-term and potentially serious conditions which can be produced by chronic stress.

Studies which have been carried out at the National Institutes of Health and at other institutions for instance strongly suggest that stress affects the body's immune system. Interestingly these same studies show that the affect can be both negative and positive.

Given that one particular definition of stress is that it is merely an individual's 'fight or flight' response to a perceived threat, it can clearly have a good affect. It can, for instance, trigger the release of chemicals which assist in healing infections from bites. That makes sense if you consider just how evolution may have tailored the body's immune system to cope with these events.

However, when this particular response persists over a lengthy time period, the affects can be harmful and one consequence is that the body's immune system reduces in effectiveness resulting in an increased susceptibility to infection and less resistance to flu and other viral illnesses.

Another consequence is an overall feeling of tiredness and sometimes even depression. If a person suffers stress for long periods then a feedback loop is created between the cause of the stress (the belief that it is not possible to find a solution for the problem which is causing the stress) and the affects. This gives rise to a cycle where the belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Chronic stress can also effect your health by compromising you circulatory system. If stress hormones which are released as a result of the 'fight or flight' trigger are not used up by {some form of physical activity such as fighting an infection|the physical activity of, for instance, fighting an infection then they can lead to actual physiological stress on the body.

Hypertension hightens the tension on the walls of blood vessels which can result in small tears arising in the blood vessels. If the body then reacts to heal these micro-tears, scar tissue is frequently produced and this restricts the flow of blood through these vessels.

Whenever stress levels are very high or remain for a long enough period of time then heart attacks can occur. The likelihood of heart attack is also higher in older individuals or in individuals who are carrying specific genetic characteristics. With narrowed blood vessels, the heart might well not be able to deliver enough blood and oxygen at moments of high demand.

It has also been known for a long time that stress can exacerbate the affects of rheumatoid arthritis and this is also now explained by the affect of stress on the immune system as there is a well documented and proven link between rheumatoid arthritis and the body's immune system.

Avoiding stress is important for us all to maintain good health and, fortunately, as we start to gain a clearer understanding of stress we are also developing some very useful stress relief techniques.