By Do you require yet another source of anxiety? It’s possible that your stress is getting you sick.
“Stress doesn’t just make us feel bad emotionally,” explains Jay Winner, MD, author of Take the Stress Out of Your Life and head of the Sansum Clinic’s Stress Management Program. “It can also aggravate just about any health ailment you can think of,” says the author.
Many health problems have been linked to stress in studies. Obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal issues, and asthma appear to be worsened or increased by stress.
There is some good news before you get too worked out about being stressed out. Following a few basic stress alleviation methods will help you feel less stressed while also lowering your health risks.
10 Health Problems Related to Stress
What are some of the most serious stress-related health issues? Here’s a small sample.
Heart disease
Researchers have long suspected that those with a stressed-out type A personality are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and heart problems. We’re not sure why this is. Stress induces the release of cholesterol and triglycerides into the bloodstream, which increases heart rate and blood flow. It’s also probable that stress is linked to other issues, such as an increased likelihood of smoking or obesity, which increase cardiac risks indirectly.
Doctors are aware that severe emotional stress, such as heart attacks, might be a trigger for major cardiac disorders. People with chronic cardiac problems should avoid acute stress as much as possible and learn how to successfully manage life’s inescapable challenges.
Asthma
Stress has been demonstrated in numerous studies to aggravate asthma. According to some data, a parent’s prolonged stress may raise their child’s risk of acquiring asthma. In one study, researchers looked at how parental stress affected the asthma rates of young children who were also exposed to air pollution or whose mothers smoked while pregnant. Children whose parents were stressed had a significantly increased risk of having asthma.
Obesity
Excess belly fat appears to be more dangerous to one’s health than fat on the legs or hips, and regrettably, that’s where people who are under a lot of stress tend to keep it. “Higher amounts of the hormone cortisol are caused by stress,” explains Winner, “and this appears to increase the amount of fat accumulated in the abdomen.”
Diabetes
Diabetes can be aggravated by stress in two ways. For starters, it makes poor behaviours like unhealthy eating and excessive drinking more likely. Second, stress appears to directly boost glucose levels in persons with type 2 diabetes.
Headaches
One of the most common causes of headaches, not just tension headaches but migraines as well, is stress.
Anxiety and Depression
Chronic stress is linked to higher incidence of depression and anxiety, which comes as no surprise. According to a review of recent studies, those who experience job-related stress — such as rigorous labour with little rewards — have an 80 percent higher risk of getting depression within a few years than those who experience less stress.
Gastrointestinal Problems
Here’s one thing stress doesn’t do: it doesn’t make you get ulcers. However, it has the potential to aggravate them. Many additional GI diseases, such as chronic heartburn (or gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), are linked to stress, according to Winner.
Alzheimer’s Disease
According to one animal study, stress may exacerbate Alzheimer’s disease by hastening the formation of brain lesions. According to some researchers, lowering stress may help to decrease the growth of the disease.
Accelerated Aging
Stress has been shown to have an impact on how you age. One study looked at the DNA of mothers who were under a lot of stress because they were caring for a chronically unwell child vs mothers who weren’t. The impacts of accelerated ageing were discovered in a specific region of the chromosomes, according to the researchers. Stress seems to speed up the ageing process by 9 to 17 years.
Premature Death
A study looked at the effects of stress on the health of elderly carers caring for their spouses, who are already under a lot of stress. Caretakers had a 63 percent higher death rate than adults their age who were not caregivers, according to the study.
