What activates stress is how we react once we feel that we’re losing control of a certain situation in our lives. It’s a natural response for humans, as we’re constantly wanting to control every facet of what we do. We want to direct, to be able to determine our fate.
What unexpected external events does is it threatens that control, then we respond by preparing to fight or flight, whatever or whomever is attempting to steal that control away from us. Stress is the primary driver of the “fight-or-flight” response.
Almost anything can trigger this stress response, this if you’re required to make or adapt to changes in your immediate environment. The body reacts to these changes either mentally, emotionally, or physically.
Our Personal Reactions To Stress
We all have our own ways of adjusting to these changes, so as a result, the same level of stress or situation can cause different reactions in different individuals.
The causes and reaction towards stress also changes as we begin to age. A child that’s stressed can throw temper tantrums, students will stress for upcoming exams, then it’s extended to relationships and dating as a teen.
The activator of stress becomes anything that takes someone out of their element, their comfort zone. Stress occurs once you need to adapt or react to changes in the environment.
How Stress Can Physically Endanger Our Health
What the various levels of stress can do is reduce or alter the health standards of our bodies, and if it’s not adequately mitigated, it can eventually lead towards anxiety and illness.
What stress turning into anxiety does is it negatively strains our emotional and mental health, but worse, it wreaks havoc on our body physically.
Increases Heart Rate
What varying levels of stress does is it causes the heart to pump faster, forcing our blood pressure to rise. The demand that’s placed on the heart is also capable of producing an irregular heartbeat, which is known as arrhythmia.
Damages The Lungs
Suffering from high stress will force you to breath heavier and more rapidly, which places more strain on the lungs. At times, what this can result in are panic attacks.
During a panic attack, the primary symptom is gasping for air, which can result in hyperventilation. What this rapid intake of air does is it gives more oxygen than what your body needs.
The result is a drop of carbon dioxide in your blood. This then forces your heart to work even harder, placing strain on your respiratory system.
Creates Havoc On Your Stomach
What stress does is it creates chaos on your gastrointestinal system. The longer that your stomach stays in this agitated state, the greater the risk of developing ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome.
What you’ll experience are the symptoms associated with a disrupted digestive system that’s out of balance: acid reflux, indigestion, constipation, and nausea.
Tense Muscles
What most will do is manifest their stress towards a certain part of their body. This specific region, which can either be the face, neck, or the back, etc., is affected under times of duress.
There’s constant contractions of these muscles in these areas which leads to pain and tension. The longer that the tension is placed on these muscles, the more difficult it becomes to releasing the resulting knots of pain.
Then it becomes difficult to experience total relaxation, even when sleeping, where some will instinctively begin clenching their face or jaw muscles while grinding their teeth when under stress.
Skin Imperfections
What various levels of stress does is it has a way of returning it back into the state of your adolescence years, as it becomes susceptible to acne breakouts, rashes, and psoriasis, this at the most inopportune times.
Damages The Immune System
What stress does is it sends out alerts which may be true or false, warning that something’s potentially wrong. Every time that its false, and realized that there’s no danger, the body then begins to get wary and suspicious.
When you’re constantly under stress, what you’re doing is continuously sending out these “danger” signals to your immune system. Eventually, what happens is that it begins to wear down, gets weakened, and is no longer able to respond appropriately, regardless if it’s a real danger or not.
Harms The Reproductive System
Chronic stress symptoms can potentially result in fertility issues. What your body realizes by the stress alerts is that, “it’s not a good time right now,” which as a result, reduces your chances of reproduction.
Increases Your Weight
What your body is housed with are a variety of stress hormones. One in particular is cortisol, which increases your blood sugar levels, which can suppress the immune system.
What cortisol does once it’s alerted with a stress signal is that it prepares your body to get physically pumped up with energy, ready to react. This can be helpful if you’re running to catch the bus on time, but not that helpful in most every day life situations.
What the cortisol hormone does, as a result, is it causes those under constant stress to gain unnecessary weight, which can lead towards hypertension issues.
Affects Your Brain
Stress can be a painful experience, this especially once it manifests into chronic headaches or migraines. It’s known that females are twice as susceptible to tension headaches than men are.
Stress And Physical Pain
It’s no wonder with all of the different ranges of physical symptoms as a result of stress and anxiety, that we seek out answers and solutions to alleviate them.
If you’re struggling with certain physical symptoms, you can usually associated it with your level of stress, so what’s need are ways to combat them.
Some of them include: meditation, exercise, eating healthier, deep breathing, adequate sleep, more leisure and relaxation.