Effects of Stress on Health

Many of us have found ourselves staying up late at night, studying, doing homework and other tasks to keep up our grades. All this creates a lot of stress for students of all ages. Personally I have found my self stressing over school work ever since middle school. Even worrying about getting accepted into this school, along with completing the application was a stressful process. With constant days of getting limited amounts of rest, due to working on homework it could have a negative impact on health. Personally, stress due to school work has caused restlessness, decreased mood and anxiety. There are two types of stress, chronic and acute. Chronic stress occurs over longer periods of time (weeks, months) and causes longer periods of unhealthy habits respectively. A second type of stress is called acute stress, which is a physical shock, like rapid heart beating after a dramatic event and causes less physical harm to the body.

Stress causes:

  • Depression
  • High Blood Pressure
  • Anxiety
  • Cardio Vascular Problems

So does stress have a true impact on health? Researchers would say so. In an article published by the American Psychological Association, they compiled a list of negative impacts stress has been found to have on health. By looking at the biological methods behind proposed health effects on stress helps determine the real causes of stress. For example, prolonged stress causes increased heart rate and constant release of hormones, causing a fight or flight response. With this occurring, it will result in hypertension, or high blood pressure and could cause heart problems in the future. Living a stressful life, often causes people to make unhealthy decisions. Stress can cause people to partake in higher consumption of alcohol, tobacco use, unhealthy foods and many more. many smokers say they need to go have a smoke to take the edge off while in a stressful situation. This can lead to a higher amount of cigarettes smoked and is a terrible alternative while in a stressful situation. According to the same source about forty percent choose to manage stress by eating unhealthy foods, about twenty percent resort to tobacco products, and the other forty percent reported higher consumption of alcohol. There are much healthier ways to manage stress. Some people say watching TV, surfing the internet, listening to music, reading and exercising are the best ways they manage a stressful situation without damaging their health.

sia-physical-symptoms-of-stress-for-adults-with-poor-healthLooking at this from a scientific perspective, to determine wether the hypothesis is true that stress is to blame for poor health, we need to consider other possible causations. What if people that have poor health are more likely to become stressed, this would cause a potential flaw in the results (reverse causation). Overall, people put in stressful situations should look for some type of treatment since there will be no good outcome.

 

 

 

3 thoughts on “Effects of Stress on Health

  1. Nicholas E Schneider

    I couldn’t possibly relate any more with your article; although i sometimes view my school induced stress as helpful because it gets me motivated and keeps me on my toes for deadlines, exams, and homework, it does often have a negative effect on how i feel. While i don’t suffer from any drastic health problems as a result of my stress (at least not yet), a high stress level around exam times and due dates for ] can make me feel anxious, frustrated, and sometimes overwhelmed and could potentially have a negative effect on my schoolwork. Here is a great article with tips on how to deal with stress: http://psychcentral.com/lib/20-tips-to-tame-your-stress/ .

  2. jnb5450

    This post is very relatable for us college students. I completely agree with the symptoms of stress. If I have a lot of work to do and I become stressed, I feel myself getting anxiety and getting in a different mood. I was wondering if you think there is any correlation between stress and eating and weight gain/ weight loss. I know that when people are stressed, some tend to over eat and some tend to lose their appetite. Here is an interesting link (http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/stress-weight-gain#1) which talks about how they correlate. Very interesting post!

  3. Zachariah Watkins

    Notice how the major problem with stress seems to be depression, I wonder if there is actually a reverse causation regarding this. Such as if you have depression do you have more stress than usual or maybe if your anxious about an upcoming test you begin to stress even more. I believe that we tend to subjugate ourselves to insane amounts of pressure just to survive the journey of college. Overall great article and nice read here is an article I would read through its pretty good.

    http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/expert-answers/stress/faq-20058233

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