Everyone on earth who has ever lived is subject to stress on almost a daily basis. We all know that it isn’t very fun. But how bad really is stress?
First of all, stress isn’t exactly bad as long as you have time to cool down after a stressful situation. Stress is an evolutionary function that helped our ancient ancestors to face dangerous and stressful situations. Our bodies do this by producing the hormone cortisol, which helps to move energy to parts of the body that need it. More oxygen is routed to the brain, heart and breathing rates increase. Your liver produces extra glucose in order to give you a boost of energy. Your muscles tense up to protect you from injury and your immune system is stimulated to protect from infection and to heal wounds.
What goes wrong is when a person experience stress for prolonged periods of time. Stress also wasn’t meant for dealing with things like homework and tests. It was purposed more for fighting off an attacking lion or some other short, intense event. Large amounts of stress continuously over a length of time is called chronic stress. With too much stress, the earlier benefits of stress turn harmful. Like in many other areas, too much of anything is bad for you.
First off, if you have a respiratory problem like asthma or emphysema, the increased intake of oxygen may make it harder to breathe for you. Your heart rate increasing is also bad if done for a long period of time. Blood vessels constrict during stress, raising blood pressure in order to route more blood to the brain. Making your heart work too hard for too long also leads to possible heart problems and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. Your liver pumping out too much extra glucose isn’t good either. Glucose is sugar, and too much sugar in your blood may lead to type 2 diabetes. All of this activity for too long of a time period can also cause heartburn and acid reflux by disturbing your digestive system. Muscles staying tensed for too long causes aching in your head, back, shoulder, and body. Cortisol’s boost to the immune system is good for a short boost, but too much cortisol in the immune system will hurt its function by hindering the secretion of histamine and the inflammatory response to defend against outside threats. This makes it hard for the body to defend against new diseases from entering the body, and it also extends the time it takes to recover from an existing illness.
Sources:
As someone who has had her fair share of school related stress, I found this topic very relatable. Especially for many of us who are college freshmen trying to adjust to new schedules and workloads, it is crucial to be in tune to your personal stress levels and know how to manage them. This article offers some really helpful tips on managing chronic stress and keeping workloads in perspective. Even though life can be challenging at times, it is important to find a way to work things out before the situation becomes too overwhelming.
I can truly relate to this article because stress effects me in a way not mentioned. Migraines. I know when I am super stressed out, I will get a migraine so bad that I will lose vision in my eyes for a certain amount of time and then the head ache pains set in. The vision loss is a warning that I have a migraine coming on. I have found home remedies that are supposed to help with it but none have seemed to help. The most effective is to remove myself from situations or to write lists to organize myself to not feel as stressed. With the personal experience I do believe that too much is a bad thing. It makes sense that our bodies were not designed to combat long term stress and that is why it has such negative impacts on out bodies when we undergo it for too long.