How Does Stress Affect Health
Because stress can affect us at any moment, we must always be physically and mentally prepared to handle it. Stress can affect us both positively and negatively. Positively if it makes us achieve things and be able to catch up with deadlines, and negatively if stress affects our mental and physical being. So we would often ask “how does stress affect health?”
People think that they get sick because they contacted a virus or bacteria or they have a weak immune system but another possibility is that they are subjected to too much stress. This is a classic example of how does stress affect health. We must not only blame the damage to our health on diseases because more often it is our exposure to stress that gives us health problems.
You might be wondering how stress affect you overall health. Your immune system is your body’s mechanism to protect it from diseases and you get sick when you have a weak immune system. Prolonged and constant exposure to stress will weaken your immune system leaving you vulnerable to illness and diseases.
Those who often get a cold every now and then may think they are just not fortunate enough that people around them contaminate them with the cold virus. But the truth is some people who would be exposed in the same manner may never get the cold virus because they have a much stronger immune system that is able to fight the virus. Thus getting contaminated with the cold virus could be attributed to the fact that they are not able to manage their stress effectively and it ultimately affects their immune system.
Interleukin-6, which is an immune system protein, is usually at higher levels among people who are in serious stress. Large amounts of interleukin-6 have been associated to diseases like infections, cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis.
Almost all if not all of us in one time or another will go through difficult situations in life. It could either be a mourning, loss of job, failure in relationships or failure in school. It has a very big effect especially if it is too unexpected, that some people get shattered with the situation. It would continually affect them even after the event has passed for quite a while. They would have nightmares, flashbacks and some even re-live the situation. If this would last for more than a month it would be what you would call post traumatic stress. Eventually some people would be mentally damaged if it persists.
These are just among the examples of how does stress affects health. This is enough reason for us to stay out of stress as much as possible if want to keep out bodies healthy and live a normal life.
