Physiological Effects of Stress

Even if they say that there are some types of stress that is good for the body, we cannot dispute that it is a fact the both acute and chronic stress have negative effects on the body. Our bodies react to stressors and we are subjected to stress. Any challenge that we meet in life is a stressor. Our initial response to it is the “fight or flight” response and this reaction is regulated in our hypothalamus but generated by the autonomic nervous system. This reaction sets up our body to resist or flee from the stressor. This “fight or flight” response in itself already instigates physiological effects of stress in the body.

Nevertheless it is the long-term type of stress that has negative impacts on our bodies. It can affect how we perform our daily tasks and can also bring out psychological burn-out. It also has a big impact as it brings physical damage or distress.

Hans Selye characterized stress reaction into three stages: alarm stage, resistance stage, and exhaustion stage. The alarm stage is initiated when there is a threatening situation. This is where you see the fight or flight response. This is just a very short term reaction but if the threat continues, then resistance sets in.

Resistance stage is described as the chronic, moderate state of activation. This stage must not be kept up at long term because it will cause exhaustion when the body has spent all its resources. During the exhaustion stage the body becomes vulnerable to fatigue, illness and injury.

To understand the physiological effects of stress, we must know that it has an impact on our body and one illness that can be caused by stress is psychosomatic illness. Psychosomatic illness is caused by emotional or psychological distress. Psychosomatic illnesses are not fake or imagined illnesses like what most people think. It is an actual illness like ulcers which can be caused by psychological and emotional distress. If ignored, psychosomatic illness can lead to serious diseases like hear diseases, hypertension, and stroke.

Besides psychosomatic illness, there are more than 50 other symptoms that stress can bring. It can range from the simple headaches, heartburn, insomnia, nightmares, social withdrawal, and diarrhea to the worst which is suicidal thoughts. For short, it affects the brain, hair, mouth, heart, lungs, digestive track, muscles, reproductive organs and skin. We must learn to efficiently deal with stress at it is a very vital part of our lives and it can never be avoided.

We just have to learn how to deal with it healthily to minimize physiological effects of stress. Learning to identify the problem can be a big help and taking steps to manage the problem and our reaction to the problem instead of running away from it.