What are the Effects of Stress on Your Health and Life?

                                           

Have you ever wondered what effects the stress in your life has on your health? If you think about it, there are dire consequences to your health when you are continually stressed out. On a daily basis we experience stress as a normal part of our life.  

There are good stresses called eustress which is the good, positive stress. Eustress is an important part of life that keeps us motivated, and excited about life. There are also bad stresses called distress that is taxing and bad on the body.  Distress is the bad stress that creates pain, anxiety, mental suffering or sorrow.  

Both types of stress in excess create a situation that taxes your body and hampers the normal functions of the body.  You might remember the "flight or fight" response. This is the biological response to excessive stress to animals and humans. It stimulates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) that then mobilizes the body's resources under stressful situations to put you in the "survival mode".

Some examples of this flight or fight response include dilation of the eyes (to see well), increased rate and contraction of the heart (for more energy), dilation of the lungs (to get more oxygen for energy), shut down of body's repair system (to conserve energy) and inhibition of peristalsis (to conserve energy).  

This is very handy when needed to save your life from danger. Unfortunately, in today's world we tend to over stimulate this function with a variety of different stimuli such as daily driving, over working, excessive drama, etc.

And our current state of economy is even exaggerating this effect with job losses and financial difficulties which create even more problems in relationships, ability to eat healthy foods, ability to provide for family/loved ones, time and energy to exercise and the list goes on.

We are constantly putting our bodies in the fight or flight mode and we frequently never allow the body to reset itself back to the normal mode. As a consequence, your body is shutting down very important processes that keep you functioning in a normal way.  

The negative effects of the fight or flight stimulation on our body include:

•  1 Slowing down or halting of proper digestion which then causes constipation, anorexia, indigestion, and lack of nutrition.

•  2  Sexual responses are negatively affected, resulting in erectile dysfunction, lack of sexual drive, infertility, and difficulty in urination.

•  3 Mental disorders including post traumatic stress disorder, depression, paranoia, and panic disorder.

•  4  Heart conditions including heart attack, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

•  5. Relationship problems due to focusing on fear and loss.

•  6  Inability to repair chronic injuries (neck pain, mid-back pain, low back pain, shoulder pain, etc.), diseases (diabetes, HIV, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.) and infections (colds, flu, viruses, bacteria, etc.).

The effects of stress on you can be widespread throughout the body and each effect can increase the effect on other systems thus creating a snowball effect. 

For example, long term digestive problems will cause malnutrition, inability to repair chronic injuries and lack of energy which will add to the sexual dysfunction problem that could create relationship problems, which could lead to depression, or suicide issues.