21 Effects of Stress on the Body

Stress is the reaction of the body to a certain circumstance that requires a response or an adjustment from our part. Often the effects of stress on the body have physical, mental and emotional consequences.

In the last 20 years, stress has been a popular subject of study, mostly because we have come closer to understanding the negative effects it can produce. The problem is that stress is part of our normal life. Many events that happen in our life and in our surroundings provoke stress; and therefore, a physical and emotional response. This is the reason why so many people fail when they intent to avoid stress. There’s simply no way to avoid it without isolating yourself from the world. So, a better alternative is not trying to avoid stress, but learning to deal with it in the most positive and efficient way.

But before we learn how to deal with stress, we must understand the effects of stress in our bodies and what it does to our minds.

 

An Old Friend

Our bodies are primarily designed to experience stress, and at the same time, to react to it. The effects of stress in our bodies, or stress response, are not an evolutionary mistake. On the contrary, it used to be an incredible advantage for our wild ancestors.

Stress gave an advantage to our ancestors by changing multiple aspects of the body that increase its ability to cope effectively with the adaptive challenges that arise in particular situations. In broad terms, part of the stress response meant an increase of arousal, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and overall physical capacity. This was particularly useful in flight or fight situation or when vital resources were in danger.

At this time, the mental and emotional consequences of stress were not relevant, from an evolutionary point of view. It was far more important to remain alive.

But we, as specie, have changed and the world has changed with us. Most of us are no longer in constant physical danger, and our basic resources are not threatened on a daily basis. Actually, our mental and emotional well-being and state have become so important as our physical state.

But the stress response has not disappeared. It keeps being activated by anything that poses a challenge or a threat. The thing is, what represents a challenge or a threat today is very different from what it meant to our ancestors.

We no longer have to worry about wild animals, but something as simple as a rude coworker, an ungrateful boss or an absent loved one is enough to activate our stress response, with all its positive and negative effects as consequence.

 

11 Negative Effects of Stress on the Body

The negative effects of stress in the body can be many, but the more important ones are:

Lack of focus: Stress can make our performance more difficult, especially when we’re dealing with important tasks or with task directly related to the source of stress. The more stress we feel, the less focused we will be.

Memory problems: Stress can become crippling when we don’t know how to control it, and this becomes particularly evident when we assess its toll on our memory capacity. The more we feel stressed during a test, the harder will be to remember a right answer. It doesn’t matter how much we prepared before, for how long we studied or how well we know the subject, if for any reason the test provokes a stress response, our performance will be less than optimal. This is true not only in relation to tests, but also in relation to work performance and even social interaction.

Social interaction and relationships: Withdrawal, anger and depression caused by stress can immediately ruin our relationship with the people around us.

Insomnia: Stress causes insomnia by making it difficult to fall asleep and to stay asleep, and by affecting the quality of our sleep. Stress can cause hyperarousal, which can upset the balance between sleep and wakefulness. When we feel stressed often, we can feel tired even if we slept all night.

Kills motivation: When we fail to manage stress in an efficient way, it can become overwhelming and soon we end up believing that our problems and the obstacles we face are too much to handle or that we have no way out. Too much stress can kill our motivation, highlighting a degraded type of life.

Hampers our goals in life: When our motivation sinks, chances are we will lack the willpower to push forward in the perusing of our goals. For this reason, stress doesn’t only affect our motivation regarding a particular matter, but it can also affect directly our mid-term and long-term goals.

Interferes with our emotional responses: When we are stressed we are more likely to show extreme or inadequate emotional responses. When we are stressed we get angry or upset about situations that otherwise would provoke little or no emotional response from us. In the same manner, we tend to show little emotional response or attention in the face of positive events.

Compromises our visual perception: Stress can primarily interfere with our perception and visual acuity. When we experience chronic stress, our adrenaline levels increase and can remain elevated for an extended period of time, potentially causing pressure in our eyes, which cause blurred vision, tunnel vision and eye strain.

Raise risk of injury: Is not surprise with all the negative physical and emotional effects stress has on our bodies and minds that the risk of injuries increases when we are stressed. Whether is while working, while exercising or even when we perform simple everyday task, such as driving or crossing the street.

Suicide: Stress can become an additional ingredient to a traumatic event, like the death of a spouse, chronic illness or critical financial problems. During such events, stress can evolve to anxiety or depression and the risk of suicidal thinking increases.

Sudden death: Scientists have known for some time that sudden death, usually caused by heart attacks associated with a lethal heart rhythm, are more prevalent in populations that suffer repetitive natural disasters or war. Other studies have shown that the primitive fight-or-flight response to stress alters heart rhythms in animals, while anger, anxiety, and performance stress alter heart rates in humans. A new study shows that mental stress changes the heart rate and the rhythm of the heart, even in patients without evidence of heart disease and other researchers suggest that mental stress, particularly in patients who already have arrhythmias, can lead to sudden death.

 

10 Good Effects of Stress on the Body

Maybe after reading the list above, we might feel just a little bit more stressed than before, particularly after acknowledging there’s no way to completely avoid stress.

Don’t worry too much about it. They key to overcome and diminish the negative effects of stress in our body and mind is not trying to avoid stress altogether, but to learn to control it and use it to our advantage.

How can stress be used to our advantage? Well, turns out stress can have several positive effects when we learn to deal with it:

Alertness: When stress strikes, we get alert and alive to face all the causes that provoked the stress response. A controlled level of stress is very useful when we need to push our awareness to a level of optimal alertness, behavioral and cognitive performance.

Excitement: We need a certain level of uncertainty in our lives. Otherwise, living would be a very boring experience. How would you feel if you just know every single thing that will happen during the course of your life? What would be the point? It would be like watching the same movie every day, forever. Stress is a natural response to that good uncertainty.

Motivation: We already said that an overwhelming level of stress could become crippling. But the key is in the level of stress we handle and being able to deal with it from a positive perspective. The right amount of stress can also become a positive force that motivates us to manage our task in the most efficient manners, in order to avoid experiencing the unwanted feeling of stress again.

Enhance our cognitive capacity: Often when we experience a certain level of stress several times, our ability to deal with similar level of stress improves, even when the source of the stress response is different. Once it strikes again, we are better prepared physically and mentally to deal with such circumstances.

Helps in handling emergency crisis: This may sound counterintuitive, but stress can help us in handling crisis. After all, this was one of the main advantages of the stress response for our ancestors. We might have replaced the wild beasts for cars, buildings on fire and kitties on trees, but stress is as useful when we face a critical moment, as it was thousands of years ago. When combined with adrenaline, it provides a great boost to our physical and mental capacity.

Comfort zone: High stress situations often push us to tipping points in our lives. Whether the source of the stress response is an unfulfilling or abusive relationship, a crappy job or simply the fervent desire of changing something specific in our life, stress often pushes us to make a choice. Of course, at the end of the day the choice of keep dealing with the stress response on a daily basis or to change our circumstances in order to avoid it definitely is our own.

Success: Healthy level of stress can serve as motivation to become better in whatever we chose. In the same way, a healthy level of stress can become the fuel to give our 110% when we chase a particular goal. Whether in relation to our career, fitness or relationship, stress can help us when we’re running that extra mile.

Resilience: If we learn how to deal with stressful situations in our lives, it will become easier and simpler to manage such situations and the stress response it provokes. Repeated stress exposure can help us develop a mental and physical sense of control. This also improves our self-confidence considerably and helps us face new challenges with a positive attitude.

Learning and growth: As we are exposed to different stressful situations, our learning ability improves. From each situation we experience, we can learn valuable lessons; especially from situations that trigger the stress response. When we learn to deal effectively with stress, we are more willing to face such situations than run away from them. We fight more often than we fly.

Sharpens memory: Just as with motivation, stress can become crippling or a tool for improvement. When we are exposed to stressful situations, our long-term memory of the events that provoked the stress response improves considerably. We might have few reasons to remember vividly the events that provoked a stress response, but we can use this to our advantage, not by remembering the events, but the lessons we learn from them. We are more likely to remember the lessons we learned from the ending of our marriage than from the break up of a TV couple.

 

Dealing with Stress

Stress can have terrible effects on our bodies and minds, but it can also be used to our advantage and as a tool to improve and grow.

The key is to understand that stress is not something we can completely vanquish from our reality, but something we must learn to deal with and to control the levels of stress we allow in our lives.

I will share the methods I personally find useful when dealing with stressful situations in a next article. Stay tuned by subscribing to the newsletter below!

 

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If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Mindful Contemplation, How to Overcome Anxiety and Regain Control and Are You Afraid of Success? [Think Again…]. Check them out and let me know what you think!

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