The Effects Of Stress On Health
Stress is your body’s emotional, mental, or physical response to any demand or threat that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous.1When the body perceives stress, cortisol is released into the bloodstream, resulting in a cascade of physiological and hormonal events that help launch an appropriate response to the demand or threat. Once that demand or threat has subsided, cortisol levels return to normal.
In small amounts, what’s known as acute stress can help you stay motivated to meet a project deadline so you don’t get fired, as well as activate the “fight-or-flight” hormones to give you the hysterical strength to lift a car off your child after you were irresponsible enough to leave them unsupervised for as long as you did.
But too much stress? Well, stress that lasts for weeks or months and comes from repeated exposure to a situation is known as chronic stress and it can have crushing effects.2The most common sources of chronic stress are money issues, trouble at work, family responsibilities, relationship problems, and health concerns.
Apart from causing headaches, insomnia, irritability, and fatigue, plus depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, and heart disease, chronic stress can also reduce sex drive, weaken the immune system, and lead to drug and alcohol abuse.
In addition to all of those fun things that are the direct and indirect signs and symptoms of constant stress, it can also affect your appearance in more ways than just skin breakouts, hair loss, and tooth problems.
Persistently elevated levels of cortisol can also fuck up your waistline in a number of ways. One is via stimulation of ghrelin (i.e. the appetite hormone) and reduced sensitivity of the hypothalamus to leptin (i.e. the fullness hormone), both of which can have the effect of you becoming hungry and overeating. And not only does cortisol make it hard to tell the difference between real hunger and a craving, as well as when to stop eating, the stress hormone also blunts the effects of other hormones that would ordinarily change how rewarding food is, resulting in an increased preference for hyperpalatable comfort foods high in fat and sugar. Another way that chronic stress affects weight is that cortisol promotes the storage of more calories as body fat, with that fat getting stored in the stomach rather than elsewhere. Lastly, new research suggests that cortisol kept at constant high levels from stress may also promote the creation of fat cells so you gain weight even without overeating.
Chronic stress is obviously ¡muy mal!
So how do you deal with it?, you ask.
You mean, other than dealing with the stress directly by getting a divorce?
Or telling your boss to go fuck themselves?!
Or opening up a trap house to solve your money woes?!?!
Well, you could always try some of the suggestions below!
WAYS TO MANAGE STRESS:
• Eat a balanced diet
• Reduce caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco
• Exercise regularly3e.g. walk, run, swim, lift weights, etc.
• Get 7-8 hours of sleep every night
• Make time for hobbies and interests
• Learn a relaxation technique4e.g. meditation, yoga, tai-chi, etc.
• Set boundaries with people
• Keep a stress diary
• Share your feelings
• Give support to others
• Talk to yourself
• Seek professional help
Do you get super hungry and reach for shit that you know damn well you shouldn’t eat?
And when you reach for that shit that you know damn well you shouldn’t eat, do you reach for more of it than you should?
Well, you now know that you literally having a lot on your plate has to do with you figuratively having a lot on your plate.
Ahhhhhhhhhh, the poetry in motion!
Glossary: calories, diet, dietary fat, exercise, fat, hormones, yoga
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