What Are the Effects of Stress on Your Body?

By Charlene Sim

A healthy person will experience some effects of stress in their lives. Whether it is a marriage, the birth of a child or the death of a loved one, these are all stressors. Depending upon your personality, you will react to some of the major stressors in life in either a positive or negative manner. Also, how many stress factors occur at the same time will affect you physically and emotionally. Your current stress level, health and how you've handled stress in the past are all important factors to consider.

There are usually bodily effects linked to a great deal of stress that will become apparent. Your immune system will typically grow weaker because so much of your energy is used up dealing with whatever is triggering the stress, thereby making it very easy to become ill. People will normally experience irregular bowel movements, suffer from general aches and pains, and lose a lot of energy and vigor. These signs of stress are apt to be the most obvious and can normally be kept under control easily with a bit of rest and a decrease in stress levels.

Effects of stress can also be emotional in nature. It is very common to see people who are typically calm and level headed snap at others and become irritable very easily when they are coping with stress. Feeling overwhelmed and depressed are common reactions, as is moodiness. When you start to have emotional responses to stress you can end up causing long-term damage in relationships with others. Even when your actions are a result of stress levels, people around you may not be so accepting and can forever alter how you are perceived by others.

Other effects of excess stress can persist well after the end of whatever triggered the stress to begin with, such as behavioral symptoms. Here you can see your pattern of eating changing, as you consume either too little or too much, your sleep habits can suffer also, and you can acquire nervous habits that are not always acute in nature, yet that don't come across well with other people. These indicators of stress are the hardest to break off as your system becomes used to them. In worst case scenarios, strong addictions to substances like alcohol, tobacco and drugs can be created.

You can take control over the effects of stress by working on what is causing the stress and dealing with controlling those issues. Usually, you will feel less stress once the cause is gone or minimized. Then it is time for your body and mind to recover. This can take a short or a long time depending again on your immune system and your mental health. Be aware of what you are doing in response to stress and take steps to ensure that your responses are as healthy as possible so that no long-term damage is caused. - 30309

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