How Does Stress Affect The Body?

Many people wonder how stress can affect the body and the answer can be a little bit complex. For the short term, a little bit of stress can actually be a good thing, but in the long term, prolonged periods of stress can cause you pain and also have been found to be linked to problems such as heart disease and high blood pressure, as well as strokes. So, how does stress take a toll on the body and why should we find stress relief?

Stress In The Short Term

When you have a feeling of stress in the short term, your body reacts with the fight or flight reaction, in the same way as anxiety. This will trigger a burst of adrenaline through the body which can actually help to boost performance and help you to get through a stressful situation. For the short term, the effects on the body are actually good and many times, it is thought that stress can be related to excitement, so having a little bit of it in your life can help you to stay mentally and physically healthy.

This, of course is assuming that after each stressful situation, you are able to de-stress and come back down to a completely relaxed state of being. These moments of stress will help you to sleep more soundly and can even help you to maintain healthy weight control.

Prolonged Periods of Stress

When you begin to experience ongoing stress in your life, your body is constantly in fight or flight mode and this can cause you problems such as a racing mind, inability to focus and loss of sleep. You may lose or gain weight and suffer from headaches as well as irritability and mood swings. You might find that you feel as if you’re not functioning very well on any level and this can begin to eat away at both professional and personal relationships.

Prolonged periods of stress will also cause you to suffer from muscle tension and potentially sore muscles. When we are stressed for long periods of time, it can feel as if we hold our shoulders closer to the ears in a defensive posture which can affect the way our whole body feels and we may begin to suffer from bouts of extreme fatigue.

Other conditions, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome are thought to be affected by how much stress we suffer and it is though that many people who suffer from ulcers find that they began during stressful times in their lives.

Stress In The Long Term

When we suffer from long term stress as a result of daily life, we can begin to suffer from problems such as depression and anxiety, as well as high blood pressure and heart disease. In fact, it has been found that many women who suffer from extreme amounts of stress throughout their lives are more likely to wind up with heart disease than women who have been more relaxed through life.

Stress is no laughing matter and if you feel like you’re suffering from it, you should work to reduce your stress levels and the effects that it can have on your body.

Stress Management Can Help You To Be Happy and Healthy

Stress management techniques are being taught by many large corporations now. The world is awake 24-7, which often makes us feel as if we need to keep up with the fast pace of the global economy, but if you’re stressed, not only will you not be able to keep up with all that’s happening, but you could suffer serious health effects, so if you feel stressed, it’s time to find ways to ease your tension.

Elements of Success

It’s good to be driven and focused on your career. We all want to get ahead, make more money and be more successful, but all of this drive could cause you to feel stressed. That’s why it’s a good idea to adopt a stress management program and incorporate it in your daily life. You do need to know that there are some basic elements of a successful stress management program and you need to know how to incorporate them so that you can get the best results possible.

You need to work toward easing your mind or addressing the mental aspects of stress, as well as work to get stress out of your body. So, when you are developing a stress management program, you need to be able to clear your mind of the stressor, and clear your body of the effects of stress.

Stress Relief Techniques to Try

Now that you know you need to clear your mind, here are a couple of stress relief techniques that you can try which might help you to manage your stress. Consider meditation to ease your stresses. This method will address that which is in your mind and help you to better deal with your stressors and give your brain a break.

Also, consider practicing the art of feeling grateful. When you feel grateful, you might feel reminded that it’s not really as bad as it might seem and this can take you a long way toward feeling better overall and helping to reduce the amount of mental stress you feel.

Practice deep breathing whenever you’re feeling stressed. This will offer you immediate stress relief no matter where you are and you’ll likely find that you are better focused when you’re breathing deeply. Some times, we need to just walk away from stress. Not for good. Just take a short walk when you begin to feel stressed. Get up, get some water, and walk around the office for a minute. It helps you to regroup and address your stress more easily.

Also, you might find that other techniques such as massage are useful in your stress management routine. Make sure to get plenty of exercise and sleep and maintain an overall healthy diet so that you are healthy and have the energy you need to keep going. Plus, you might want to try other ways to decompress when you’re feeling a little stressed out. Take time to just play, or get away from your problems. Watch a movie, play with your kids or dog or just spend time with friends and laugh.

While you may not to be able to avoid stress, you will likely find that you can develop a stress management program that helps you to feel stress free and healthy all the time.

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