The Different Ways Stress Affects Your Body

Interferes With Sleeping Habits

The quality and quantity of sleep is powerfully impacted by chronic stress. It leads to lying in bed feeling anxious and worrying, which makes relaxing and quieting the mind enough to fall asleep almost impossible. This experience has led to the phrase that you lose sleep over this, that, or the other thing. Individuals who experience chronic stress sleep less, tend to have less quality sleep overall, and find functioning well in the daytime all the more difficult. If allowed to go unchecked, this cycle will unfortunately only get worse. When you do not receive enough nightly sleep, your body loses even greater amounts of stress hormones. The chemicals connected to deep slumber are the same chemicals that instruct the body to cease producing stress hormones. It is a vicious cycle. Even worse, early evening and afternoon are when stress hormones peak; these are the times when the mind and body should be preparing for sleep by relaxing. Chronic stress definitely interferes with your sleeping habits in punishing ways.

Discover more effects of stress on the human body by reading more now.

Can Make You More Prone To Sickness

Poor diet, lack of exercise, and limited sleep with poor sleep quality all take a toll on the body. Chronic stress does something else along with these symptoms: it can make you more prone to sickness since stress weakens the immune system. Take colds for example. They tend to seem to strike when you're emotionally exhausted or overworked. Research linking colds to stress has narrowed in on cortisol, which is known as the stress hormone. The adrenal glands release it when you feel anxious or threatened. One of the jobs of cortisol is to damp down the immune system temporarily: specifically speaking, the inflammatory response. This grants the body greater energy to deal with whatever may be threatening it. Unfortunately, chronic stress is stress that persists, meaning cortisol is steadily being produced, and the immune system is limited in what it can do to fight off illness.

Keep reading to learn about more effects of stress on the body.