Stress causes your heart to beat faster and your blood vessels in your heart to constrict, which drive your blood pressure up. Frequent bursts of heightened blood pressure can cause you to have overall higher blood pressure over time.
Source: Mayoclinic.org
When you’re under a lot of stress, your gastrointestinal activity slows down. This means you break down food less efficiently, which can cause bloating and constipation, and you don’t absorb nutrients properly, which could lead to nutrient deficiency.
Source: Everydayhealth.com
Stress causes your body to overproduce metabolic fuels, and in response your liver produces more bad cholesterol. Some studies also suggest that stress makes it harder for your body to clear lipids (naturally occurring molecules that include fats and triglycerides.)
Source: Everydayhealth.com
As we’ve mentioned, stress can cause you to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, but it can also increase your levels of triglycerides, and these three things together put you at a higher risk of heart disease.
Source: Rochester.edu
Once stress has given you heart disease, it’s not done wreaking havoc on your body. Stress by itself probably won’t cause a heart attack, but stress on a person who already suffers from heart disease can cause a heart attack, and even death.
Source: Webmd.com
You may have heard stress can cause weight gain. Here’s why. Your body releases the hormone cortisol when it thinks it has to fight or flee. For our cave-dwelling ancestors, this was a good thing because cortisol triggers feelings of hunger, and typically when it was released, they were running from a saber toothed tiger. For early humans it was good that the hormone told them to eat. But today, typically when you’re stressed, you’re not about to exert yourself physically. But you still feel hungry because of cortisol, and eat calories you don’t need.
Source: Corporatewellnessmagazine.com
Stress causes a decrease in production of the neurons in your brain that take in and process information, so you could find it harder to retain new information if you’re under a lot of stress.
Source: Cnn.com
Researchers are finding a link between stress at an early age and mood disorders in young adults. A decrease in production of information-processing neurons has been associated with a higher risk of obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and several other mood disorders and mental illnesses.
Source: Cnn.com
Stress triggers responses in your body that tell you to be alert, awake and aroused — none of which are conducive to a good night’s sleep.
Source: Harvard.edu
The many reactions stress causes in your body make it harder to recover from illness or injury. There’s a reason nurses try to keep anyone out of your hospital room who might upset you.
Source: Apa.org
