Stress doesn’t feel good, but what is really going on in your mind and body when it becomes too much to bear?
It’s more than just a racing mind and tight chest – it can have serious impacts on both your mental and physical health. You want to pay close attention to the severity and length of your stress to make sure you aren’t facing more serious consequences.
Stress puts pressure on your mind and body like you can apply enough physical pressure to an object to damage or break it. The same principle applies to the neurons and receptors in your body that manage stress, mental health, and even physical health.
The mental
Stress can lead to poor mental health that brings about symptoms that even affect your physical health. Here are some things for you to reflect on to determine if high amounts of stress are hurting your mental health:
Depression and anxiety can both be brought about and worsened by stress. The neurotransmitters in your brain that make you feel good like serotonin and dopamine can become significantly depleted due to stress, putting you at risk for depression.
Cognitive function can become impaired due to high stress, impacting your memory, decision making, and problem-solving skills. It damages regions in your brain including your prefrontal cortex that are responsible for your ability to perform mentally.
Unhealthy coping mechanisms like drinking, overeating, or avoiding can become an easy outlet for trying to manage stress. These tools can impact both your mental and physical health without actually doing anything to resolve your stress long term.
Burnout is a common result of stress that makes you feel fatigued, emotionally exhausted, detached, and void of motivation. This happens to many people who try to push through severe stress without taking the time to refill their mental and emotional cup.
The physical
It probably makes a lot of sense that stress makes your mental health worse, but did you know it can directly impact your physical health too? Check in with yourself or provider to determine if stress is affecting your physical health, look out for:
A weakened immune system can be a result of chronic stress. It suppresses your immune response so that you are more prone to colds, infections, and chronic diseases.
High blood pressure can arise from chronic stress too. It triggers your flight or fight response often enough that your base blood pressure will rise from being elevated too often.
Digestion problems are also a common result of chronic stress. Like your body’s response through blood pressure, frequently trigger flight or fight will slow your digestion processes, leading to bloating, stomach pain, nausea, and more.
Hormonal balance can also become disrupted from chronic stress. It causes your body to release elevated levels of cortisol, the primary stress hormone, that disturbs the production of other hormones throughout your body. This can lead to a host of uncomfortable symptoms or even early perimenopause.
What can you do about chronic stress if you’re struggling to get it under control? I have multiple tools and techniques that I use with my patients to manage stress and get their health back on track. Acupuncture and herbs are great tools for managing your body’s stress response while balancing the systems that have been affected by it.
Let Good Needles help, make an appointment to better manage your stress and prevent or eliminate the side effects that come with it.
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