The Impact of Stress on Physical Health, How Mental Health Strain Affects Your Body

Stress is one thing we have with us day and night. Starting from completing our office tasks within time to managing personal relations, stress can strike in anything that may require time to manage and finish. The mental stress often seems minimal until we begin experiencing serious effects on our bodies, sometimes which become quite threatening if it has already led to certain diseases.

- MUKHTAR AHMAD QURESHI

As I reflect on my experiences and those around me, I realize how easily stress can creep into the most hours of routines. At times, we are left thinking of stress as something to “work with” and move over, however, we often do not have any awareness of its potential harm to the body. We must be aware of how the mind and body are very intertwined to work together. Mental health has effects on the physical health that do not immediately become apparent, but that can, and do, become disabling with time.

THE STRESS RESPONSE, FIGHT OR FLIGHT:

If we are stressed, the body is subjected to a fight or flight response. This is an adaptive evolutionary survival strategy, on the one side protects it from the danger and on the other side. It causes our body to excrete tension (adrenaline, cortisol) hormones as it either readies us to confront or flee from danger. Even though this answer works for the body only a while, persistent stress keeps the body in this state and brings along a variety of health complications. When you have experienced your heart racing or muscles tightening as a consequence of the event, then you have experienced the same response in the body. But what happens when these reactions become chronic? The repeated exposure of the hormones over time can have adverse effects on your body.

HOW CHRONIC STRESS IMPACTS YOUR PHYSIQUE.

1. CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITIONING: