Health Effects And Diseases Caused By Stress

Very few people enjoy feeling stress — almost by definition, it’s an unpleasant feeling. But the negative effects of persistent worry and tension may not be limited to your emotional state. Medical research has discovered that many illnesses and negative health outcomes appear to be at least partly the result of chronic stress. What diseases can be caused by stress, and how can you avoid these ill effects? 

Ongoing mental pressure can cause your fight-or-flight reflex to remain active for extended periods, putting a strain on many different parts of your body. This may result in problems like cardiovascular disease, digestive issues, and mental illness. Learning to manage your stress effectively could make a huge difference in your overall health.

This article explores what stress is and how it cam impact your health. We’ll also highlight resources for those who would like support from a mental health professional when addressing stress-related concerns. 

Where does stress come from?

Stress can stem from various sources, including everyday pressures such as work deadlines and financial concerns, which trigger the body's stress response and elevate cortisol levels. Additionally, major life events like the loss of a loved one or a serious illness can contribute to chronic stress. 

Long-term stress can impact health negatively, potentially increasing the risk of conditions like high blood pressure and heart attacks. However, despite the theoretical link between stress and serious conditions like breast cancer, the evidence to support these claims has been poor. 

Seeking medical advice, joining support groups, and exploring stress-relief techniques like relaxation methods or supplements can help manage stress effectively. This is safer than trying to self-medicate for stress with alcohol, drugs, supplements, and other substances. 

What does stress do to the body?

Most of us know what stress feels like in the mind, but to understand how it can lead to disease, it may be necessary to review the physical side of stress. When we’re worried, anxious, or afraid, the body tends to increase the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. This is the complex network of nerves, glands, muscles, and organs that coordinates the human body’s response to danger.

Activation of the sympathetic nervous system causes a variety of physical changes that help us gear up to run away from or attack an immediate threat. These changes include:

• Pupils dilate, enhancing vision

• Blood sugar elevates, providing energy for physical exertion

• Heart rate and breathing speed up, increasing blood circulation

• Digestion stops, redirecting energy to survival functions

• Blood supply is diverted to the major skeletal muscles to enhance speed and strength

• Muscles tense, preparing for action

All of these responses can be useful when you’re facing immediate physical danger. But in the modern world, we’re often stressed out by things we can’t run away from or fight. This can leave us feeling a sense of threat without any obvious way to relieve it, causing the body’s alarm system to remain active much longer than it should.

Science tells us that remaining ready for danger for long periods of time can be bad for the body. It can place excessive physical strain on the organs, muscles, and nerves involved, while also causing metabolic changes that may have long-lasting health effects. 

Stress can play a role in heart disease

Some of the most serious diseases caused by stress are those that affect the cardiovascular system. Traumatic or stressful events in childhood and adolescence appear to substantially increase the risk of death due to heart attacks later in life. Meanwhile, stressful situations in adulthood, such as social isolation or work-related anxiety, are known to raise the odds of developing coronary heart disease. Periods of intense stress may also trigger cardiac failure in at-risk individuals.

These effects could be partly due to the immediate physical effects of the stress response. Your fight-or-flight reflex can cause many of your blood vessels to tighten, while also pushing your heart to beat faster. This can increase the wear and tear on your cardiovascular system. It’s also possible that the hormones released by the sympathetic nervous system could trigger swelling and cell damage in your arteries.

Lifestyle habits may also play a role. Stressed-out individuals sometimes turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like smoking or overeating, both of which are known to increase the risk of heart problems.

Chronic stress might affect your immune system

Long-term stress may leave you more vulnerable to a wide variety of diseases by interfering with your immune system. Part of the human stress response is a surge in the activity of the cells responsible for fighting off disease, which may reduce the odds of infection or speed up healing in the event of an injury. 

Unfortunately, when this happens repeatedly, it may train your body to suppress its immune activation, increasing your susceptibility to viral infection. You could think of this a bit like the story of the boy who cried wolf. Stress repeatedly rings the immune system’s alarm bell when there’s no danger, which could make your body more likely to ignore the signal.

Stress could be linked to obesity

We’ve already noted that some people respond to chronic worry and anxiety with unhealthy eating behaviors, which could contribute to excessive weight gain. But stress might also have unhealthy effects on the way that your body stores and distributes fat. Individuals with high levels of stress appear to be more likely to gain adipose tissue in the stomach region. That can be a problem, because belly fat seems to be more associated with the negative health effects of obesity than fat stored in other regions. 

This pattern of weight gain appears to be linked to a specific signaling pathway known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. When this system is activated due to stress, it raises the level of the signaling hormone cortisol in your bloodstream. Cortisol has a huge range of effects throughout the body, including promoting fat storage — particularly around the central organs, leading to an accumulation of belly fat.

Stress could contribute to diabetes

Given that stress is known to have effects on digestion and metabolism, it may come as no surprise that it might also increase the risk of type 2 diabetes. When your body feels it’s under threat, it tends to boost your levels of blood sugar to provide the energy needed for action. Over time, repeated spikes in glucose could cause your cells to develop insulin resistance, which may lead to diabetes.

Though researchers disagree about how important stress can be in causing diabetes, there’s substantial evidence that it can make managing the disease more difficult. Individuals with this condition may have a hard time keeping their blood sugar levels under control when the sympathetic nervous system is trying to release more glucose.

Irritable bowel syndrome might be worse when you’re stressed

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a gastrointestinal disorder that can lead to frequent and painful defecation. Studies of this condition suggest that it’s not caused by just one factor — genetics, infections, food intolerance, and changes in the microbes in your gut may all contribute to IBS. However, evidence is mounting that stress could be an important factor.

The signaling hormones released when your body is under stress may cause inflammation and decreased mucous production in your gut. This may lead to irritation and disruption of the normal digestive process. The changes in your gastrointestinal environment might also make it easier for harmful bacteria to reproduce, making the problem worse. Together, these stress-related shifts appear to worsen the effects of IBS.

Persistent stress could lead to mood disorders

In addition to the physical ailments discussed above, ongoing tension and worry may also contribute to the development of mood disorders such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. Chronic stress is considered a major environmental risk factor for these psychological conditions. 

Researchers are still investigating how this effect works, but it may involve long-lasting changes in several different brain areas. Stress hormones like cortisol have many receptors in the amygdala, which seems to play a role in threat learning and processing emotions like fear and sadness. The hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, both of which may influence memory and decision-making, also receive many inputs from the body’s stress system. 

All three of these regions seem to undergo structural changes during prolonged stress. The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex appear to shrink, while the amygdala often grows. These changes mirror the ways these brain areas are commonly altered in people with mood disorders.

Ways to manage stress and reduce risk of disease

Most people will encounter at least some difficult and worrisome situations in their lives. Learning to cope with stress in healthy ways may reduce the risk of stress-related disease. 

The following strategies are often effective in offsetting the harmful effects of stress:

• Regular aerobic exercise

• Deep breathing and other relaxation exercises

• Meditation

• Supportive social interactions

• Reducing caffeine intake

• Spending time in natural areas

• Making creative works, such as art, writing, music, and dance

• Mindful acceptance of emotions

Therapy may help relieve chronic stress

The stress management techniques above may work better when used alongside therapy from a trained mental health professional. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), for example, has been found effective for many stress-related disorders like anxiety and depression. Many people experiencing chronic stress have to balance many demands on their time, and online therapy can be helpful in this situation. When you’re able to engage in therapy remotely, it can be much easier to find the time to attend sessions. 

Many large-scale trials and meta-analyses show that therapy delivered over the Internet can be highly effective. A 2012 paper examined treatment outcomes for 1500 patients and concluded that online CBT led to significant improvements in conditions like depression, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress. These results are consistent with the many clinical trials showing the efficacy of internet-based CBT.