5 Areas That Stress Can Make You Sick

A huge number of visitors to physicians suffer from conditions and complaints that are, directly or indirectly, associated with stress to some degree.

While this can be jaw-dropping information to the average person, it is not so to health professionals who consult patients on a daily basis.

Stress can cause noticeable physiological effects and changes to the human body.

And if you don’t already know. Every person suffer from stress. It’s just a matter of how bad the stress is, and how well the sufferer manages it.

Here are 5 common ways stress can make you sick.

1) Muscle pain and aches

When you experience stress, muscles in the body become tensed. They contract harder and more frequently. This is why muscle aches are the most common complaints of victims suffering from stress.

Common areas of muscle pain include:

  • Neck
  • Jaw
  • Shoulders
  • Back
  • Head
  • etc

In additional to that, tension in the muscles can negatively affect organs, blood vessels, nerve cells, skin, and even the bones.

While muscle aches and pains can seem like a very bad condition to go through, these are the mild cases.

In more severe cases, chronic muscle tension can lead to disorders like recurring spasms, acute cramps, essential tremors, etc.

Tenseless muscles can sound like the easy solution. But it is easier said than done when you have stress to comprehend with.

2) Heart conditions

Let’s not talk about stress causing chaos in romance and love. Stress can affect victims with much more deadly force.

Life-threatening conditions like stroke, coronary heart disease, and cardiac arrest, have long been associated with anxiety-related conditions.

This is hardly surprising as research has shown that stress can trigger high blood pressure (even hypertension), spike cholesterol levels, and even constrict blood vessels.

Not only that.

A growing number of medical practitioners, professionals and researcher are starting to believe and advocating that stress, heart diseases, and inflammation of blood vessel walls are all related.

The probability that you will be affected increases as you age. Especially after you reach 50.

3) About that tummy

It is well documented that stress can have drastic weight loss effects. But before you go full-fledge into the “”stress diet”, put your overall health into consideration.

The main reason why stressed-out individual lose weight is because their experience a loss of appetite. This leads to smaller meal portions and less frequent meals. Which is not exactly good news for your body.

The human body have daily nutritional needs like protein, fiber, carbohydrates, etc. And it also need sufficient calories to maintain a healthy weight proportional to the individual’s height.

Losing weight in this manner is only going to harm your body in the long run.

There are also common cases of people overeating due to stress. In this case, eating is often unconsciously used as a distractions that ignite stress in a person. So with all that extra calories, that individual starts gaining weight like no tomorrow.

Clinically speaking, stress also causes the body to release a hormone called cortisol. And it is something that cause the body to store more fat make you… fat.

On another issue, various types of stomach discomfort have long been associated with stress. This include medical problems like:

  • Gastric
  • Diarrhea
  • Bloating
  • Constipation
  • etc

Overall, the tummy area seem to be one of the primary targets for stress to cause chaos.

4) Immune system

Research and studies have shown that there is a negative relationship between stress and the human immune system.

While this effect on immunity is not definitive yet, sufferers should err on the side of caution as common sense tell us that it makes total sense.

5) Influenza

An acclaimed doctor conducted a research on the relationship between psychological stress and susceptibility to the common cold. And concluded that the 2 are indeed connected to each other.

Your resistance to cold decreases. Making you more likely to contract the illness.

So you no longer would need an excuse to get medical leave. All you need to do is stress yourself out and wait for the viral disease to infect you.

In closing

Be mindful that the illnesses, conditions, and symptoms mentioned above can result from various number of conditions. Stress is not the sole cause of these medical conditions.

If you are suffering from one or more of the above conditions, your family doctor is the best person to consult with for guidance and advice.