Stress and Sicknessby Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger 29 Oct 2009 12:30 PM A recent article in PARADE Magazine asked if stress can make a person sick. The answer? Yes. More importantly, stress can mess with your normal defenses. In the short term, a little stress can actually be beneficial. Stress can trigger that good old "fight or flight" response, releasing adrenaline into your system to increase strength and stamina. But your body wasn't designed to function at full alert for long periods of time. Chronic or long-term stress can be bad for you in a number of ways. Stress and your head... as in headaches. With all the "fight or flight" chemicals in your system, the balance of chemicals in your brain may actually change when you're under long-term stress. Some researchers believe that chronic stress may be linked with migraines, thanks to that chemical imbalance and how it affects the blood vessels in the brain! Even without migraines, there's all sorts of problems associated with tension in the neck and shoulders, grinding your teeth, and clenching your jaw -- common physical responses to stress. Those responses definitely contribute to painful, nagging tension headaches. Stress and your heart... and your blood pressure. There's been lots of research and evidence linking stress with an increased risk of heart attack. Job stress in particular can increase risk of heart problems by up to fifty percent! Working on physically calming yourself can help, but the best thing to do may be working on reducing the sources of long-term stress. Research has also looked at a link between stress and cholesterol. Stress and your skin... is that a zit I see? Chronic stress can make your normal skin problems worse. When your body is already overtaxed dealing with the state of stress, it may not have the resources left over to deal with other problems like acne, dryness, and allergic reactions. In general, long term stress can be a huge hit for your immune system. You may find that when you're under stress, you tend to get sick more easily -- your body just doesn't have the defenses it normally does. So if you're worried about the flu this winter, you might want to look at your stress levels. If you're at Stresscon Five, you may need to manage stress in order to help keep yourself healthy! Learn more about Aimee Amodio  Aimee is a fiction writer... dog lover... music lover... Relevanthealth tags User Comments  Aimee Amodio (11995) 29 Oct 2009 01:42 PMHahaha it's like DefCon Five (the military alert level)... basically, it's what I call it when I'm super stressed out. :D And I actually got it backwards, apparently DefCon Five is the lowest level of alert, and DefCon One is the highest level of alert! Discuss this article
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