{"id":147741,"date":"2021-09-05T18:53:36","date_gmt":"2021-09-05T18:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/147741"},"modified":"2021-09-05T18:53:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-05T18:53:36","slug":"how-chronic-stress-harms-your-body-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/147741","title":{"rendered":"How Chronic Stress Harms Your Body"},"content":{"rendered":"[\u2669 INTRO ] Stress happens. And that\u2019s not always bad\u2014starting a new\njob or getting married can both be happy things, but they also can be really stressful. There are some kinds of stress that just don\u2019t\nseem to go away, though. Like the feeling that you\u2019re drowning in\nwork, but still perpetually worried about making ends meet. If you deal with a lot of stress every day,\nfor months or years on end, then stress doesn\u2019t just feel awful\u2014it actually causes you physical\nharm. Psychologists call any event or situation\nthat puts pressure on you or threatens your well-being a stressor, while stress refers\nto your psychological and physical reactions. Stressors that are one and done\u2014like locking\nyour keys in your car, or forgetting your wallet\u2014bring on acute stress. But when stressors are repeated or continuous,\nthat\u2019s chronic stress.

Things like abusive relationships, living\nin poverty, and being discriminated against have all been shown to cause chronic stress. And that psychological anguish takes a toll\nphysically. When you experience acute stress, your body\nactivates a system called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis, or just HPA axis because why would you\nwant to say all that other stuff over and over again. It starts deep in your brain, in the limbic\nsystem \u2014 the part responsible for a lot of your automatic emotional reactions, among\nother things. There, a region called the hypothalamus releases\nhormones that start a whole chain of more hormones being released \u2014 first by your\npituitary gland, and then by your adrenal glands, which release a bunch of adrenaline\nand cortisol into your bloodstream. And those two hormones trigger the \u201cfight-or-flight\u201d\nresponse. They boost physical activity by increasing\nyour blood sugar and the blood flow to your muscles, and bump up your metabolism at the\nsame time.

The idea is that the physical boost helps\nyou fight the stressor or run away. So, like, if you were suddenly face to face\nwith a bear, the surge in energy would help you either outrun it, or go all like Revenant\non it. The same system is activated by chronic stress,\nbut things get a bit more complicated. Researchers have found that people under some\nkinds of chronic stress have perpetually high cortisol levels, as if their HPA axis is running\nconstantly. For others, it can depend on the timing, with\nhigher cortisol levels near the start of the stress before it actually dips lower than\nusual.

But we do know that while this stress reaction\ncan be helpful at times, having it running all the time is a problem. People under chronic stress are at higher\nrisk for all kinds of ailments, like heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and mental disorders\nlike anxiety and depression. That\u2019s because, in addition to it being\nsuper unpleasant to be stressed out all the time, the stress response is constantly sapping\nyour energy. The resources used by fight-or-flight have\nto come from somewhere, and one of the places they come from is your immune system.

On the molecular level, the same cortisol\nthat works to get extra glucose to your muscles also stops your body from making as many infection-fighting\nwhite blood cells as it normally would. So stress can tank your ability to fight infections. It's kind of like evolution is telling your\nbody not to worry about fighting off that cold right now, because you need to fight\nthat bear that is right in front of you. Except with chronic stress, the bear isn\u2019t\na bear. It\u2019s your crappy job. Or your unhappy relationship. Or whatever it is that stresses you out all\nthe time. And that means your immune system never gets\nthe chance to recover and deal with that cold as easily as it normally would. One famous experiment demonstrating this involved\n11 dental students who volunteered to have their mouths biopsied twice: first during\nsummer vacation, and then again during exam week.

It took an average of 3 days longer for the\nwounds to heal while they were stressed about exams. All kinds of other studies have gotten similar\nresults \u2014 some by punching small holes in people like they did with the dental students,\nand others by observing how stress affects recovery from surgery and other major wounds. There's also research suggesting that chronic\nstress explains part of the relationship between poverty and health.

Even just the perception of being in a lower\nsocioeconomic class is associated with an increase in respiratory infections. Stress can also advance the aging process. By the time you get older, your DNA has had\nto replicate so many times that the protective parts at each of the ends of the chromosome,\ncalled telomeres, can kind of start to fray. When telomeres are shorter, it's more likely\nthat there will be errors in copying genes. And those errors increase your risk of disease. There\u2019s evidence that having more cortisol\nin your blood interrupts the repair of telomeres. Which might explain why stress is linked to\ndiseases that are also associated with age, like heart disease, cancer, and anemia.

To stay healthy, the best thing you can do\nis get rid of the chronic stress. But, easier said than done. If you can\u2019t get rid of it completely, things\nlike meditation and relaxation therapies can help lower your stress response. And, weirdly enough, so might changing how\nyou think about stress. Studies have shown that when people think\nabout the source of stress as a challenge to overcome instead of a threat to their well-being,\nthat seems to lower their perceived stress and reduce their body\u2019s physical response. There\u2019s another way you might be able to\nimprove your health, too: help others reduce their stress. In a sample of over 800 older adults, those\nwith high stress who also reported helping friends or neighbors with things like housework\nor childcare had mortality rates similar to those with low stress. Whereas those with high stress who didn\u2019t\nhelp out had reduced odds of survival. So, chronic stress is not good for anyone. But even if you can\u2019t avoid being stressed\nout all the time, there are ways to help yourself relax \u2014 and sometimes you can even reduce\nother people\u2019s stress in the process.

Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow\nPsych! If you want to keep up to date with our latest\nvideos explaining how these big ole noggins of ours work, head over to youtube.com\/scishowpsych\nand click on that subscribe button because it\u2019ll all come into your subscription box\nand you\u2019ll watch every single one of them and it really helps\u2026 with the YouTube algorithm. Thank you! [\u2669 OUTRO ].","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[\u2669 INTRO ] Stress happens. And that\u2019s not always bad\u2014starting a new job or getting married can both be happy things, but they also can be really stressful. There are some kinds of stress that just don\u2019t seem to go away, though. Like the feeling that you\u2019re drowning in work, but still perpetually worried about … Continue reading How Chronic Stress Harms Your Body<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":147743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,781,4771,7,409],"tags":[34391,34237,34395,696,34399,518,34389,25041,953,34404,56573,34398,34401,34387,34386,34396,34388,34241,34392,34394,34403,33818,34393,34400,34402,34397,702,517,34385,5696,34390,34405],"class_list":["post-147741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-causes-and-prevention","category-crime-justice","category-disasters-accidents","category-getting-help","category-health","tag-acute-stress","tag-adrenal-gland","tag-adrenaline","tag-anxiety","tag-autoimmune","tag-brain","tag-chronic-stress","tag-cortisol","tag-depression","tag-dna","tag-education","tag-fight-or-fight","tag-glucose","tag-green","tag-hank","tag-hormone","tag-how-chronic-stress-harms-your-body","tag-hpa-axis","tag-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical-axis","tag-hypothalamus","tag-immune-system","tag-learn","tag-limbic-system","tag-molecular","tag-muscles","tag-pituitary-gland","tag-psychology","tag-science","tag-scishow","tag-stress","tag-stressor","tag-telomeres"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/147741_maxresdefault.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}