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Stress is a natural part of life that affects everyone at one point or another. Daily responsibilities like caring for your family, working, or running errands, to significant life events can trigger a stress response. And, believe it or not, short-term stress can benefit your health. However, if your stress response never turns off, it can adversely affect your health in major ways.

Brain, Nervous and Sensory System

During times of physical or psychological stress, your amygdala instantly sounds the alarm by sending a distress signal to the hypothalamus. Your hypothalamus acts as your brain’s control center and communicates with the rest of the body through the autonomic nervous system. Once the hypothalamus receives the signal, your sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight response) turns on.

Endocrine System

The adrenal glands are part of the endocrine system which is responsible for producing certain hormones. During times of stress, they produce adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. As they circulate through the body, they trigger numerous physiological changes. First of which happens in the liver. When adrenaline and cortisol are released, the liver produces more glucose to fuel your “fight or flight” response.

Cardiovascular System

Some of the first physiological changes that take place include increased heart rate and elevated blood pressure. When stressed, your heart has to work harder to produce the blood flow needed to maintain bodily functions. However, the long-term elevation of blood pressure can be extremely harmful to your health.

Respiratory System

As your pulse begins to rise, so does your breathing. Small airways within the lungs expand so the lungs can take in as much oxygen as possible. This increase of oxygen not only benefits the cardiovascular system, but it is also sent to the brain which improves alertness.

Musculoskeletal System

During times of stress, it’s common to feel tension or tightness in your muscles. If they are tense for long periods, this can result in tension headaches, muscle cramps, pain, and migraines.

Gastrointestinal/Immune System

There are millions of neurons residing in the gut that are in constant communication with the brain. So, it’s no surprise that stress alters gut-brain communication as well. When stressed, people often feel “butterflies” in their stomach, nausea, bloating, and/or abdominal pain. Stress also affects digestion and nutrient absorption, often resulting in constipation or diarrhea. Stress also stimulates the immune system which can help you avoid infections and heal wounds. However, long-term stress will reduce your immune system’s ability to fight invaders making you more susceptible to illness and disease.

Integumentary System

Your hair, skin, and nails are all part of your integumentary system, but it also includes your sweat glands. Sweating is your body’s way of cooling off, but sweat produced in response to stress is different. When reacting to stress, a milkier sweat made up of fatty acids and proteins released from the apocrine glands which are found near pockets of hair follicles under the arms, around the groin, and on the scalp.

Urinary System

Frequent urination is a common symptom of stress. In times of high or persistent stress, your kidney health can take a beating. High blood pressure and elevated blood sugar can place additional strain on your kidneys. And while there is much still unknown about the effect of chronic stress on your urinary system, research suggests that anxiety, environmental and chronic stress may contribute to lower urinary tract symptoms such as frequent urge to urinate and difficulty emptying the bladder completely.

Reproductive System

In women, chronic stress can affect menstruation, worsen menopause symptoms, decrease libido and fertility, and increase the risk of complications during pregnancy. Chronic stress in women can exacerbate symptoms of reproductive diseases such as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. In men, libido, sexual performance, and fertility can all be adversely affected by stress. Men can also become vulnerable to infections of the testes, urethra, and prostate gland.

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You may be surprised to know that stress is actually essential to brain health. Neuroscientists have discovered that, in order to learn, we need a certain amount of short-term tolerable stress to stay sharp and grow our brains. But too much stress can be, well, too much.

In the brain, moderate, occasional stress promotes new cell generation. That’s why the enjoyable stress of modest physical exercise benefits our brains. A certain amount of stress can actually improve your short-term memory. Stress in moderation is also conducive to overall health. For example, your immune system needs a form of stress to help it stay on guard to protect against infectious micro-organisms and cancer.

The basic stress response, fight or flight, is genetic. If it runs amok, however, or is turned on chronically, stress can damage memory formation and weaken the immune system.

Stress damages memories, judgment

High, chronic stress levels are unhealthy and have been shown to impair memory and judgment. Chronic stress involves too much of the stress hormone cortisol circulating in the blood. One result is impaired production of brain growth factors, protein molecules that stimulate the growth of nerve cells and their cable-like connections with other brain cells.

Too much stress also affects the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes, the “executive center” of the brain. No wonder bad decisions at work or in our personal lives correlate with too much stress.

In short, chronic stress is a brain wrecker. It can also contribute to increased risk of heart attacks, high blood pressure, cancer and intestinal problems such as irritable bowel syndrome and ulcers.

“Stress proneness,” memory and Alzheimer’s

Dr. Robert Wilson and his colleagues in Chicago at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and Institute for Healthy Aging use stress proneness – a person’s tendency to suffer psychological distress in response to negative emotional events in life – in their research. Their study of about 800 75-year-olds found that stress-prone women were more likely than others to have impaired memory for real-life events.

Over the study’s period of almost 5 years, 140 participants were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Those who had high-stress proneness had twice the risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those with low-stress proneness or hardiness personalities.

What’s stressing you out? Is it mortgage troubles, pressure on the job, a bumpy relationship? The unending nature of human stress, if not managed in a healthy way, is what can damage our bodies and brains.

Make stress work for you.

Take stock of the daily events that give you stress, and find a stress-management technique (exercise, meditation, counseling), that best suits your individual needs and personality, coping style and severity of your stress.

(Adapted from The Brain Training Revolution: A Proven Workout for Healthy Brain Aging. Paul E. Bendheim, M.D., published by Sourcebooks.)

Paul E. Bendheim, M.D. is a board-certified neurologist and founder and chief medical officer of BrainSavers, an organization devoted to healthy brain aging.

Stress is a natural part of life. Deadlines, appointments, bills, family and community obligations will always be there. No matter how stressful your life is, there are still healthy ways to cope with stress.

If you are living with high levels of stress, you are exposing your body to elevated levels of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Long-term stress can increase your risk of developing anxiety, depression, digestive problems, headaches, heart disease, sleep problems, weight gain, and memory and concentration impairment.

While there are many healthy ways to manage stress, there’s an equal number of unhealthy coping mechanisms. Not only are these bad habits not relieving tension, but they are also compounding the adverse effects of stress on your body. Unhealthy habits can include consuming too much caffeine or alcohol, compulsive spending, emotional eating, withdrawing from family and friends, lashing out at others, and spending too much time watching TV or on the computer. Becoming aware of how you handle stress is a crucial part of learning how to manage stress through healthy choices.

Effective Ways to Cope with Stress

If you can change your attitude about things that might be annoying or frustrating, you can change your stress level. And that means that you can improve your health and well-being.

Here’s how:

• Take a daily break. Every day, give yourself 15 to 20 minutes to sit quietly and breathe deeply (this is one of our 10 Essentials). If possible, close your eyes and picture someplace calm that you find relaxing.
• Focus on gratitude. Cultivating a sense of gratitude can improve your mood and increase your resilience to stress. One of the best ways to foster gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal. Every day jot down a few things that went well, as well as people, places, or experiences you are grateful for that day. During times of stress or sadness, you can read past entries and revisit happy memories.
• Talk your way around stress. Instead of keeping feelings bottled up, try to find productive ways to talk about them with the people involved. This includes asking for help when your to-do list is just too long.
• Exercise your right to joy. Stay active and stay positive. There are big emotional, as well as physical, benefits of exercise. So, walk, swim, bike, hike – anything to get moving. You’ll shed tension while you improve your health.

Sleep deprivation is a very real problem in modern society, affecting millions of Americans every year. Although occasional changes in sleep are common and mostly harmless, chronic sleep disturbance and sleep deprivation have serious side effects.

Sleep Loss Impairs Judgement

Sleep deprivation inhibits your ability to make sound and thoughtful judgments. This is mostly because a tired individual is less likely (or able) to fully and accurately assess situations and act on them wisely. Just one sleepless night can impair performance and judgment as much as a blood alcohol level of 0.10 percent, which is beyond the legal limit to drive. And similarly to alcohol, sleep deprivation makes it more difficult to accurately assess how impaired you actually are when you’re tired.

Sleep Deprivation Affects Your Mental Health

Mental health and sleep are closely connected although researchers aren’t exactly sure how. The overlap between mental health disorders and sleep disorders is so pronounced that researchers suspect both types of conditions share common biological roots. Studies in both children and adults suggest that sleep problems may increase the risk for, and even directly contribute to, the development of some psychiatric disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorders. One longitudinal study of approximately 1,000 adults ages 21 to 30 found that compared with normal sleepers, those who reported a history of insomnia during their first interview were four times more likely to develop major depression by their second interview three years later.

Lack of Sleep May Increase Your Risk of Death

In the “Whitehall II Study,” researchers from the University of Warwick and University College London, found that a lack of sleep can more than double your risk of death from cardiovascular disease.  The study looked at the sleep patterns of a group of 10,308 civil servants and found that those who cut their sleep from 7 hours per night to 5 hours or less faced a 1.7 fold increased risk in mortality from all causes and doubled the increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Losing Sleep Can Lead to Serious Health Issues

Chronic sleep loss can adversely affect your health and hinder your daily function and productivity. While short-term sleep deprivation can affect your memory, productivity, alertness, and energy, long-term sleep loss has more serious consequences. Regular lack of sleep is associated with an increased risk of developing certain chronic conditions such as:

• Diabetes and impaired glucose sensitivity
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Metabolic changes, including obesity and hormonal imbalances

Easy Ways to Improve Your Sleep

Getting enough sleep is important, but it’s not just the duration that matters. The quality of your sleep is also essential to feeling your best. There are several ways to improve the time spent asleep and the quality of your rest.

• Maintain a regular sleep routine. Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the time every morning – even on weekends and holidays.
• Avoid caffeine late in the day. The effects of caffeine can last for several hours and may make it difficult for you to fall or stay asleep.
• Don’t watch TV in bed. Having a TV in your bedroom can keep you later than you intended and/or disrupt your sleep cycles.
• Exercise regularly. Regular physical activity promotes healthy sleep cycles, but rigorous exercise or activity should be avoided before bedtime.