We all know stress is unpleasant. The racing heart, sweating and just overall sense of helplessness isn’t fun. However, did you know that stress is more than just an unpleasant feeling? That’s right, it’s actually quite harmful to your health. Read below to learn more:
It Can Negatively Affect Your Stomach:
Stress causes the brain to be more sensitive to the sensations in the stomach. As a result, when stressed, you can feel nauseous or experience stomach pain. In some severe cases, it can even cause vomiting. If stress is chronic, you can eventually develop ulcers. Stress also alters the way food moves through the body’s intestines and how the food is absorbed, which can lead to diarrhea or constipation.
Stress Can Reduce Your Ability to Handle Life:
According to a recent study by New York University, even mild levels of stress can alter your ability to maintain control over emotions. This can lead to excessive anxiety and sadness or the inability to function properly with day-to-day situations.
Can Cause Disease:
Stress has been linked to all sorts of horrible diseases. This includes lung disease, cirrhosis of the liver (when stress leads a person to turn to alcohol to deal with their stress) and cancer. It has also been linked to suicide and fatal accidents.
Ruins Your Teeth:
Some people respond to stress by grinding their teeth. Oftentimes, people who do this don’t even realize they do, because they grind their teeth in their sleep. Eventually, this will lead to damage of the jaw and will cause the teeth to thin, resulting in all sorts of other issues.
It Can Make You Eat More:
University of Miami researches recently found that people put in a stressful situation consumed 40% more food than when not stressed. Therefore, according to research, you will eat more when you are stressed, leading to weight gain and other health problems.
Stress Weakens Your Immune System:
Last, but not least, chronic stress can negatively affect your immune system. When your immune system is compromised, this of course leads to you getting sick more often and catching every cold that goes around.
Stress is not only unpleasant; it’s also dangerous to your health, as you have seen from the points above.
