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Stress is a normal feeling that everybody has felt at some point in their lives. Yet for something so quintessentially human, the physical effects of stress can be overwhelming.
Think back to life in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Don’t worry, I won’t make you think about it for long. What is it about that time that disturbed you? Was it the news cycle? Fear of the virus? Sports and performance venues shutting down? Having to wear a mask? Not being able to see friends and family like you used to? Nobody who lived through those times will forget these emotional and social strains.
The American Psychological Association says stress is “the physiological or psychological response to internal or external stressors. Stress involves changes affecting every system of the body, influencing how people feel and behave.”
What does stress feel like? You could probably guess. Intense stress generates physical reactions like a rapid heartbeat, sweatiness, dry mouth, short and shallow breath, and exhaustion. More minor stressors can make our bodies tense, disturb our sleep, and give a lingering feeling of dread.
Stress versus Anxiety
Before we get any further, let’s talk language. The words stress and anxiety are often used interchangeably, but they’re actually not the same thing.
According to the American Psychological Association:
“Stress is typically caused by an external trigger. The trigger can be short-term, such as a work deadline or a fight with a loved one or long-term, such as being unable to work, discrimination, or chronic illness. People under stress experience mental and physical symptoms, such as irritability, anger, fatigue, muscle pain, digestive troubles, and difficulty sleeping.”
“Anxiety, on the other hand, is defined by persistent, excessive worries that don’t go away even in the absence of a stressor. Anxiety leads to a nearly identical set of symptoms as stress: insomnia, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, muscle tension, and irritability.”
So while both of these unpleasant feelings share a lot in common, stress is caused by an identifiable trigger, while anxiety is not. I’d like to use a metaphor to sum this up.
Fight or Flight: The Body’s Stress Response
You might’ve heard of “fight or flight.” That is how we’ve evolved to handle threats. Imagine you’re a caveman and a sabretooth tiger appears in the field in front of you. What’s the first thing that happens? You might think, “oh crap,” with maybe some more colorful language sprinkled in. That extra jolt of anxiety comes in the form of your body creating the stress hormone, cortisol. This is what gets us moving and ready to make an immediate decision. Fight or flight. Do you pick up a club and go to war with the tiger? Or do you scurry up the nearest tree and wait for danger to pass?
This stress-based system helps us survive, just like it did in the caveman days. It’s evolution at work. In small doses, stress may be uncomfortable, but has no serious consequences. It’s healthy.
The problem comes when that anxiety lasts days at a time. Or weeks. Months. Years. The longer a person deals with stress, the more that the hormone cortisol breaks down their biological systems and causes serious unintended consequences. Chronic stress is one of the most debilitating conditions out there.
I realize this may sound hyperbolic. I’m going to list out some of the physical effects of stress, not to freak you out, but to illustrate the dangers.
The Physical Effects of Stress
Cardiovascular disease
When somebody is feeling stress, their heart beats faster. The heart is well-equipped to handle this in spurts—remember, we’re evolved to be able to fight or run away from a sabretooth tiger at the drop of the hat—but there’s a greater toll when it’s always being asked to do more. Constant exposure to the stress hormone cortisol and higher blood pressure can damage blood vessels, too. Chronic stress can lead to hypertension, stroke, or a heart attack.
Obesity
Obesity – People often cope with stress by overeating or gorging themselves on unhealthy foods. What in life couldn’t be solved by a taco? The relationship between stress and obesity goes further than that, though. Prolonged exposure to cortisol slows down the metabolism. Think of it from an evolutionary point of view—if you were in constant distress and searching for safety, wouldn’t you want to burn through calories more slowly until you got to your next meal? Unfortunately, obesity comes with all sorts of bad health outcomes, like cardiovascular issues and diabetes.
Menstrual Problems
People experiencing chronic stress may face disruption to their cycle. High levels of stress can trigger skipped periods. This has contributed to myths that severe stress can cause early menopause, but individuals’ menstruation can continue once their cortisol levels go down. Sometimes, chronic stress can trigger longer, more painful cycles. This ends up being one of the less talked about physical effects of stress.
Pregnancy Issues
It’s harder to conceive when trying to wade through an ocean of distress. This is not just true of women either. Studies show that sperm quantity and quality plummets when the man is stressed. Once conception does occur, chronic stress can impact the pregnancy in a lot of different ways, including premature birth. Postpartum can be tricky too, as many distressed parents may struggle to bond with the baby.
Loss of Sexual Desire
Loss of desire and sexual dysfunction – This goes for all genders. Think of the exhaustion and distractibility stress causes. It’s hard for people in that state of mind to focus on sexy time. Chronic stress can even cause sexual dysfunction. For example, if you consider the way stress affects emotions, hormones, and blood vessels (see the cardiovascular explanation above), then it makes perfect sense that distressed men could have erectile dysfunction. Female orgasmic disorder—that is, the inability for a biological woman to orgasm—is linked to stress and fatigue.
Skin Problems
A person’s skin has a way of wearing people’s problems. Take me for example.
This is me in 2019.
And this is me in 2021 after the pandemic.
In all seriousness, an excess of cortisol, that potent stress hormone, causes skin to lose moisture and become flaky. It can also lead to rashes, hives, and flare-ups of rosacea and eczema. If you want to slow down aging and prevent skin problems, relaxing can be a great “beauty treatment.”
Hair Loss
Here’s one of the more obvious physical effects of stress. Many folks naturally lose hair as they get older. However, if someone is experiencing chronic stress, their hair follicles may go dormant for a while before eventually falling out. In more intense cases, the body rejects the hair follicles and it starts coming off in patches.
Chronic muscle tension – Another feature honed through evolution is that when we are feeling threatened or vulnerable, we tense our bodies. This reflex guards against injury and puts us in the best position to enter fight or flight. Constantly living in this state causes serious discomfort, though. Headaches and migraines have been linked to chronic tightness around the head, neck, and shoulders.
Chronic Pain
Prolonged periods of pain usually come from some sort of injury or illness. Interestingly, one of the biggest determinants of whether a seriously injured person goes on to live with chronic pain is their attitude around the injury. If they remain fearful—muscles tensed, avoiding exercise and possible reinjury—they may continue hurting indefinitely. This is also true for other forms of chronic pain. Fibromyalgia often flares up when chronic stress is present.
Gastrointestinal Problems
You’ve probably had an anxious stomach at some point. In milder stressors, this could mean butterflies in your stomach. More severe stress could cause bloating, nausea, or event vomiting. Typically, chronic stress impairs the ability for the body to properly digest food and soak up all the necessary nutrition. It can also exacerbate other preexisting problems like ulcers or irritable bowel syndrome.
Getting Sick More Often
Cortisol can be helpful in managing a person’s immune system and reducing inflammation. However, consider how much energy excessive and chronic stress can suck out of a person. It’s exhausting! Beyond the fatigue, this never-ending flood of cortisol wreaks havoc on the immune system, causing people to get sick more often. There’s even emerging science showing a connection between stress and metabolic disorders like diabetes.
Bigger Risk of Mental Illness
It’s not just the physical effects of stress that matter. While the exact reason a person develops a psychiatric disorder is often unclear, stress is usually a contributing factor. I’ll get into it in a future post, but there’s a theory called the diathesis stress model that helps explain how stress activates potential underlying psychological illness. Relentless distress lays the ground for long battles with depression and anxiety. Other disorders, like posttraumatic stress disorder, are actually a reaction from living through an extraordinarily stressful event.
Your Health Is Important.
The physical effects of stress can grind anybody into a pulp if they’re not careful. If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, first consult a doctor. After getting a medical opinion, though, it may be worth thinking about how stress might be affecting your health.
One of the best ways to reduce your stress is by engaging in self-care. Wondering what type of routine would be best for you? Check out this guide I put together on how to approach building an excellent self-care system. Your physical and emotional health can also greatly improve when you sleep.
If you found this list helpful, please consider sharing with a friend or family member who could use it. You can also sign up for my email list to stay up to date with my biweekly posts on mental health issues and wellness. Everybody on my email list gets a free worksheet to help them track their mood and sleep.
