18 Serious health problems caused by stress

Stress is part of our normal life, but too much of it without proper management could lead to major health problems.

When you are faced with too much pressure in your daily life, dealing with work-related issues, family problems, financial matters, or any other continuous predicament, your health could suffer from stress. This could also worsen, especially if you don’t know how to manage stress properly. Chances are, you already have accumulated a great batch of health troubles.

Here are some serious health problems you could get from being stressed:

Indigestion

Have you ever encountered a sudden, unexplained diarrhea? How about constipation?

You might not be aware, but these are caused by indigestion due to so much stress. You will suddenly run into the need to defecate right away, wondering what foods you have eaten to cause loose bowel movement but remember none.

Acid Reflux and Hyperacidity

Do you have symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or what is commonly known as acid reflux before and during a job interview or right before your big speaking engagement?

Based on some surveys and studies, heartburn may be very well triggered by tension.

Peptic Ulcers

Ulcers are not actually generated by stress, but if you are suffering from an existing one, it will become chronic and worsen your condition.

Obesity

I know some people who became obese due to stress.  They opted to eating as much as they could whenever they are stressed.  Though refraining from eating because you are under stress is harmful to your body, it’s almost the same thing with eating more than you should.

Colds and Viruses

Be it physical or mental exhaustion—your immune system suffers much.   And your body attracts viruses and/or colds to attack your body’s immune system.

Irregular or Heavy Bleeding during Menstrual Period

Too much stress in women can cause hormonal imbalance and may either keep up or delay your menstruation.  It can also make you suffer from “heavy period” wherein it become more painful than the usual and the bleeding might be entirely different from the normal releases every month–worst scenario is, heavy bleeding that can last for a week or more.

Most miscarriages in pregnant women were also contributed by stressful situations that are intolerable for them.

Insomnia

When you are under pressure, or stressed about something, you have the tendency to overthink on things which disturb your sleep.  And the more that you avoid sleeping, the more you’ll get used to not getting a sound sleep when you most need it.

Chronic headache

Since you are always tensed, expect episodes of headaches wherein you might suffer either from tension or migraine headache.

Migraine may be induced by consuming foods such as chocolates, oranges, or cheese, but unable to manage stress is one of the major components contributing to this type of chronic headache.

While migraine is different from tension headaches and may last for a week or more, unless you get calm, you cannot just tame a tension headache.

Depression

As discussed from the American Psychiatric Association, depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that affects your feelings negatively, the way you think and how you act or react. It usually causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed. Though it can be treated, the condition shouldn’t be ignored because. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems which can lessen a person’s ability to function at work and/or at home.

Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Apart from medical factors, anxiety may be brought by environmental and outside constituents such as: trauma from abuse, or from the loss of a loved one; deficiency of oxygen in high altitude areas and most especially, from stress in a personal relationship: marriage or friendship, from work, school, about money or finances and from a horrifying experience or natural catastrophe.

Anxiety causes nervousness, fear, worrying and just like telling yourself repeatedly that the worst thing is about to take place.
And since it may be from an ordeal or terrifying experience, a phobia may be broken.

Temporary Insanity

Anxiety due to stress if left uncontrolled may lead you to “snap” or be temporarily insane.

Diabetes

When you are under stress, either from mental, physical or emotional burden, a high level of cortisones is being excreted by your body which also induce your glucose sugar to kick in.

This may get more serious when complications start to develop wherein you might acquire lung and kidney problems, blindness, and so forth

Hypertension

Aside from acquiring this bad health condition through possible complications in diabetes, an increase in the blood pressure may occur from being so strained.
Your heart pumps blood into the arteries (blood vessels), wherein blood will be carried throughout your body. High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is troubling and can be fatal because it makes your heart work harder than usual to pump blood to the body and responsible for clotting of the arteries, leading to the incident of heart failure.

Stroke

The stroke has two types: the first one is when an area of the brain lacks blood flow, and the other is when a fissure or rupture of blood vessels occurs in a specific region of your head. Both cases resulted from lack of oxygen in your brain area. For most fonts, stroke is due to lack of blood stream caused by an arterial disease brought by stress.

Nearly all doctors conclude stress, regardless of hypertension, sum up to arterial dysfunction and inflammation in the arteries, both forerunners to stroke.

Stroke risk may be lowered by having a healthy lifestyle and trying to handle the tension in your spirits.

Heart Disease

Although stress is a normal component of life, if left unmanaged, it can lead to heart diseases, breast pains, palpitations or irregular pulses.

Severe stress is accountable for the not so familiar cardiac condition called, ”takotsubo cardiomyopathy” or stress cardiomyopathy. Others simply referred to it as “broken heart syndrome” where the symptoms are very similar to those of a heart attack. It happens when a heart muscle is weakened, making your heart do not work well as it normally should as a product of intense physical or emotional stress. A common case of this is a fierce grief from the demise of a loved one, but feelings of reverence, wrath and even surprise, can also make it. Physical stress refers to dehydration, low blood sugar and stroke.
When a person experiences those types of intense event, stress hormones are being discharged and when these become toxic, heart gets dazed to the degree that it can no longer pump properly.

Cancer

Although the link directly relating stress to cancer has not yet found, studies suggest that those who suffer from too much stress are twice as probable to acquire cancer, especially breast cancer in adult females.

Putting too much concern to some areas in your life like work and family would lead to so much tension, fear, anxiety, and sleep disturbance. It can also increase the risk of developing those serious illnesses later in life if not properly managed.