The Definition of Stress
How Does Stress Affect Health

What is the definition of stress? How does stress affect your overall health? Are its effects always negative? Or does it have a good side?

Stress is actually your body’s innate physical response to a challenge, a perceived or real threat or a demand. It is your body’s natural defense or survival mechanism to protect itself.

Have you heard of the “flight-or-fight response”? Its medical term is neuroendocrine response.

It is how your body reacts to a stressful event, whether it is depressing or wonderful.

When you are stressed, do you know what happens inside your body?

Here's how stress affects your overall health:

Stress and health are intertwined.

When you are stressed, your adrenal glands release a bigger amount of neurotransmitters, which are known as adrenaline and non-adrenaline.

In addition to these neurotransmitters, your pituitary gland also releases the stress hormone called cortisol.

All these chemicals have physical effects on your body.

How do they affect your health? They do so by...

1. stimulating your heart to beat faster,

2. pushing your muscles to become tensed and be prepared, and

3. activating your senses to be alert.

These physiological effects of stress help your body to perform to its best ability or protect itself in a dangerous or challenging situation.

To have a better understanding of the definition of stress and how it affects health, why not click the following links:

Types of Stress

There are 3 main types of stress: eustress, distress – acute and episodic acute - and chronic stress.

Not all stress is bad. Eustress has beneficial effects. The types that cause harmful effects on your health are the episodic acute and chronic kinds.

These kinds of stress are all results of the...

Leading Causes of Stress

It is almost impossible to live without stress as it is always present in the world we live in.

The main causes may both be internal - such as being too idealistic - and environmental - an event that brings a major change in your life.

What’s surprising is a major happy event such as giving birth can also lead to...

Effects of Cortisol on Health

Do you know that your health also benefits on cortisol? Yes when only a small amount is released. A larger amount of cortisol causes harm thus its prevention is imperative.

How does cortisol harm you?

It encourages inflammation and leads to a weak immune system which allows cancer cells to thrive. This is explained further in...

Stress and Cancer

Experts still can’t agree on the definite link between stress and cancer. So, how does stress affect your health and lead to cancers eventually?

The National Cancer Institute says long-term exposure to your body’s neuroendocrine response adversely affects two important processes:

1) the repair of any mutation in the DNA, and

2) the regulation of cell growth.

When these two processes are messed with, tumor development is encouraged. Thus it is really important that you learn prevention or...

Ways to Deal with Stress

How do you deal with stress? There are many ways on how to. An example is not to take responsibilities beyond your capacity. It’s alright to say enough already.

Other step to cope with stress effectively are to adapt a healthy eating plan and appreciate the importance of a physical activity.

Cancer is a disease of both the body and the mind. Because of this, one of the ways on cancer prevention is understanding how stress affects health and the definition of stress.

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