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:
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...
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.
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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