Stress is a person’s physical response to the changes requiring adjustments. This covers physical, mental, emotional and psychological reactions. Stressful situations can cause the brain to strain allowing it in a mode of flight or fight. Flight is when the person escapes the situations that cause stress or fights to face them. However, stress enables humans to give quick spontaneous responses.
The ‘flight or fight’ mode is pushed by stress hormones. Some of these hormones are dorpamine, adrenalin, noradrenalin, endorphins and cortisol. These hormones cause a surge of energy in the body when pumped into the blood stream. Then the body reacts to a given situation with the help of hormones.
The mentioned hormones are also responsible for increasing the speed of heart rate, brain activity, blood flow and breathing process of a person. It can also temporarily stop the digestion to preserve energy and encourage muscle tension.
Everyone is not aware that all kinds of stresses are not harmful or negative. A positive form of stress that makes people feel excited and happy is called Eustress. A small amount of stress can be helpful to the human in keeping the brain alert and making it perform better leading to better responses and reactions.
Stress is commonly known as harmful to the body. It can be harmful to a person when he eliminates everything that is related to slowing down even a little bit and relaxing. When a person works for long time, gets tensed and burns out the stress that comes out of it is harmful.
A lot of stress can hurt people. Low level symptoms include headaches and having a weak immune system that makes the body vulnerable to common diseases.
Chronic and severe stress can result in extensive damage. Chronic stress is considered as one of the main causes of health related problems nowadays. Research studies reveal that that chronic stress is associated with major causes of death. Hearth diseases and cancers are the major examples.
Other types of diseases can be caused by unwanted stress. Psychological problems such as anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders and depression can be caused by stress. This has a deteriorating effect on the human health. Hypertension and high cholesterol are few examples that may lead to digestive ulcers, diabetes, obesity and strokes.
Relationships can be ruined by stress and it can even cause aggression or sexual dysfunction. This causes a person to function illogically and less as a social being.
Stress can also be linked to substance abuse. Research shows that a number of people using prohibited drugs, tobacco and alcohol increase their stress levels. These substances are not helpful in curing stress but they may be temporary consolations that result in long term destruction.
Also learn how does stress affect health? and also how to you have swine flu will be beneficial for you.
