Impact of Stress on Your Health and How to Tackle It

Given how fast-paced our lives are, for most of us, we deal with stress regularly. In smaller doses, our bodies and minds are perfectly equipped to deal with this. However, smaller doses are rarely what we have to deal with nowadays. Instead, higher stress levels can make it challenging to get about our everyday lives. Everyone’s reasons for being stressed out can be different. For some, it can be academic or work stress; for others, it can be interpersonal. Sometimes stress can be environmental, and sometimes it can be because of internal reasons.

No matter what your reason is, developing healthy coping mechanisms is essential. If left unchecked, stress can have a pretty adverse effect on almost every aspect of our lives. However, if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, you might not know how to start calming yourself down. Luckily, you can keep reading below to learn how stress impacts your life and how you can tackle it.

1. It can make you feel sluggish

For some, stress can have a psychological effect where you feel like your brain is foggy and incapable of thinking too much. For others, however, stress can make you feel physically foggy or sluggish. In many cases, this happens when you haven’t actively considered or accepted the reasons that may make you stressed. Thus, your mind displaces the psychological stress into physical symptoms. If you’ve been feeling sluggish and tired without any apparent reason, stress might be the root cause.

One of the most effective and proven ways to tackle this sluggishness and your underlying stress is by keeping fit and active. Physical activity can help release endorphins, boosting mood and countering stress.

At times, chronic stress can be the culprit behind muscle tension and issues with body movement. If this is something relatable, approaching a kinesiologist would do you good. Many people fell victim to bodily issues post-pandemic, which further heightened the demand for kinesiologists. As a result, this field is witnessing high demand, along with the online bachelor degree in kinesiology becoming popular these days. Statistically speaking, kinesiologists' job growth is expected to increase by 27% in 2024, corroborating our point. In parallel, online degrees will gain a market volume of $239bn by 2027. The reason for sharing such stats is to emphasize the cruciality and significance of kinesiology in tackling various health issues of today.  

2. Irregular periods

If you’re a woman, irregular periods are the most evident signs of overwhelming stress. Stress isn’t just a mental burden. It can have a dire impact on your physiology and can interfere greatly with your hormone levels. If you’re chronically stressed, you can start seeing the impact on your reproductive system soon.

Women suffering from irregular periods, heavier periods, spotting, painful periods, or periods stopping altogether may have stress to blame. Alongside this, you may also experience changes in weight, skin condition, hair fall, and more. If you suffer from any of these tell-tale symptoms, it’s worth visiting the doctor to rule out any medical reason. Once these medical issues are ruled out, you can start working towards lowering your stress levels. Herbal remedies, such as ginger and lavender tea, can be exceptionally useful and relax your reproductive system and mind. Yoga can help you enter a meditative state of mind and soothe your body, thus helping reduce stress levels.

3. Cardiovascular effects

One of the first effects we start to notice, whether we’re going through chronic or acute stress, is cardiovascular. Even if you’re going through a short, stressful event, the first signs are often cardiovascular. A racing heartbeat, sweating, arrhythmia, dizziness, chest pain, and shortness of breath are all signs that your cardiovascular system is working overdrive due to the stress.

While short-term symptoms can dissipate once the situation calms down, your cardiovascular health can start suffering if you’re stressed out more often than not. With time, you might develop heart problems, such as high blood pressure, increased risk of heart attacks, angina, and more. If you want to counter these effects, controlling your stress levels can make a huge difference. Approaching a mental health provider can help you address why you might feel so stressed. With time, therapy can help you develop healthier coping mechanisms to protect your mental and physical health.

4. Sleeping problems

When you’ve too much on your mind, your sleeping schedule can fall on either end of the spectrum. For some, stress can mean sleepless nights, racing thoughts, and an inability to rest, no matter how tired you are. For others, stress can mean eternal exhaustion and an inability to focus on anything because you’re so tired. Either way, sleeping problems can interfere immensely with your everyday life, making you foggy, irritable, and unfocused, causing headaches, blood pressure, and more.

Even a day or two of going without sleep or feeling too exhausted can get overwhelming, so controlling things as soon as possible is important. If you’re suffering from chronic insomnia, getting a doctor’s recommendation and taking medicine can be the best way to get your schedule back on track. Putting your gadgets away an hour before you sleep can help if you want to try something natural. Reading a book, doing meditative yoga, and winding down can help you also fix your circadian rhythm and destress.

5. Digestive problems

If you’ve ever experienced nausea when anxious, you’re not alone. Stress can disrupt your entire body, and your gut is no exception. If you’ve been stressed for a bit, you might start experiencing symptoms such as bloating, cramping, nausea, and general inflammation that can make life difficult. Often, people take tons of medication to address these issues without any effect because their gut can remain imbalanced due to stress.

It's important to figure out ways to curb inflammation and restore your gut health. Prolonged stress can wreak havoc upon your digestive system and lead to long-term issues. Traditional medication may not be the answer here. Instead, it is important first to identify the causes of your stress. Deep breathing and other grounding techniques can be essential in helping you focus even in the toughest situations.

How can I handle stress in a healthy way?

Explore your own Effective Wellness Strategies. To effectively manage stress, it is important to find out your own self-soothing practices and engage in them when facing stressful situations. There are several wonderful options one can try on, such as taking leisurely strolls in natural surroundings, practicing meditation, and immersing yourself in creative endeavors.

Conclusion

Stress, whether it’s chronic or acute, can be a nightmare to deal with. It can put your body in fight or flight mode, leading to a range of not just psychological but physiological symptoms. If you’re witnessing any of the above symptoms, it might be helpful to consider how you’re doing psychologically. Doing so can help you tackle your stress and get your life back on track.