While stress is a normal physical reaction, it can sometimes have harmful effects on your body and overall health. Fortunately, there are effective ways to manage it and maintain your balance.
Stress is the body’s natural response to life’s challenges and unexpected events. It triggers the release of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol to prepare the body to react quickly to threats. In the short term, this physiological response increases your heart rate, blood pressure, and alertness. When stress persists and the body is unable to regain its equilibrium, stress becomes chronic. This can eventually weaken your immune system, affect your mental health, and impair your overall well-being.
Stress can be triggered by a variety of situations, whether positive, like a promotion or the birth of a child, or negative, like conflict or overwork. Everyone has a different stress tolerance.
Generally speaking, stress stems from situations we perceive as demanding or threatening. Common sources of stress include workload, family responsibilities, financial worries, interpersonal conflicts, overuse of digital devices, and significant life events such as a move or accident. Social isolation, noise, lack of sleep, and other factors can also amplify stress. When these stressors pile up or persist over time, they increase strain on the body and throw us out of balance.
Stress and anxiety are often confused, but they’re not the same thing. Stress is a normal, short-term bodily response that usually disappears once the stressful situation has been resolved. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a persistent reaction that can occur even in the absence of a specific trigger. It is often accompanied by excessive worry and physical symptoms similar to those of stress, like an accelerated heart rate and muscle tension. Anxiety that becomes invasive and interferes with daily life can be a sign of an anxiety disorder that requires professional intervention.
Occasional stress disappears once the underlying situation is resolved. However, if stressors don’t go away, the body can fail to regain a state of equilibrium. Stress becomes chronic when the body remains in a state of alert for too long without enough time to recover. Whether you develop chronic stress depends not only on how much stress you’re feeling, but also how often you’re stressed, for how long, and your own tolerance for stress. This condition may also lead to physical and mental exhaustion, which increases the risk of long-term health problems.
In the short term, cortisol helps us manage stress. When we’re stressed repeatedly or for a long period of time, however, the brain continuously produces cortisol, which prevents the body from relaxing completely. This, in turn, disrupts metabolism, sleep regulation, and several other essential body functions. In the long term, cortisol overload eventually exhausts the body and increases the risk of physical and psychological illness.
Intense, prolonged stress can damage your health, increasing the risk of illness as well as physical, psychological, and behavioural problems.
Stress is a risk factor for many diseases and conditions, including the following:
Stress can trigger many symptoms that may vary from person to person. They can be divided into three categories: physical, psychological, and behavioural.
Some of the physical symptoms of stress you may experience include the following:
Psychological symptoms of stress include the following:
Stress can also prompt the following changes in behaviour:
There are ways to control the stress we feel and prevent it from taking over our lives and affecting our health.
Here are a few tips to help you manage your stress:
In a society focused on productivity, stress affects more and more people regardless of age or social status. Listening to your body and adopting good habits can help you manage stress better and maintain your well-being.
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Last updated on March 10, 2025
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