Chronic stress is bad for your health.
That statement summarizes finding by medical scientists researching the link between stress and health.
States medical researcher Sheldon Cohen et al., “Chronic psychological stress is associated with a greater risk of depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, upper respiratory infections, and poorer wound healing.”
From the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center:
Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, PhD, has dedicated her research career to understanding how stress alters the endocrine and immune systems. Her Stress and Health Lab, part of The Ohio State University Medical Center’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research (IBMR) of which she is director, has been at the forefront of this field.
Dr. Kiecolt-Glaser’s research reveals how chronic stress, such as spousal care giving, can have negative effects on the caregiver’s immune system and can increase the person’s risk for age-related diseases. Her work reveals that chronic stress can impair vaccine response and her lab was the first to demonstrate that stress slows the rate at which wounds heal.
She has also examined stress in the context of nutrition. “We recently showed that stress can alter the metabolic responses to high-fat meals in ways that promote obesity, another first in the research literature,” says Dr. Kiecolt-Glaser.
Here is the Mayo Clinic’s description of how your body responds to acute stress:
When you encounter a perceived threat — such as a large dog barking at you during your morning walk — your hypothalamus, a tiny region at your brain’s base, sets off an alarm system in your body. Through a combination of nerve and hormonal signals, this system prompts your adrenal glands, located atop your kidneys, to release a surge of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol.
Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure and boosts energy supplies. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhances your brain’s use of glucose and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues.
Cortisol also curbs functions that would be nonessential or detrimental in a fight-or-flight situation. It alters immune system responses and suppresses the digestive system, the reproductive system and growth processes. This complex natural alarm system also communicates with the brain regions that control mood, motivation and fear.
The body’s stress-response system is usually self-limiting. Once a perceived threat has passed, hormone levels return to normal. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, your heart rate and blood pressure return to baseline levels, and other systems resume their regular activities.
So, how does chronic stress affect your body?
From clinical immunologist Leonard Calabrese, DO:
If you think that herbs and dietary supplements will boost your immune system, then think again.
From the Harvard Medical School:
Walk into a store, and you will find bottles of pills and herbal preparations that claim to “support immunity” or otherwise boost the health of your immune system. Although some preparations have been found to alter some components of immune function, thus far there is no evidence that they actually bolster immunity to the point where you are better protected against infection and disease. Demonstrating whether an herb — or any substance, for that matter — can enhance immunity is, as yet, a highly complicated matter. Scientists don’t know, for example, whether an herb that seems to raise the levels of antibodies in the blood is actually doing anything beneficial for overall immunity.
Instead of taking ineffective and unproven herbs and dietary supplements, the Harvard Medical School suggests six relaxation techniques to reduce stress.
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