Are you falling sick too often? A hectic job, familial issues, financial limitations, and broken friendships are enough to cause a lot of stress to an otherwise jolly person. Chronic stress can affect our health in numerous ways and can even make us fall sick for no other reason. If you are experiencing one or more of the following stress signals, it means that you might be falling sick soon. Read on to find out the ten signals your body gives when you have started falling sick due to stress.
1. Pain In Your Brain
Stress can cause your hormones to release a series of neurochemical events in your brain, which will stimulate the nerves and make your blood vessels swell. This creates tension in the brain that results in headaches and migraines.1
2. Churning And Burning Of Your Stomach
Stress can cause digestive issues such as disruption of the gut function, heartburn, gas and bloating, and even cramps and diarrhea.2 If you are feeling anxious and stressed out and suddenly your stomach feels like a queasy mess, it might be a sign of you falling sick due to all the stressful days you are going through.
3. Sneezing Way Too Much
If you are sneezing since a long time now and that cold is much like flu stress, your immune system might be getting weaker than ever.3 With stress, our immunity goes down, many times leaving us infected with a cold virus.
4. Insomnia
Of course, stress can cause you to toss and turn in bed and leave you wide awake like a night owl. Sleep problems are the most common in people who stress out a lot. Your irritation, anxiety, and loss of focus can surely leave you sleep-deprived and make it difficult for you to sleep for days at a stretch.4
5. Packing On The Pounds
When your body understands that you are facing stressful situations, it automatically releases adrenaline and cortisol assuming that you need physical energy to protect yourself. These hormones trigger the sensation of hunger and you end up eating a lot of fats and carbs. As a result, you start gaining weight easily. So, stress has proved to result in weight gain.5
6. Terrible Backaches
Stress can trigger the sympathetic nervous system to reduce the blood flow to your muscles and make you prone to muscle spasms. When stress gets worse, some people even tend to hunch over and tense their shoulder and neck muscles when they feel anxious. These tendencies often exacerbate back problems.6
7. Acne And Breakouts
When you freak out more, your skin too breaks out. Stress can affect the levels of the hormone androgen in the body, which triggers the sebaceous glands to produce more oil. This results in pimples and clogged pores.7 Stress can also stimulate the nerve endings and can cause your skin to flare up resulting in eczema and psoriasis.
8. Cuts And Scrapes Do Not Heal
It has been found that stress can make those wounds take longer to heal.8 If you don’t want those unsightly marks stay on your body for long, it would be wise not to mellow out too often. In fact, if you stress out too much, wounds can take around nine more days than average to heal completely.
9. Forgetting Even Your Kids’ Names
It has been found that stress releases the hormone cortisol, and high levels of cortisol in the blood can temporarily impair your ability to recall well-known information. Chronic stress has proved to even damage brain cells, affecting your memory to a great extent.9
10. Inability To Conceive
Stress can impact every organ system in the body, including the reproductive system. The more a woman is depressed, the less likely she is to conceive a baby. Stress can affect your fertility as well.10 When you try relaxation techniques and ways to cope with stress, you automatically increase your chances of getting pregnant.
Coping well with stress can make you a healthier and happier person. So, try to cope up with stress and lead a better life than drowning yourself in misery.
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