Contents:
- Medical Video: How stress affects your body - Sharon Horesh Bergquist
- Can stress cause illness?
- Nausea
- Indigestion
- Easily hurt
- Stay healthy when stress strikes
- 1. Consult with your doctor
- 2. Exercise every day
- 3. Eat healthy food
- 4. Learn to relax
- 5. Expand friendship
- 6. Talk to a professional therapist
- 7. Get enough rest
Medical Video: How stress affects your body - Sharon Horesh Bergquist
Most people may have experienced stress. However, it turns out that stress can affect the body and cause you to get sick easily. Especially if your stress lasts long, this might increase your risk of getting an illness. How can? What do you have to do to keep your body healthy? Check out the answer here.
Can stress cause illness?
Stress can occur due to changes in the surrounding environment, so the body will react and respond to it as a safeguard. When stress strikes, the body will usually try to restore the condition. However, if stress often occurs, the body will need more time to heal.
As a result, the body's performance will be disrupted. These problems can certainly involve many systems, organs, and glands that are affected by stress responses. Here are the kinds of reactions your body has when it is hit by severe stress.
Nausea
A study reports that stress can disrupt the production of the hormone serotonin and adrenaline. As a result, when you experience stress, you will experience nausea. This happens because when you are stressed, your intestine will send a message to the brain that you must feel scared and cause nausea.
Indigestion
Anxiety and worry that end up being stressed, can cause a lot of pressure on the stomach and intestines, including stomach acid and digestion. So often when you experience stress, you will feel something is wrong with your stomach.
Easily hurt
Your body is fighting a day against viruses or bacteria that will and has invaded the body. Apparently, stress can weaken the immune system as a result it can increase your risk of experiencing minor ailments, such as nausea, cough, flu, swollen lymph nodes, dry tongue, dizziness, headache, or stomach ache.
Stay healthy when stress strikes
Anxiety or excessive worry that leads to stress can cause imbalances in your body. Even so, there are several ways to take care of your health when stress strikes. Here are some tips that you can do.
1. Consult with your doctor
If you have experienced symptoms that indicate stress, immediately consult your doctor. Perform a thorough physical examination to make sure other health problems do not trigger feelings that make you stressed.
Your doctor may prescribe medications such as antidepressants to help you deal with excessive stress.
2. Exercise every day
Do exercise every day regularly so you can take care of your health. However, before starting, you should consult with your doctor first. Chemicals produced during moderate exercise can be very beneficial in improving the function of the immune system.
Aerobic exercise and regular strengthening are also effective ways to train your body to deal with uncontrolled stress.
3. Eat healthy food
Many people vent the stress experienced in food. So that you don't pay attention to foods that are consumed healthy or not, the important thing is that stress will subside after eating.
Even though you are stressed, you need to eat healthy food too. You can eat avocados, berries, cashews, yogurt, or oranges as an outlet for your stress.
These healthy foods can help prevent prolonged stress. Also, it contains good nutrients that have been shown to be able to provide an energy boost, reduce the levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and increase levels of the hormone serotonin (happy hormone).
4. Learn to relax
Relaxation techniques can trigger a relaxation response, which is a physiological state characterized by a feeling of warmth and calm mental alertness. This is the opposite of the "fight or flight" response.
Relaxation techniques can offer real potential to reduce anxiety and worry. This can also increase your ability to deal with stress. With relaxation, blood flow to the brain increases and brain waves shift from alert, beta rhythms become relaxed alpha rhythms. Common relaxation techniques include deep breathing, meditation, listening to soothing music, and activities such as yoga and tai chi.
5. Expand friendship
Feeling lonely makes it harder for you to manage stress. People who have a large network of friends not only have a greater life expectancy than people who don't, but they also have few incidences of many types of diseases.
6. Talk to a professional therapist
Psychological counseling can help you develop appropriate treatment strategies to deal with problems that trigger excessive stress.
The therapist will help you recognize what types of thoughts and beliefs cause you to become too stressed. Therapy can also help you suggest ways to help you change, and with your willingness to change. Because the therapist's success is also supported by your will.
7. Get enough rest
Take care of your health with adequate rest. A number of studies have shown that sleep deprivation can mess up mood and brain performance. If you are stressed and sleep deprived, your body will become more overwhelmed to defend itself against disease attacks. So, try to keep enough sleep every night.
