Chronic stress makes you sick

The right amount of stress is not harmful to your health. But it does become a problem if there are no relaxation phases built in and your body is constantly in alert mode. When that happens, acute stress becomes chronic.

It’s a familiar story to many of us, with minor variations: Run the kids to daycare or school in the morning, then rush to work. At work, one meeting follows the next. After work, pick up the kids, zip home, and barely make it to your night out at the movies. Our lifestyle is shaped by hurrying, a hectic pace, and pressure to perform.  Relaxation, recovery and break time often fall by the wayside. We ask more and more of ourselves, and at the same time we pay less attention to ourselves. But that’s important. When we are constantly running on high, subjecting ourselves to ongoing pressure, acute stress becomes chronic.  And that can be bad for our health.

There are many signs of chronic stress, and they can manifest themselves in people in very different ways. Chronic stress can hurt your metabolism, your immune and cardiovascular systems, your sleep regulation, and your learning, memory and attention processes. Chronic stress can also spiral out of control. We experience our own stress responses, but we can no longer influence them. As a result, stress itself puts pressure on us. Ultimately, it takes smaller and smaller stimuli to set off another stress response. This can lead to burnout.

Chronic stress can play a significant role in psychosomatic diseases. It can also cause high blood pressure, diabetes, tinnitus, heart attacks, headaches and backaches as well as depression and sexual disorders.