Stress: How it affects our body and mind?

Your heart races, palms sweat, breathing quickens. Is there a lion in the room? No. It’s just your boss’s email.

Welcome to the modern jungle — where the predator is stress, lurking among deadlines, financial obligations, personal relationships, and even our own expectations. Unlike our forebears who escaped from tangible dangers, we find ourselves ensnared in a perpetual cycle of “fight or flight,” and our bodies bear the concealed toll.

How Stress Turns Against You

 Your Heart is Overworked:

Chronic stress keeps your blood pressure high. Instead of occasional sprints, your heart is now running daily marathons. This prolonged strain increases the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes over time.

Your Gut Feeling Misfires:

Have you ever experienced stomach discomfort due to anxiety? Stress disrupts digestion, leading to bloating, diarrhea, constipation, and can even aggravate conditions like IBS. Your gut is intricately linked to your emotional state.

Muscles Tense Up:

Is your neck tight or shoulders stiff? That’s stress locking up your muscles, bracing for a confrontation that never happens. Over time, this results in chronic pain and tension headaches.

Immune System Compromised:

Short episodes of stress can enhance immunity. However, constant stress weakens it. You may find yourself more susceptible to colds, healing takes longer, and inflammation increases, paving the way for various illnesses.

Your Brain, Altered:

Stress inundates your brain with cortisol. A little is manageable, but excessive amounts shrink the hippocampus (the center for memory), hinder learning, and can lead to anxiety and depression.

The Ultimate Irony:

Stress exists to keep us alive. Yet left unchecked, it slowly destroys the very body it tries to protect.

What Can You Do?

Breathe: Slow, deep breaths trick your body into relaxing.

Move: Exercise burns off stress hormones. Even a brisk walk helps.

Sleep: Quality sleep restores your systems, lowers cortisol, and sharpens your mind.

Connect: Talking to someone you trust is proven to reduce stress hormones.

Mind your mind: Meditation and mindfulness literally change brain wiring to handle stress better.

Stress damages your brain by flooding it with cortisol, which causes your memory centre to shrink, your focus to become blurry, and your mind to be wired for fear. It gradually robs you of your happiness, increases your anxiety, and even changes your brain to anticipate the worse. It changes your thoughts, not simply tampers with them.

Bottom line: Stress is a master of disguise. It doesn’t always shout — sometimes it whispers through headaches, fatigue, or anxiety.Listen to your body before it screams.