How stress affects the body

Psychology

How Stress Affects the Body

Stress is a basic fact in everyone's life. Forces from the outside world affect an individual on a daily basis. How an individual responds to stress determines in what ways it will affect the individual. All living creatures constantly interact with their surroundings, both physically and behaviorally. This interaction of forces, or energy, is of course present in the relationships between all matter in the universe, whether it is living or not. Nonetheless, there are critical differences in how different living creatures relate to their environment. These differences have extensive consequences for survival. Because of the surplus of stress in our modern lives, stress is usually referred to as a negative experience, but from a biological point-of-view, stress can be a neutral, negative, or positive experience (Stress, 2009).

Generally stress is related to both external and internal factors. External factors include one's physical environment, their relationships with others, their home, and all the situations, challenges, difficulties, and expectations that they are confronted with on a daily basis. Internal factors determine a person's ability to respond to, and deal with, the external stress-inducing factors. Internal factors which influence a person's ability to handle stress include nutritional status, overall health and fitness levels, emotional well-being, and the amount of sleep and rest that one gets (Stress, 2009).

I choose this topic because, stress plays a major factor in a persons' health. People are consistently under stress everyday and thus causing threats to their health. I am going to school to become a nurse, and my job will be to treat patients and keep them healthy. I would integrate my capabilities as a nurse to help my patients cope with stress. As a nurse I would strive to succeed in helping and healing my patients of stress and stress related illnesses.

Stress can affect the body in a number of different ways. Uncontrollable, unpredictable, and constant stress has far-reaching consequences on a person's physical and mental health. One of the abnormal consequences of stress is a learned helplessness that often leads to the hopelessness and eventually clinical depression. There are many illnesses that can occur due to stress as well. These include: chronic anxiety states, high blood pressure, heart disease, and addictive disorders (Stress, 2009).

Excess stress can manifest itself in a variety of emotional, behavioral, and even physical symptoms, and the symptoms of stress can vary tremendously among individuals. Common physical symptoms that are often reported by those experiencing excess stress include sleep disturbances, muscle tension, headache, gastrointestinal disturbances, and fatigue. Emotional and behavioral symptoms that can occur because of excess stress include nervousness, anxiety, changes in eating habits including overeating, loss of enthusiasm or energy, and mood changes (Stress, 2009).

One of the best examples of the effects of severe stress is post traumatic stress disorder. This occurs when people experience feelings of terror and helplessness during a trauma and then has recurrent flashbacks, nightmares, impaired concentration and emotional numbing afterwards. Some victims of this disorder turn to alcohol or other drugs which do nothing accept compound the problem. It is thought that approximately 10% of Americans have had or will have this disorder at some point in their lifetime (Carpenter and Huffman, 2008).

Since it seems evident that we can't escape stress, we need to learn how to effectively cope with it. There is not one single thing that must be done but a process that allows us to deal with various stressors. A person's level of stress depends on both their interpretation of and their reaction to stressors. Elimination of drug use and no more than moderate alcohol use are important in the successful management of stress. It is known that people, when stressed, often seek these things out, but it is also known that many of these substances sensitize the stress response. Because of this, small problems will produce big surges of stress chemicals. Unfortunately, these attempts with drugs and alcohol to mask the effects of stress often prevent the person from facing the problem directly and dealing with it. This leads to not being able to develop effective ways to cope with or eliminate the stress (Stress, 2009).

There are seven very important resources that are available regarding health living and stress management. These resources include: health and exercise, control, positive beliefs, social skills, social support, material resources, and relation (Carpenter and Huffman, 2008). For those who need more help in dealing with stress, stress-management counseling in the form of individual or group therapy is often offered by various mental-health-care providers. Stress counseling and group discussion therapy have proven to reduce stress symptoms and improve overall health and attitude (Stress, 2009).