Chronic Stress Can Ruin Your Health and Your Life.
Stress can make you sick, unhappy, and fat. Learn why and what you can do about it.
Our body and nervous system are still living in the stone-age, where a stress reaction was needed to run away from an acute, short-term threat.
During these so-called fight-or-flight responses, the body releases stress hormones such as epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) or cortisol.
Adrenaline increases your heart rate, blood pressure, triggers the release of glucose (blood sugar) and makes you breathe faster to ensure extra oxygen supply that will help to make you more alert.
Once the threat is over (aka when our ancestors escaped from the mammal), the levels of the stress hormones get back to normal.
That’s why short bursts of stress can be handled well by your body.
The problem is that finishing a stressful project or being trapped in a traffic jam usually takes longer than running away from a threat. The stress hormones will stay elevated and cause all sorts of issues:
If your blood sugar level stays elevated and you don’t use the extra glucogen to run away or physically fight a threat, the extra energy can be stored as body fat.
