Question: How dose stress effect ur health ?

Rebecca Lacey answered on 28 Jun 2012:

Hi charlotte01!

This is a big question and something that my colleagues are working on at the moment!

There are many ways in which stress may affect our health. For example being under a lot of stress may raise your blood pressure, your pulse rate and it can also affect you mentally as well (some people may feel like they cannot cope very well or may feel depressed or anxious).

Current research has been going on looking at how social stress (e.g. experiencing your parents splitting up or arguing) can affect the level of stress hormones (e.g. cortisol) in the body. Scientists think that if you experience lots of this social stress when you are young that the stress mechanisms in your body may get reset to work at a different level to those children who haven’t experienced this. This can lead to health problems over time and make you more prone to heart problems, diabetes and obesity, for example.

It is also possible for some people that experiencing high levels of stress can result in unhealthy behaviours. For example some people may drink lots of alcohol in order to cope or smoke more. These things are obviously bad for your health and can increase your risk of lots of different diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.

It should be noted though that not all stress is bad and usually our body copes with it just fine.