What To Know About Stress—and How It Affects Your Health

Stress is a normal, biological, and psychological response to both daily life challenges and major stressors. Working on a deadline, receiving upsetting news, or experiencing a traumatic event can all trigger a stress response. Stress affects almost every system of your body—leading to changes in your behavior, performance, mood, and overall mental and physical health. 

Most people have experienced stress at some point in their lives. In fact, 33% of adults report feeling overwhelmed by stress most days. In small doses, stress isn’t always a bad thing. But, experiencing chronic (long-term) stress often comes with negative health consequences. Fortunately, there are many ways to manage stress that can help you improve your well-being and prevent your risk of developing stress-related complications.

Types of Stress

While everyone will experience stress from time to time, not all stress is the same. There are two primary types of stress: acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term). Whether stress is acute or chronic depends on how long your stressor lasts, your ability to address the stress you're experiencing, and the type of stressor that's affecting your life.

Acute Stress

Acute stress is short-term stress. Generally, an acute stressor is a challenge or inconvenience you may commonly experience as a part of daily life. This type of stress will trigger your body's natural stress response, but this response will eventually go away once you address the stressor or the stressful situation is over. Forgetting your house key at work, running late to an appointment, or facing an unexpected obstacle (e.g., sitting in traffic) are all examples of acute stress.

Although these situations can feel unpleasant or frustrating, stressors that cause acute stress tend to be easier to solve. In these cases, a stress response can sometimes help you adapt, keep you alert, or sharpen your focus on the situation at hand.

Chronic Stress

In contrast to acute stress, chronic stress is your body's response to a prolonged stressful event or a series of events. In these cases, the stressor is long-term and often difficult to solve. A person experiencing chronic stress may have less control over the stressor. Examples of stressors that can cause chronic stress include:

• Living in poverty
• Experiencing family dysfunction
  
• Dealing with ongoing abuse, harassment, or discrimination
• Managing a chronic or terminal illness
• Caretaking for an aging or sick loved one
• Having a toxic work environment

People who live with chronic stress may also experience helplessness, anxiety, depression, and negative physical health outcomes (such as not being able to heal from an infection or illness as quickly).

Symptoms

It's worth noting that stress is a full-body experience. Almost every major system of the body becomes activated when you experience stress. Notably, your sympathetic nervous system, which activates the body’s “fight or flight” response, releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol when you're dealing with a stressor. This body-wide response causes both physical and mental symptoms, which can affect your heart, stomach, muscles, mood, and thoughts. 

Physical Symptoms of Stress

Stress may cause a wide variety of symptoms that affect your physical well-being. These may include:  

• Heart palpitations
• Muscle aches
• Sweating
• Dry mouth
• Shortness of breath
• Fidgeting
• Headache
• Fatigue

Emotional and Cognitive Symptoms of Stress

It's also common for stress to cause symptoms that affect your mental health, including your emotional well-being and ability to think. These symptoms may include:  

• Forgetfulness
• Trouble concentrating
• Difficulty making decisions
• Changes in mood
• Feeling nervous, anxious, sad, or depressed
• Racing thoughts
• Anger or irritability

Behavioral Symptoms of Stress

As a result of the stress you're experiencing, you may notice changes in your behavior, such as:  

• Experiencing changes in your sleeping and eating habits (such as not eating or sleeping enough or eating and sleeping too much)
• Having a lack of interest in hobbies and activities
• Isolating yourself from social situations and loved ones
• Coping with stress with substances such as alcohol, drugs, or tobacco
  

Causes

Stressors are events or demands that trigger your body’s natural stress response. This stress response can become activated anytime your brain and body perceive a threat. For example, your body activates the same stress response whether you’re running late to an appointment or running away from danger. However, your stress response can vary in intensity based on the stressor you're experiencing.

Some common causes of stress include: 

• Financial stressors, such as not having the funds to pay your rent or mortgage
• Parenting or family stressors, like taking care of a sick child or parent
• School or work stressors, such as an upcoming exam or important work presentation
• Political stressors, like living in a divisive political climate
• Health stressors, such as receiving news of a medical diagnosis
• Pandemics or natural disasters
• Community violence or war
• Discrimination or harassment
• Social pressures, like having to adhere to gender roles or cultural expectations

Stress can also occur due to internal stressors that may cause you to add pressure on yourself. These stressors may include:

• Perfectionism
• Negative self-talk
• Rigid thinking

While everyone experiences stressors, how severely your stressors can affect you tends to depend on your personality, available coping skills, and level of support. For instance, common parenting stressors—like getting a child to school on time—might cause more stress for a single parent than someone in a two-parent household.

Diagnosis

Typically, you can self-diagnose yourself with stress. There is no one test that a healthcare provider can use to diagnose stress. However, a healthcare provider may use a questionnaire, or health indicators like heart rate or blood pressure, to better understand your current and overall stress levels. Your provider may use one of the following questionnaires to measure stress: 

• The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)
• The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory

Generally, these questionnaires include a series of questions that you can answer, and depending on your answers, your provider can learn whether you have mild, moderate, or severe stress. This can help your provider understand how stress may be affecting your overall health and suggest options for treatment and self-care.

Your healthcare provider can also help you identify signs of chronic stress and stress-related disorders. They may ask you about potential stressors you're experiencing, sleeping patterns, eating habits, and mood. As they learn more about your experiences with stress, your provider may also try to rule out mental health conditions such as:

• Acute-stress disorder
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Generalized anxiety disorder
• Major depressive disorder

Treatment

Although it is impossible to eliminate all stressors from your life, learning how to manage stress can help reduce the negative effects stress can have on you. Stress management techniques can look different for everyone, so it’s important to find coping strategies that work for you. Oftentimes, you may have to do some trial-and-error to figure out what works best for you—and that's OK. What's most important is to gradually find the strategies that help you reduce your stress.

A starting point of stress management techniques you might consider trying include: 

• Exercising and moving regularly (e.g., walking, running, dancing, yoga, lifting weights, and playing sports) 
• Eating nutritious foods
• Talking about your stress to a trusted loved one 
• Getting enough sleep
• Keeping a journal about your life experiences and how you're feeling
• Engaging in hobbies that you enjoy (e.g., crafting, knitting, gardening, reading, playing video games, hiking)
• Starting a mindfulness or meditation practice
• Reducing your intake of caffeine and alcohol, which can worsen stress symptoms

For stress that is more chronic or debilitating, you might find it helpful to contact a mental health professional to get additional support. They can help you understand treatment options outside of self-care, such as participating in talk therapy or taking medication.

How to Prevent Stress

While external stressors can be hard to control, there are some things you can do to reduce the amount of stress you’re experiencing. Some prevention strategies may include:

• Learning to say “no”: It’s common to experience stress when you feel overextended or have too many commitments on your plate. Setting boundaries and saying “no” can help increase the amount of control you have over your life, while also reducing feelings of stress and overwhelm. 
• Asking for help: You don’t have to manage your life’s stressors on your own. Ask for help from loved ones or seek out resources in your community when life begins to feel overwhelming. It's also important to note that not everyone is comfortable asking for help, or may have never learned how to properly request support. Talk to a close loved one first for their suggestions or ask a mental health provider how you can gradually work your way up into asking for support more comfortably.
• Practice positive self-talk: Perfectionism and negative self-talk can worsen feelings of stress. Practice talking to yourself as if you were a friend. Be kind to yourself as you navigate life’s stressors.
  

Complications of Stress

While stress isn’t always harmful in small doses, undergoing chronic stress can lead to negative health outcomes. Over-activation of the body’s stress response can contribute to the development of the following conditions:  

• Chronic pain
• Migraine
• Heart attack
• Stroke
• Chronic fatigue syndrome
• Autoimmune disorders, such as lupus, arthritis, or type 1 diabetes
• Mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, or PTSD

A Quick Review

Stress is a common and normal response to the demands and pressures of everyday life. Stress activates the body's “fight or flight” response, sharpening your focus and giving you a boost of energy. But, you might also feel symptoms like an increased heart rate, shortness of breath, mood changes, and anxiety.

While everyday stressors (like sitting in traffic when you're running late) cause acute stress, stressors like poverty, managing an illness, and community violence can lead to chronic stress and adverse health consequences and complications. Stress management techniques like moving your body, asking for support, and starting a mindfulness practice can help reduce the negative affect stress has on your life and improve your overall well-being.