Everyone experiences stress daily, from kids to teens to adults. When going through a difficult situation, such as a deadline or a personal problem, people often say “I’m stressed out!”. This response is literally correct, but what exactly is stress?
Simple stated, stress is a response of humans and animals to something that disturbs their relaxed state, physically and/or mentally. We automatically go into “flight-or-fight” response when dealing with stress. An example of this may be when you are sitting on a chair and a friend of yours tips that chair making you feel as if you’re falling off the Eiffel Tower. As we know, too much stress is bad both for our mind and body, but too much of anything can be harmful. In truth, a little stress is actually good for us! A little stress gives birth to the feeling of excitement and benefits of this is to keep both our mind and body active. When playing a competitive sport or even tag, this “flight-or-fight” response stays activated until we are done. Believe or not, an upcoming test also provides you with good stress. The exhilaration you feel is actually your body being stressed. Here are some more benefits of stress:
1. With a steady amount of stress, your brain increases its ability to concentrate, think, and memorize.
2. After experiencing a stressful situation, your body can better adapt to the same stress in the future.
3. It can motivate you to succeed. Stressful situations can also be seen as challenges. After overcoming them, you feel like a champion with a sense of accomplishment.
4. It helps you grow, especially at a young age and as a baby. Your brain becomes better in thinking and your body more healthy and active.
And as stated before and something we all know, too much stress is BAD. The level of stress we feel differs from person to person even if they are faced with the same situation. When dealing with constant and high levels of stress without rest aka chronic stress, the body has to keep on “fighting” even when it wants to take a break. There are several signs of too much stress to look out for:
1. Can’t concentrate or finish tasks
2. Body aches
3. Getting sick more often
4. Getting irritated, angry, and/or anxious more easily and more often
5. Trouble falling asleep or staying awake
6. Changes in appetite
As you can see, too much stress affects the body in many ways. To be exact, too much stress can weaken your immune system, damage your heart through an excess of hormones that increases your heart rate and constriction of blood vessels, make it difficult to control your emotions, make you look older through wrinkles, and shrink your brain by overusing parts of it. These side-effects can eventually lead to depression where you feel anything you do is worthless, increased risks of cancer, strokes, and heart attacks, weaken your bones and muscles, and change your genes which will affects your offsprings for generations to come.
You Are Stressed
by Elvis Tran