If you are experiencing acute stress, your body will react by releases stress hormones like cortisol, these hormones are there to protect us by preparing your body to fight or flight the stressful event.
Your heart rate will increase, your lungs take in much more oxygen increasing production of unwanted additional free radicals within the body which can be harmful causing pre-mature aging, cancers, cell destruction and changes in DNA, your blood flow increases and parts of your immune system become temporarily suppressed, which has an adverse effect regarding your inflammatory response to pathogens and other foreign invaders.
If your stress ever becomes long term and chronic, your immune system decreases in sensitive to cortisol, and while inflammation is somewhat regulated by this hormone, this minimises sensitivity which heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation to get totally out of control.
This is how stress predisposes you to getting ill in the first place, and in the event you do get sick, emotional stressors can make your symptoms worse, especially if the stress is severe or continual.
Alzheimer’s
Canadian scientist reviewed studies that have already been published and found brain areas affected by chronic anxiety, fear and stress were linked to Alzheimer’s. This may explain the development of neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and Alzheimer’s.
In the study they found that 72 percent of Alzheimer’s patients had experienced severe emotional stress during the two years preceding their diagnosis. In the control group, only 26 percent, had undergone major stress or grief. Most of the stresses encountered by the Alzheimer’s group involved:
Bereavement - death of a spouse, partner, or child
Violent - experiences, such as assault or robbery
Car accidents
Financial problems
Diagnosis of a family member’s severe illness
To me there is a clear and present link between stress and anxiety regarding the effects it has on our biological system and Alzheimer’s.
Stress can also play mayhem on your stomach health, which is vital to sustaining physical and mental wellbeing. A further study exploring the role of stress have also found that stress can also literally rewire your brain.
Scientists have also created a link between severe middle age stresses damaging the brain. They have found the neurons involved in chronic anxiety and fear ‘extensively overlap’ in areas also associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
In a modern consumerism society, like we have here in the west, serve stress has become part of our normal being and is constantly increasing as time continues on. We all know several people, if not more who are suffering from this stressful lifestyle that we have accepted. There has never been in all our history even through wars and other hardships been so many people suffering from this self-creating illness and it is becoming normalise. This is a dangerous game to play indeed, cancer, mental health, Alzheimer’s and hundreds of other diseases can be related back to stress, creating a toxic environmental for all of us losing prospective of our true reality.
The sad thing is that we have just accepted this way to live. No matter what the cause of this intolerable increase in stress, weather you blame the government or the big corporate businesses with their billon pound marketing strategies, ultimately it’s down to the individual, the choices we make.
Stress induced damage to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex can be combated or even reversed with consistent moderate physical and mindful activity that have both been found to improve the hippocampus.
Tai Chi, Qigong, Meditation, Yoga, moderate exercise and talk therapies are all scientifically proven to reduce stress and therefore reduce the risk of getting dementia and other mental health diseases.
Even if you’re not in a position or not willing to release stress from your daily life’s, then the above can certainly help manage it for us, without the need of medication and all its adverse side effects.
Looking at this from a basic and general overview of the energy body, as it has many complexities attached to it, but acute or chronic stress and anxiety pre-dominantly creates an overwhelming Yang body where forgetfulness, sleeping issues, excess body heat (especially at night) with maybe night sweats, trouble with digestion and swallowing food, female menstrual issues the list goes on and on may occur, Tai Chi & Qigong has an excellent track record and proven methods to re-balances the bodies energies creating harmony and peace within.
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