Anxiety is tolerated by the body in small doses. The surges of tension, alarm, and agitation serve you well when “fight or flight” is your best defense.The levels of adrenaline and cortisol that flow through you are meant to go down as the danger abates, leaving you calm, your pulse steadied, and you are no longer upset.
But what is the cost to your physical health when anxiety is constantly present, fatiguing normal function, and sapping your strength?
The physical damage caused by anxiety commonly includes the following health problems:
Stress in your Chest
Anxiety likes to take up residence in the chest. Labored breathing, dizzying spikes in blood pressure, heart palpitations, and even heart attack can accompany a life of overwhelming stress and worry.
Anxiety increases the odds of heart trouble significantly, even in previously healthy people. Research indicates that anxiety can introduce damaging shifts in blood thickness and inflammation in the heart. These conditions are serious and sometimes life-threatening.
Brain Strain
Anxious feelings are frequently caused by a steady wash of stress-related chemicals in the brain. When those feelings and chemicals become commonplace rather than infrequent, your brain may come to accept your anxious state as normal. Chemicals like serotonin and oxytocin, which produce positive, content feelings are overcome.
Soon, your brain becomes “hardwired” for fearful, intense emotion, reluctant to register overblown anxiety as a problem. Eventually, anxiety tricks your brain into thinking that help isn’t necessary or that your physical symptoms can’t be alleviated.
Ruined Routines
Anxiety keeps you up at night. It may make you lose your appetite or cause you to overeat to ease the worry. Anxious fear or lack of focus might even make it hard to exercise or make healthy choices.
Your ability to heal, accept nourishment, and manage weight-related conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity require routines that support your health. If your body is filled with worry or dread, it will soon succumb to fatigue, illness, and eventually, more chronic disease.
An Unsettled Stomach
The knots in your stomach, the pain in your gut, and the roiling in your belly all signal that anxiety is running rampant through your midsection. It’s no surprise that prolonged stress can lead to nausea and digestive distress. Furthermore, when anxiety is left untreated, your life may become regularly, and embarrassingly, interrupted by bouts of irritable bowel syndrome or spastic colon.
Hormonal Hassles
They’re up, they’re down. Much like the anxious thoughts inciting them, your hormones are all over the place, creating chaos in your body. Long periods in a tense, sensitive mental state lead to huge secretions of stress hormones in your system. The hormonal imbalance has serious effects on the brain, heart, immune system, and sexual functioning. If you’re not careful to treat anxiety early, you may experience short-term memory loss, limited fertility, and belly fat induced by high levels of cortisol.
Unhealthy Habits
Sometimes anxiety becomes too much to handle emotionally and mentally. In an effort to cope, you may seek relief through less than healthy means. Indulging in alcohol, tobacco, painkillers, and illicit drugs are not the cure for your anxiety. They seem to offer relaxation and escape but usually just make things worse. Engaging in harmful behaviors habitually risks addiction and damage to your heart, lungs, and nervous system as time goes on.
Take a moment before you reach for another pill or simply settle for managing pain.
Your body isn’t meant to house anxiety indefinitely.
Try instead to reduce your stress with an experienced therapist. Talk to someone who will give you the tools you need to cope with your fears.
Denise Kautzer is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and a Certified Public Accountant whose practice is located in St. Paul, MN. You can view her website at www.denisekautzer.com or contact her at denise@denisekautzer.com.