The Effects of Stress on Health: Negative and Positive Aspects

Stress is a common emotion experienced when one is unable to deal with a difficult situation and is a part of daily life. Stress has negative effects on health and individual behavior, including depression and anxiety. Managing stress is difficult because there are different types with their own characteristics, symptoms, and treatment. Chronic stress can cause serious health problems, including heart problems, high blood pressure, diabetes, and respiratory problems. Stress can also affect the digestive system, causing heartburn, constipation, stomachache, and vomiting. Short-term stress can be beneficial to the immune and muscular systems. Poor stress management methods, such as drug or alcohol use, can lead to worsened stress symptoms and sleeping problems. Good stress management methods are important to reduce the negative effects of stress.

Effects of stress:
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Stress is a common emotion that comes when one is unable to deal with a difficult
situation and it is a common part of daily life. Recent studies show that many people get stressed
every day and many more are always stressed but it is difficult for them to handle stress. Stress is
always seen as a medical problem and it is experienced by almost everybody in their life but they
experience it in different forms and degrees (Jean, 2005, p. 10). People get stressed whenever
they are faced with a difficult situation that they cannot cope with or handle. It has negative
effects on health of people and individual behavior because it can cause serious mental problem
like depression and anxiety and this means that it is a bad emotion. This paper explains how
stress can affect heath and also looks into its positive effects.
The meaning of stress is not clear although people use it to mean how the body
reacts when it is exposed to a dangerous situation. According to McCeney and Krantz (2002, p.5)
stress is looked at as normal physical response that the body goes through when there is lack of
balance between the situation we are faced with and our ability to cope with. Jean (2005, p. 15)
states that managing stress is difficult and confusing because there are different types of stress
like acute stress, episodic stress, and chronic stress and each type has its own characteristics,
symptoms, duration, and how to treat it. In some cases it is always difficult to know that an
individual is having stress because sometimes it motivates them to work hard.
Having stress makes an individual to have serious health problem that interferes
with how body functions biologically. For example, when the body is faced with stressful
situation, the brain coordinates with the body to release body hormones to deal with that
situation. As a result, when this process continues, it makes the heart rate to increase and the
person start breathing faster and this makes the muscles to tighten in order to make the body
respond to that situation (McCeney & Krantz, 2002, p. 15). This is normal way that body deals

with stress but when it continues to happen it can cause serious health problems. It may also
results to chronic stress that affect a person’s mind, body, life and behavior. It also makes a
person to start having fatigue, lack of concentration, and worst body condition.
Furthermore, body problems such as depression, anxiety, headache, high blood
pressure, diabetes, and heart problems can come as a result of stress. It has been found that
almost all the diseases are as a result of stress because it badly affects a person’s physical,
emotional and mental health (Burke & Matthiesen, 2004, p. 10). It has also been found that when
stress continues, many stress hormones in the body causes problems to the respiratory and
cardiovascular system which can cause deaths. Legg (2018, para 3) states that when a person
who is suffering from “Type D” personality is also stressed they are high chances that the person
will face bad outcome. Additionally, the condition of a stressed person with breathing difficulties
like asthma can become worst when the person begins to breathe faster to respond to stress.
If someone fails to manage stress properly it can cause more health problems like
type 2 diabetes. This happens when a person is undergoing stress and the liver reacts by
producing excess blood sugar in order to boost sugar levels. However, under chronic stress,
when excess sugar is released the body will be unable to handle it and this will lead to the
development of type 2 diabetes. Legg (2018, para 3) is also concerned that stress affects
digestive system because when stress hormones increases in the body it causes it leads to
increase in breathing nd heart rate which affects the digestive system. As a result, affected person
will have heartburn and will also have problems with how food flows leading to problems like
constipation, stomachache and vomiting (Legg, 2018, para 1).

Having stress for short period of time is harmless and can be good to the body but
when it continues for a long time it may lead to other medical problems. McCeney and Krantz
(2002, p. 15) add that when stress continues for a long time, it causes increase in blood pressure
which increases the risk of hypertension, heart attack, or stroke. However, medical doctors have
failed to agree that stress causes long-term high blood pressure but they have agreed that when
one is having stress, blood pressure increases causing heart to beat faster and blood vessels to
narrow. Prolonged stress also causes immune system to be weak and this means that people
affected can easily contract other diseases.
More important is how people manage stressful situation because this can also
have bad effect on their bodies as founded by the study conducted by stress management society
in 2009 (Burke & Matthiesen, 2004, p. 8). It is important to develop good stress management
methods which will help one to reduce the bad symptoms of stress because stress situation can
become worse when poorly managed. For example, some people use drugs, tobacco, or alcohol
to reduce stress but this only works to make it become harmful (Knowlton, 2018, para, 6). When
a person uses these drugs to reduce stress, instead of stress disappearing the body becomes more
stressful and it may results into more problems. The use of drugs also causes sleeping problem
which can make some symptoms or diseases became worst.
Many people only look at the bad side of stress but stress has some advantages or
positive benefits to the general health of a person. When stress happens for a short time it boosts
the immune and muscular system of a person and this result into better health. When the immune
system of the body is boosted, the body increases it chances of fighting strange diseases.
Additionally, Knowlton (2018, para 8) adds that stress makes someone to work hard by
increasing the speed of his/her physical performances and it also makes one to be strong because

when the body is stressed it releases adrenaline which increases the heart rate and the rate of
metabolic system also increases.
Furthermore, this adrenaline also makes a person to have a reaction in the
muscles that make them to have better performances and also helps to fight tiredness and
diseases. Knowlton (2018, para 7) states that stress has an advantage in the way it acts as a great
motivator. For example, during exams or sports season in school when students are getting ready
for important exams or sport, they may feel stressed because they are not well prepared and this
can motivate them to work hard (Jean, 2005, p. 15). Students who experience stress tend to work
hard than they usually do in preparation and have better performances because they are pushed
by stress hormones. Knowlton (2018, para 8) says that this is because stress improves intelligent
quotient (IQ) of an individuals by making them mentally active.
Conclusion
The aim of this paper was to discuss effects of stress on health of individuals and
also to look at its positive effects. Stress is bad to the health of a person but if it is managed
carefully it can bring some good thing to the body. Such good sides of stress include increased
physical performance, improved immune and muscular system, and motivation. A long stress
causes health problems like mental illness, depression, anxiety, heart attack, high blood pressure
among others. It is also important to look at the method that one uses to manage stress because
when a wrong method like use of drugs is used it may cause more serious problems.

References
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Burke, R. and Matthiesen, S. (2004). Workaholism among Norwegian journalists: antecedents
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