The word stress conjures images of struggle, discontent, and unpleasant symptoms. Many people are aware that stress is bad for you, but can it kill you? Stress itself doesn’t kill you, but your reaction to it can. Knowing when stress is harmful, how to manage it, and when to seek professional help could extend your life.
Can You Die From Stress?
Stress doesn’t kill you, but when chronic, the reaction stress produces can lead to serious illnesses that can be deadly. Your body’s response to stress is natural. It’s what allows you to respond to problems and threats big and small, and when it’s kept in check and is time-limited (when the brain and body have a chance to return to baseline functioning), no harm is done.1
Stress causes damage by being chronically activated, either by staying activated for extended periods or becoming frequently activated with only few and brief opportunities for recovery in between flares. When this fight-or-flight stress reaction—which is mediated by the sympathetic nervous system—is chronically or frequently activated, cortisol levels remain high, which leads to responses that do damage to the whole body. Such responses accelerate aging, and damage tissues in every single organ, gland, and system in your body.2,3
Stressful thoughts, emotions, or situations activate reactions throughout the brain and body in a rapid-fire chain of events involving the nervous and endocrine systems:4,5,6,7
- You experience an event, either internal (a thought, an emotion, a sensation) or external (a situation, a person) that causes or increases an emotion. Your brain’s amygdala kicks in and contacts another part of the brain, your hypothalamus.
- Your hypothalamus reacts and, to help solve what it assumes is a problem, it instantly nudges the pituitary gland by sending it corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH; also known as CRF for “factor”).
- Now alert and alarmed, the pituitary frantically contacts the adrenal glands on top of your kidneys. The pituitary gland sends down adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) which causes the adrenal glands to release a flood of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol coursing through your blood into every system and cell in your body.
The fight-or-flight response, in turn, causes reactions and changes throughout your body so you can deal with your stressor. (Regardless of what that is—your body doesn’t differentiate between types of stress but just reacts.)
The following are fight-or-flight changes that occur in your body:1,7
- Pupils dilate for sharper vision
- Heart rate and blood pressure increase to boost circulation away from your internal organs and toward your extremities so you can fight or run
- Breathing becomes rapid and shallow to give the brain and body bursts of oxygen
- Muscles tense for increased strength and reaction time
- Platelets increase to allow for quicker blood clotting in case of physical injury
- The immune system increases white blood cell counts and promotes inflammation in preparation for healing
- Carbohydrates and fat stores are broken down to immediately increase blood sugar (glucose) and lipid levels for energy
Cardiovascular Disease & Stress
Stress is strongly linked to heart disease.8 Increased heart rate and blood pressure impact small blood vessels throughout the brain and body, causing inflammation and leading to deposits of plaque.2 This change increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. It also contributes to heart disease.3
Stress & Respiratory Diseases
Stress impacts blood flow to lungs, inflammation of tissue, and breathing rate. It can worsen problems like asthma and emphysema and make them more difficult to manage.4,5
Immune System Problems & Stress
Stress initially enhances the immune system, but when it remains chronic, this system shuts down. This is why when you’re stressed you might notice that you are sick more often.2,4,5 A constant off-again, on-again pattern of the stress reaction is linked to autoimmune diseases because the body becomes confused and the immune system tricked into overactivity.2 It attacks your own cells as a result.
Stress & Digestive Disorders
The digestive system also reacts to the chronic stress response. Blood flow is unnaturally diverted away from it, and stress hormones and immune system behavior lead to inflammation. This affects how your entire digestive system functions.4,5 Related disorders include acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel diseases, and functional disorders like gastroparesis.9
Musculoskeletal Problems & Stress
Prolonged muscle tension can cause chronic headaches, back, shoulder pain, neck pain, cramping, and joint pain.3 Chronic pain can become debilitating.
Stress & Type 2 Diabetes
The weight gain that is associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D) is often attributed to stress eating. As it turns out, there’s a reason you could crave fatty, sugary food when you’re stressed. As part of the stress response, the liver produces and releases extra glucose to provide an energy burst. When you’re under chronic stress, your body needs a steady supply of fats and sugars, so you crave these foods. Both what you eat and what your body is doing (producing extra glucose) contributes to T2D.4,5,7
Cancer & Stress
The causes of cancer are complex. Little is currently known about the direct influence of stress in the development of cancer, but researchers are discovering that there may be a link. For example, there is a possible, but not yet fully understood, connection between the increased immune system activity that’s designed to repair short-term damage and the production of tumors due to chronic immune system activation.1
This news isn’t all doom-and-gloom. We have the power to step in and influence our body’s stress reaction. It begins with knowing how to tell when stress is harmful.
How Can You Tell When Stress Is Harmful?
Stress itself is neither inherently good nor bad. It’s simply how your brain and body respond to life and anything that disrupts your emotional or physiological balance.2 Stress can actually be helpful, increasing motivation and energy so you can respond to problems and enjoy pleasant experiences. This type of positive stress is called eustress.5
It’s when the fight-or-flight reaction becomes chronically activated, either staying on for extended periods or stuck in a continual, erratic, roller coaster ride of on and off status, that it is harmful. Stress attacks us on multiple fronts, impacting the body and brain (our physiology), the mind (our thoughts and feelings), and our behavior. The sympathetic nervous system involves the regions of the brain associated with mood, motivation, and fear.6 As previously mentioned, the sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the fight-or-flight response.
Therefore, tuning in to all of these experiences can help you know when you’re experiencing harmful stress. If you are experiencing stressors in your life and begin to notice physical or mental health symptoms that don’t go away, it could be a sign that stress may be taking a toll on your health and wellbeing.
If your mood, emotions, or physical health isn’t how you want it to be, stress management techniques may help.
How to Manage Stress
Stress is harmful on two fronts: internal and external. Internally, chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system and living in a near-constant state of fight-or-flight can contribute to serious illness. Externally, stressful situations contribute to unhealthy lifestyle choices like smoking, substance use, unhealthy eating habits, and a sedentary lifestyle.
Determining what you are experiencing both internally and externally can help you deal with it.8 Spend some time investigating what makes you feel stressed, where you feel it in your body and mind, and how you deal with it in your actions. Then, you can create a plan that incorporates stress management tips into your daily life.
When to Get Professional Help for Stress
Sometimes, no matter how many stress management techniques you try on your own, life stressors remain overwhelming and you can’t find a way to feel better.
Stress can cause major challenges that signal a need for professional help, including:3
- Anxiety
- Dread
- Lack of joy
- Decreased motivation
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Problems with work or school
- Insomnia or other sleep disturbances
- Substance Use
- Suicidal thoughts
When stress becomes a deeper problem than a minor inconvenience or passing difficulty, reaching out for professional help can improve your life. If you are experiencing physical symptoms anywhere in your body, your medical doctor can help diagnose or rule out illnesses. When stress is interfering in your happiness, overall mood, relationships, motivation, level of fear or worry, or causing other problems, a mental health professional can help you work through it.
How to Find a Therapist
When you’re stressed and experiencing mental health difficulties, the idea of knowing how to find a therapist can be incredibly overwhelming. That’s why we’ve created a guide to finding a therapist. You can ask people you know and trust, such as friends, family members, faith leaders, or your doctor, for recommendations. You can also use our online therapist directory or our navigator to find a licensed professional in your area who is a good fit for you.
Therapy can be time-limited, lasting for a set number of sessions and anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, or it can be ongoing if you desire long-term support. A typical session can cost between $100 and $200 but some therapists offer sliding-fee scales where the cost is adjusted based on your income level.10 Also, mental health therapy is often covered by insurance. Check with your provider to learn the details of your plan. Think of therapy for stress as an investment in yourself, your happiness, and your quality life.
How Do You Treat Stress?
Stress is highly treatable. Even though much of your reaction to it involves automatic processes within your brain and body that you don’t directly control, you’re not at the mercy of your physiological response to stress. Therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes can treat stress and any problems it may be causing.
Therapy
Therapy can help you address a wide range of stress-associated concerns. A therapist can help you identify underlying factors that may be contributing to an unhealthy reaction to stress. With awareness and insight, you can then problem-solve with the therapist to create goals and action steps to move past these unhelpful life situations whether they’re carrying over from the past or are part of your present. Therapy can also help you with anxiety, depression, and unhealthy behaviors and habits that are exacerbating stress.3,4,5
Medication
While stress in and of itself isn’t a medical condition and isn’t directly treated with medication, medication is often necessary to treat health problems that developed in response to stress. Medication, for example, is often necessary to help blood pressure return to normal levels, or prescriptions for blood-sugar management are sometimes in order for people with type 2 diabetes.
Anxiety medication is sometimes used to treat anxiety disorders. While there is a close connection between stress and anxiety, this type of medication isn’t automatically recommended or used to treat stress, as it’s not effective for stress management.8 Psychopharmacology approaches, if used, are best paired with therapy and lifestyle changes.
Lifestyle Changes
Lifestyle changes, while they can involve stress-management techniques like exercise, social support, and engaging in hobbies, go beyond stress management. They help your body repair itself and change its automatic reaction to stress.
These changes involve eliminating unhealthy ways of dealing with stress, habits that actually end up increasing stress and damaging health such as smoking, unhealthy eating, or substance use.8 They also involve learning ways to prevent the sympathetic nervous system from instantly activating the fight or flight response.
Believe it or not, it is possible to affect the workings of your nervous system by doing activities that help the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS)—the SNS’s calm counterpart—remain active and dominant even in the face of stress.
Things you can do to boost PNS activity include:6
- Pausing to take slow, deep breaths or engaging in formal breathwork practices
- Practicing mindfulness every day
- Meditation
- Relaxation techniques
You can learn how to do these on your own, with self-help books, dedicated courses, and working with a therapist. Know that you don’t have to make sweeping changes to your lifestyle all at once. Identify one unhealthy habit you’d like to eliminate and one positive thing you’d like to replace it with. Then, take small steps every day to work toward a better relationship with stress.
Final Thoughts on Stress
Stress is a universal human experience, and you’re not alone if you are struggling with it. It is difficult and can wreak havoc on your physical and mental health. You don’t have to resign yourself to life-threatening problems or a life of misery. Reaching out to a friend or family member for support and working with a therapist can make a positive difference in your life and well-being.
Can Stress Kill You Infographics
