CHRONIC STRESS
Chronic stress can negatively affect your immune system making you more vulnerable to infection and disease. The chemical reactions triggered by stressful situations result in an onslaught of stress hormones being pumped around the body. While these hormones are useful in acute situations. Their ability to interfere with the immune system can result in information. Reduced white blood cells and a higher susceptibility to infection and tissue damage stress can affect your immune system in two ways, by creating chronic inflammation that harms tissues and by suppressing immune cells needed to fight infection. Prolonged exposure to chronic social conflict results in high levels of stress which leads to abnormal functions in your immune system. This increases your vulnerability to infectious and autoimmune disease. Chronic stress can reduce our immune systems ability to fight off antigens, the harmful invaders that can make us ill. When you are stressed your body begins producing a stress hormone which is known as Cortisol or hydrocortisone. Cortisol works to prepare your body to run away from the threat. To do this, it suppresses the immune system by lowering amounts of a protein required for signaling other immune cells. This in turn results in a reduced munber of immune cells known as lymphocytes. Lymphocytes work to recognize and respond to harmful invaders and kill off antigens that would cause disease. With fewer lymphocytes, the body is at an increased risk of infection and disease. Ultimately, the immune system is considerably weakned resulting in not only more infections but also potentially headaches, cardiovascular disease; diabetes, asthma and gastric ulcers. Not all stress is harmful, sometimes it's useful and necessary. Stress is a built-in characteristic that hails from our hunter-gatherer times. Back then, a stressor might have been the very real danger of coming face-to-face with a sabre-tooth tiger. The sight of the tiger would cause the hypothalamus to stimulate the adrenal glands, which would then start pumping out adrenaline the adrenaline provided the body with energy it needs to run away from the tiger...
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