7 Medical Conditions that Come from a Stressful Lifestyle

By Olivia Rahim | August 15, 2020

Everyone does their best to lead a balanced lifestyle. Ordinarily, that includes working and having an
active family life. It often includes hobbies and leisure time as well.

When someone’s life is out of balance, then it can lead to them feeling stressed. There’s a lot of that
happening in 2020, probably more than usual. With the presidential election, the pandemic and the
rising body count, and civil unrest, it’s easy to feel that your life is out of order.

Having too much stress in your life doesn’t do you any good, though. Many studies indicate that if you
live with too much stress, it can adversely affect you.

Let’s go over some medical conditions that you can develop if you have too much stress and some
others that stress can aggravate.

Heartburn
Some doctors and specialists estimate that up to 60 million people deal with heartburn every month.
Heartburn:
Is a condition that affects individuals from many backgrounds
Is where you feel a burning sensation in your mid-chest and upper chest
Sometimes involves your throat and neck as well

Many individuals experience heartburn when they eat spicy foods, like curry or five-alarm chili.
However, others deal with it because of stress.

When you feel stressed out, you can have heartburn episodes that aren’t related to the food you’re
eating. A bad heartburn case can immobilize you for a while, and it’s very uncomfortable.

Reducing stress in your life can sometimes combat it, combined with the proper medication.

Accelerated Aging
Incredibly, stress seems to accelerate certain aging process aspects. There was a study at one point that
compared DNA. The subjects were mothers under high stress.

These women had chronically ill children. Research showed that there was a particular chromosome
region where the aging process seemed to be accelerated.

This is astonishing. It seems to indicate that stress can cause people to age faster. It’s not just new-age
mumbo-jumbo that stress ages you. There appears to be scientific evidence to back it up.

Alzheimer’s Disease

Many people dread getting Alzheimer’s disease, and if it runs in their family, they’re always on the
lookout for it.

Alzheimer’s disease:
Is a degenerative brain disorder

Destroys mental functionality and memory

Anxiety and Depression
Perhaps one of the least surprising things that stress can do is make you feel anxious or depressed. If
you have constant stress in your life, then often, negative thoughts swirl around in your brain.

If you already have depressive tendencies, then stress can exacerbate them. You might get to the point
where it’s tough for you to function. You’ll barely be able to get out of bed and get to your job each day
or take care of your kids.

Anxiety and stress go together as well. If there is stress in life, you can feel anxious if you can’t develop
healthy ways to control it.

One possible solution is to seek therapy. You can talk about what’s troubling you, and possibly get some
prescription medication to help you.

Headaches
If you get headaches, then you probably already know that they can be stress-related. There are what
doctors call tension headaches, and then there are migraines, which is a particular kind of severe
headache.

When stress seems overwhelming to you, it can bring on a tension headache or migraine. Those can be
difficult to get past. You might have to take the time to go lie down in a dark room, have some over-the-
counter pain meds, and put a cold compress on your forehead.

Of course, if you’re at work or right in the middle of an activity when the headache strikes, doing these
things might not be possible. That’s why you need to get the stress in your life under control.

Diabetes
It surprises some people to learn that stress can make diabetes symptoms worse. If you’re stressed, you
might react to it by doing things that can worsen your condition if you are diabetic or pre-diabetic. You
might decide to go and eat some unhealthy foods that your doctor told you not to.

Also, if you already have Type-2 diabetes, stress seems to raise your blood glucose level. It’s yet another
way stress can make a harmful condition worse.

Obesity
There is also a marked connection between weight gain and stress. If you’re already overweight or
obese, then having a high-stress lifestyle makes it more likely you’ll eat unhealthy foods and overeat.

It’s a common reaction when you feel overwhelmed. You’ll break from your diet without even thinking
about it too much if you don’t feel like you have any other outlet.

If you are under a lot of stress, then the fat seems to form in the belly much more readily than it does in
the thighs or elsewhere. There’s a hormone called cortisol that high stress levels cause. It increases fat
amounts that the human body depots right in the abdomen.

That’s why it’s tough to get rid of belly fat, no matter how much you diet and exercise. It might tie
directly into the stress in your life.

If stress is a major part of your existence, then there’s nothing more critical than reducing it. You can do
that through things like a vacation or a stay-vacation from work. You can take up a relaxing hobby like
gardening. You might try yoga or meditation.

Whatever you want to try, do it sooner rather than later. The longer you live with high stress levels, the
worse the impact on your body and mind.