Consequences of stress
On a psychological level, cognitive and behavioural functions can be habitual: Difficulty in concentrating and making decisions, emotional variation, anxiety, sadness, excessively frequent irritability, insomnia, changes in eating and sexual appetite.
Also, it has been demonstrated that among individuals who suffer from work stress, the risk of behaviours damaging to health, such as smoking, alcoholism or drug consumption, increases considerably. When this behaviour existed prior to the stressful situation, the consequence is usually an increase in consumption. There also seems to be a significant increase in eating disorders such as obesity, anorexia or bulimia.
Another consequence of stress is the progressive deterioration of personal relationships, with family, friends or a partner.
On a physiological level, cardiovascular changes can appear, such as high blood pressure, arrhythmias, migraines; dermatological changes such as alopecia, dermatitis; sexual changes such as erectile dysfunction and vaginismus; digestive changes such as diarrhoea and constipation; musculoskeletal changes such as spasms, chronic pains, headaches and immune system changes with greater likelihood of suffering from infectious diseases.
It should be borne in mind that presently there is a great range of experimental and clinical data that shows that stress, if its intensity and duration exceeds certain limits, can produce considerable changes in the brain. These include more or less mild and reversible modifications up to situations in which neuronal death may occur.
It is known that the damaging effect that stress can have on our brain is directly related to the levels of hormones secreted in the body’s physiological response. Although the presence of determined levels of these hormones is of great importance for the correct functioning of our brain glucocorticoid excess can produce a series of changes in different brain structures, especially in the hippocampus which is the brain structure that plays a critical role in many learning and memory processes.
Through different experimental projects it has been possible to establish that continued exposure to situations of stress can produce three types of damaging effects on the central nervous system: Dendritic Atrophy, Neurotoxicity and Exacerbation.
For this reason, the need exists to have useful tools to prevent and minimise the effects sustained from stress and anxiety in the short and long term and one of these is to acquire skills to manage it.