Outline
Stress is something many individuals believe is a normal part of their life. Unfortunately, many of them also believe that it is inevitable and they can do nothing to avoid it. Stress can also be caused by mental health-related anomalies and disorders. Here, a major role is played from the psychological factors influencing our lives. For individuals with heart problems, this could result in fatal. Clinical tests show that even if the patient has only minor heart disease problems, still the result of stress can be a heart attack, sudden death, or heart failure.
Stress
Stress is something many individuals believe is a normal part of their life. Unfortunately, many of them also believe that it is inevitable and they can do nothing to avoid it. But this is not the case. Stress has various causes, very different from each other. Its cause could be physical anomalies, like not managing to sleep enough or having a body-related illness. Even a cold can cause stress if you don’t manage it correctly. This example tries to show that even what we consider to be ‘small anomalies’ or diseases can be the root causes of stress.
Stress can also be caused by mental health-related anomalies and disorders. Here, a major role is played from the psychological factors influencing our lives. For example, the death of a loved one could shock your nervous system and the first effect is stress. This is rather a harsh example but consider this other one. Even the insufficiency of funds to fulfill one’s desires can create stress. This can come from a temporary unemployment status or even everyday obligations and pressures in the work environment do have a stress-formation effect on you. It is this stress ‘feeling’ that makes you feel that you are not in control of your own life.
The way stress affects people depends on the individual it ‘attacks’. People react very differently to it. The most serious cases could lead to depression or even major depression and schizophrenia.
Of course, the body has various mechanisms that react to stress and stress-related incidents. But this happens in the first stages of the situation. If this stress situation is prolonged, as it might be in a work situation, it can lead to more serious problems.
Some major effects of stress relate directly to your health. Here we see that stress is not only caused by body diseases but it also affects them by becoming the cause of other diseases. Stress caused by emotions could influence the increase of your heart beatings. So, thus it will influence the increase of the blood pressure; increase the production of stress hormones, including the notorious adrenaline. “All these things increase the workload on your heart and put more pressure on your blood circulation system.” (Simon, 2009, par. 4)
For individuals with heart problems, this could result in fatal. Clinical tests show that even if the patient has only minor heart disease problems, still the result of stress can be a heart attack, sudden death, or heart failure. There is sufficient empirical evidence to demonstrate a correlation between heart attacks and sudden death due to stressful situations. As doctor Simon points out:
“These situations have been shown to increase significantly following the acute stress of natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis and as a consequence of any severe stressor that evokes “fight or flight responses.” (2009, para. 9)
The stress created by job-related problems and issues is another form of creating heart problems. But there exist other times where we form our stress. This own-formed stress contributes to coronary-related diseases. Here smoking and other faulty lifestyles could be dangerous and influence the formation of heart problems. “Traits like excess anger, hostility, aggressiveness, time urgency, inappropriate competitiveness and preoccupation with work.” (Simon, 2009, para. 12)
Studies have shown that even cigarette consumption does influence the increase of blood cholesterol levels and thus contribute indirectly to heart problems. Like the increasing consumption of cigarettes because of work-related problems there exist many other factors that do help the formation of stress which in turn influences, directly or indirectly, the general health of our bodies.
References
Simon, H (2009). “Stress”. The About. Web.