How ill can you feel with stress ?

This is a very hard question to answer with any accuracy. Stress is an external stimulus which causes a person to react in some way. That's a pretty dry explanation but it has to be to take account of everything that puts us under stress. Cooking a meal is stressful; reading a book is stressful; catching a train on time is stressful. Stress is a part of everyday life; stress is inevitable.

The way people react to the stress is more important than the external event causing the stress. For example, some people might find cooking a meal stressful because people are going to judge them by a meal they have cooked. Other people might see the chance to cook as a chance to learn a new skill. This might give them confidence to cook more and find a career in cooking or develop a new hobby. The same could be said for any event that faces a person in their daily life.

Stress is good for a person if they can modify their behaviour to defuse the stress, have an outlet for the stress or have a way of reconciling the stress as a part of life. Missing the train is stressful; you will be late for work; you will miss the morning meeting; you may get reprimanded by the boss. The person that uses this stress as good stress does things that ensure they don't miss the train again. They learn the train timetables; they iron their shirt the night before; they have an early night.

The person that does not learn from the stressful event gets to work late again. The boss reprimands them again. Sooner or later they need to look for another job.

If stress is allowed to run it's course and continue to impact on our lives then it starts to become a real problem. This is the definition of chronic stress. The stress goes unrelieved and persists for a long period of time. The individual facing this stress does nothing to relieve the stress. In many cases, people take on more stressful activities hoping that this will motivate them to work harder, study more, eat less or feel more involved in life. They engineer stress into their lives rather than find ways to deal with current stressloads. If they reduced the current stressloads they could have more time to do these other things. They get the horse and the carriage the wrong way round; they eat the stick and beat themselves up with the carrot.

People that endure prolonged chronic stress can suffer from all sorts of illnesses. This is because stress affects all parts of the body. Chronic stress will work on the nervous system, the immune system and the circulatory system.

Stress hormones will interfere with the delicate balance of chemicals that regulate the immune system. This might cause the immune system to work too well and attack parts of the body or make the immune system sluggish and unresponsive to real threats to the body. The upshot of this is that a stressed person will pick up common illnesses more than a less stressed person. They will contract colds and flus and possibly worse illnesses.

The circulatory system includes the heart, arteries, capillaries and veins. It is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood throughout the body, thus keeping vital organs alive. Chronic stress causes the heart pressure to rise. Prolonged high blood pressure is dangerous and could lead to heart failure. The blood consistency is changed by stress hormones to make it thicker and stickier. This can lead to blood clots in the blood stream that can lead to strokes.

As the nervous system effectively manages our reactions to external events if there is no response to the external event much of the reaction is directed to the body. This can cause things like sleeping disorders, psychosomatic problems like diarrhea, constipation, bloating or cramping of the stomach and brain functions could be compromised.

Stress can be the cause of many illnesses in an indirect or direct way. The key to avoiding these issues is to understand the stress that one might be facing. Armed with this knowledge a strategy to deal with it can be developed or the stress can be reconciled as a fact of life and an alternate outlet can be found to redirect the stressful energy. Be in control of your stress rather than the other way round, even if this control is simply an understanding of the nature of the stress.