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Does stress itself cause poor health, or does stress cause high blood pressure and unhealthy habits, which cause poor health? (monyet.cc)

submitted 1 year ago by Uno@monyet.cc to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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title. I feel like you always hear stuff to the liking of "high stress leads to poor health," but I am kind of wondering exactly why this occurs.

For instance, it's said that stress can cause:

Aches and pains.
Chest pain or a feeling like your heart is racing.
Exhaustion or trouble sleeping.
Headaches, dizziness or shaking.
High blood pressure.
Muscle tension or jaw clenching.
Stomach or digestive problems.
Trouble having sex.
Weak immune system.

Imagine, hypothetically, that I were to have a high stress life, but still had good sleep, low blood pressure, and a slow heart rate, while also staying away from unhealthy habits like drinking or addiction.

Would my health still be worse than a person who lives an equivalent, but less stressful life than me?

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[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Stress itself harms your health.

It’s almost a willing choice on the part of your body. In a million little ways your body can choose to operate in “two” different modes:

(“two” actually means a multidimensional spectrum, a huge vector of floating point values)

Your body’s got High-Alert mode, which involves being ready to fight, ready to hide and strategize, but which causes more breakdown of tissues and organizational systems …

Or it can operate in Low-Alert mode which is less ready to fight, less safe in a dangerous environment, but also causes less degradation of the systems.

Ship at full battle ready — every engine turned on and hot, every sailor at his station, versus a ship at normal daily duty: some systems turned off and being repaired, some sailors snoozing in their bunks, eating.

High Alert mode is stress, basically. Or technically it’s the response to more stressors. You go into High Alert mode and you drain resources faster.