Living with constant and prolonged stress can lead to problems in our health. In fact, nowadays one of the most common diseases is chronic stress, since living under constant stress has become normal.
The biggest problem of maintaining a continuous stress over time is that it can lead to serious health problems, since stress affects the way in which the body generates a strong defense response, thus depressing our immune system.
In the presence of a threat, our system emits an adaptive response through the immune and nervous systems.
Stress can appear almost at any time, but the constant stressors that we have in our daily life (friends, partner, family, work, pending tasks…) stimulate the activity of our nervous and psychological system causing wear and tear.
Faced with this immediate stress, our body reacts with hormones that protect us at the moment and promote adaptation. The problem is when this “immediate stress” is prolonged over the long term, as changes occur in the organism that promote disease.
How does our immune system react?
Humans have two types of immunity, innate (or natural) and adaptive (or specific). Within innate immunity, there are cells that attack many types of pathogens in a relatively short time, so the generalized response generated by these cells is inflammation.
Adaptive immunity, on the other hand, has a much more specific and, at the same time, a much slower form of attack. It is called adaptive because the immune system learns to recognize specific pathogens and adapts special defense mechanisms for each one. Once the antigen is detected, an antigen-specific response is generated. Thus, these antigen-specific cells divide to create more cells that have the same antigen-specific defense response.
How does stress affect the immune system?
The secretion members of the adaptive immune system are influenced by stress. Under stress, the pattern in which these antimicrobial proteins are secreted changes, which may explain why stress increases susceptibility to infectious diseases.
NK cells, or killer cells, which are responsible for killing cancer cells or those that are infected, are also affected by chronic stress. Chronic stress has been shown to decrease the ability of NK cells to destroy their target cells and at the same time, altered NK cell activity has been linked to the progression of viral and autoimmune diseases.
Psychological stress is related to the suppression of defense mechanisms, i.e. those mechanisms under which the body recognizes a pathogen and defends itself against it. Living under constant stress compromises our defense mechanisms in many ways. And although we live in a world in which we inevitably have constant stressors, there are many strategies aimed at diminishing their effect.
Controlling stress is possible
Some of Vicente Andreu Daza’s tips to mitigate stress are:
- Adequate rest
- Meditation
- Breathing exercises
- Physical exercise
- Read
Dedicating a moment of your day to one of these activities will make a difference in your health. Your mind and immune system will thank you.