6 Ways Stress Can Affect Your Body

You know how stress affects your mind. It can make you feel frazzled and unable to focus, and it might trigger already-existing anxiety and depression. But did you know there are many sneaky ways that stress affects your body, beyond just your brain?

Unfortunately, stress affects your whole body in multiple ways. Here, therapist and anxiety expert Jodi Aman explains six ways that stress can affect your body.

1. Your skin can have problems.

You probably know that stress can make you break out, but did you know that stress can mess with your skin in other ways? Aman says that acute and/or chronic stress can give you dry skin, and it can also give you you a rash, hives or even make your skin blush.

This happens because stress causes the adrenal glands in your body to stimulate sebaceous oil glands. This leads to more sebum on your skin, which causes breakouts. Simultaneously all the stress hormones increase your blood flow, expanding your capillaries and making your skin look red and inflamed.

2. Your hair can fall out—or turn gray.

Stress can even impact your strands. If you’re under extreme stress, you could start to see more shedding in your daily life. Short-term stress (say, getting stuck in traffic or losing your keys) won’t cause hair loss, but long-term stress can.

As far as going gray prematurely, it seems this is still speculative and experts think it would likely only occur over long periods of stress, even though there isn’t currently that much research to base it on.

3. Your stomach can go through the wringer, too.

Unfortunately, when you’re dealing with stress and anxiety, your stomach tends to let you know before anything else that something’s up. Aman says that you may have to deal with burping, diarrhea and gas. You could also experience constipation and heartburn—as if you didn’t have enough to worry about, right?

4. You have trouble sleeping at night.

This one is pretty obvious, but still important to call out: stress can cause insomnia or negatively impact your sleep quality, causing you to toss and turn all night. According to the National Sleep Foundation you experience hyperarousal when you’re stressed out, causing an unhealthy balance between sleep and wakefulness. Unfortunately, this can have a cyclical effect, because a lack of sleep can definitely make you feel extra frazzled, then you can’t get to sleep yet again.

5. Your world can seem surreal.

This sounds downright frightening, and it’s all due to a hormonal reaction from the stress. “Adrenaline (released during your body’s fight-or-flight response to stress) makes you hyper focus. If you’re not in danger, this hyper-awareness can make people feel like they are losing touch with reality,” says Aman. This is not a healthy state for your mind or your body to be in long-term and can have some scary effects on you. You might float through the day feeling like this is not even your life.

6. You can lose your voice.

The tension caused by long-term stress can affect your muscles. It can cause your throat, chest, jaw and vocal cord muscles to tighten, affecting your voice quality, sometimes making it shaky, hoarse or even causing you to lose it altogether. When you speak, it could sound like it’s not even you talking.

Other, more well-known physical reactions to stress include tension headaches and migraines, weakened immunity (making it easier to catch illness and harder for your body to fight it) and weight gain and/or loss.

Suffice it to say that stress can affect all parts of your body. Practicing self-care can help give your body a break in the way that works for you. If you feel overwhelmed at any point, reach out to someone who can help you, whether it’s a trusted friend or a therapist. No matter what you’re going through, you don’t have to suffer through it alone.