The human body has certain ways to send distress signals. Here’s how to recognize them and learn why you should pay more attention to them from now on. Money, work, children, in-laws, house repairs, relationship problems – all these are sources of stress. And if you’re stressed to the max and your nerves were not sufficiently tightened, it means you have not yet opened your email, didn’t read your messages and missed some calls.
You’re found in this “fight or flight” and you have a flood of hormones in your body, preparing you for a life and death situation which arises again. And now you have lots of adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol that seem to be rushing through your system, ready to attack. These stress hormones can cause a lot of physical and mental damage as they spin through your body.
Here are six signals your body sends you to slow down because you’re too stressed:
1. You’re losing it. You snaps at people, even if this is not you, and you feel you must make a great effort to control your temper. This is because constant stress deletes you and weakens the mechanisms responsible for improving your mood.
2. You breathe faster. Your muscles need high levels of oxygen to work at the best capacity. And the only way that your body can make this possible is to speed up your breathing.
3. You can’t sleep. A “slalom” between thoughts and feelings of anxiety would keep anyone awake, including yourself, when you’re are stressed. A complex chemical process helps us to sleep every night. This process is most severely affected in the constant presence of high levels of cortisol – which is supposed to be very low at night.
4. You get eczema or hives. Cortisol excess – the stress hormone – this stimulates the release of chemicals – histamine. And before you realize you get hives or eczema. Or you can get hives crisis which its itching for weeks.
5. Sweating. When you are stressed, your heart rate increases, also the speed of breathing and blood pressure increases. This makes you sweat more because your body is trying to keep your temperature at a balanced normal level.
6. Your vision is blurred and unclear. There are many causes that can lead to blurred vision, but some of them, such as blood pressure, can be aggravated by stress. Blurred vision is also a symptom of migraine headaches that are often caused by stress.