It’s widely known that stress can have a short-term physical impact on your body, with common symptoms including headaches, fatigue, tense muscles and sleeplessness.
What may not be obvious is the long-term impact that prolonged stress can have on our organs. Apart from being not nice to cope with, negative thoughts as a result of stress play a part in our physical health also. We were built to thrive in short periods or bursts of stress but NOT live in it permanently.
The table below gives you an idea of how long-term negative stress can impact your body. There is no fixed pattern for each of us and this is worst case scenario i.e. the potential effects.
I must stress that this table is not a diagnostic reference for any medical condition you currently have. It is simply another piece of the jigsaw that may be relevant if you are or have been under persistent stress or have suffered chronic stress.
Finding ways to combat the symptoms is really important but more important is to establish the root cause – the stressor itself – and manage it.
