Here’s How Stress and Inflammation Are Linked

Denise Schipani | 12 June 2023

Research shows that stress can cause inflammation in the body, leading to a number of chronic health conditions. Find out what to do about it.

Research shows that stress, the body’s response to feeling challenged or threatened, induces or worsens medical conditions, including depression, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer.

But the exact mechanism by which stress induces disease has remained a mystery. Until now.

A study review concluded that inflammation is a common pathway of stress-related diseases.

“Chronic inflammation is an essential component of chronic diseases,” the authors wrote.

Still, the pathway from stress to inflammation to disease isn’t always clear.

“There’s no one simple answer,” says Alka Gupta, MD, codirector of integrative health at the Brain and Spine Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. “We do know, though, that when we teach people how to reduce stress in whatever form — stress management tips, classes, individual advice, yoga, deep breathing — we see decreases in some of these inflammatory side effects.”

So if we can understand the ways in which chronic stress leads to low-level inflammation, we may be able to avoid at least some of that inflammation before it leads to or worsens disease.

What Happens in the Body When You’re Stressed?

When you’re stressed — emotionally, psychologically, or physically — your body goes into what’s colloquially called the “fight-or-flight response,” as it readies for, well, fighting or fleeing. One effect is the release of the stress hormone cortisol, says Dr. Gupta. Cortisol works to suppress nonessential-in-an-emergency functions, like your immune response and digestion. Together with the release of other chemical messengers, the hormone fuels the production of glucose, or blood sugar, boosting energy to the large muscles, while inhibiting insulin production and narrowing arteries, which forces the blood to pump harder to aid our stressor response.

Another hormone, adrenaline, is also released, which tells the body to increase heart and respiratory rate, and to expand airways to push more oxygen into muscles. Your body also makes glycogen, or stored glucose (sugar), available to power muscles. In addition, stress decreases lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system, putting you at risk for viral infections like the common cold.

“When the fight or flight response is invoked, your body directs resources away from functions that aren’t crucial in life-threatening situations,” Gupta says.

The fight-or-flight response itself is meant to be short term and adaptive, which makes sense: When your body goes into that mode, your normal immune function is temporarily shut down. If you think of fight-or-flight as triggered by something like a tiger chasing you, your body devotes energy and resources to running away, not to digesting the last thing you ate — or to sending immune-fighting cells to kill a cold virus. It’s when you’re in that state chronically that the cascading inflammatory response is set up.

Click here for full article https://www.everydayhealth.com/wellness/united-states-of-stress/link-between-stress-inflammation/