Should I Get a Stress Test?
A stress test doesn’t measure the stress in your life, but it does measure the cardiovascular and physical stress on your heart, or rather how hard your heart is working and what it looks like when you’re walking very fast on a steep incline on a treadmill. (2) “People usually get a stress test when they have multiple risk factors for heart disease, or if they’ve been having certain symptoms like chest pain or palpitations,” says Haythe.

“Basically, we want to see what happens to the heart when there is a greater demand for oxygen: when the blood pressure and blood flow increase. That’s when you can see if there might be an obstruction that is blocking blood flow in the arteries that needs treatment,” she explains.

Why Long-Term Stress Is So Bad for Your Body Systems
Left unchecked, severe stress — the kind that continues for months or years — is more apt to lead to serious illness than short-term stressors do.

“The stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and epinephrine affect most areas of the body, interfering with sleep and increasing the risk of stroke, high blood pressure, and heart disease, as well as causing depression and anxiety,” says Alka Gupta, MD, chief medical officer at Bluerock Care in Washington, DC.

Here are a few key ways chronic stress can impact the body:

Stress causes inflammation. Studies have shown that chronic stress is linked to increased inflammation in the body. (3) “One of the proposed actions of stress is that it triggers inflammation in the body, which is thought to underlie many diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis, and even pain,” says Dr. Gupta.

One possible culprit: Chronic stress seems to be linked to an increase in pro-inflammatory cytokines, a type of immune cell that is typically part of the body’s defense system when you have an infection. (4) But when these cytokines are chronically activated, as with stress, they can damage the heart, according to a study from 2021.

“People with autoimmune conditions, where the immune system attacks the body itself, tend to have higher levels of these cytokines,” says Michelle Dossett, MD, PhD, an assistant professor and specialist in integrative at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California. The good news is that stress management techniques, such as meditation, have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects, lowering cytokines in the body.

Stress affects your digestive tract. “The gastrointestinal tract is filled with nerve endings and immune cells, all of which are affected by stress hormones,” says Dr. Dossett. As a result, stress can cause acid reflux as well as exacerbate symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. Not to mention create butterflies in your stomach.

Stress messes with your immune system. A number of studies have shown that stress lowers immunity, which may be why you’re likely to come down with a cold after a crunch time at school or work — right on the first day of your vacation. (5) “Patients with autoimmune disorders often say they get flare-ups during or after stressful events, or tell me that their condition began after a particularly stressful event,” says Dossett.

Stress can muddle your brain. “Brain scans of people with post-traumatic stress disorder show more activity in the amygdala, a brain region associated with fear and emotion,” says Haythe. But even everyday kinds of stress can affect how the brain processes information.

“We see actual structural, functional, and connectivity-related brain changes in people who are under chronic stress,” adds Gupta. All of these can affect cognition and attention, which is why you may find it hard to focus or learn new things when you are stressed. (6)

Stress can make you feel crummy all over. Stress makes us more sensitive to pain, and it can also cause pain due to muscular tension. (7) “People under stress also tend to perceive pain differently,” says Gupta.

They’re also less apt to sleep well, which doesn’t help matters. “Sleep is so important in terms of helping to prevent every disease,” adds Haythe. “It helps reboot the immune system and prevents depression, irritability, and exhaustion.”

Is It Possible to Get Cancer From Stress or to Die From It?
While it’s tough to link stress directly to a specific disease, “we know that stress does contribute to serious illness,” says Dossett. “Forty percent of cancers are preventable with changes in lifestyle. Since stress makes you more likely to smoke, drink excessively, and eat in ways that cause obesity, it’s fair to say that there is a link between stress and disease,” she says.

Maybe it’s no accident that most heart attacks occur on Monday — the most stressful day of the week.