Stress, The Deadliest Killer

With the end of exam season and the transition between semesters, many people have experienced an increase in the most deadly emotion: stress. Due to the exams that many people have had to take this semester, stress is in the air even a week after the end of term 1. Many people don’t realize how much of an effect stress can have on one's body and mind.

Stress may seem illogical and lacking in rhyme or reason, but it comes from a very real place in the body. Stress is caused by many different chemicals in the human body, and one of those is a hormone called cortisol. This hormone produces an animalistic reaction in humans, causing us to start panicking and activate our fight or flight response even when there is no physical problem that would require such a response. Although it might not seem like it, cortisol causes a slew of positive effects on the body. It forces the brain into activating the fight or flight response and also causes the body to produce more chemicals that help with the healing of injuries and damage to skin tissue. Not only that, cortisol also diverts most of the brain's function to alertness, performance, and memory; all things that are useful in both a test and a life or death situation.

For all the benefits stress can create, there are also drawbacks. Though it may seem nice that stress is diverting brain power into memory and performance, it comes at the great cost of draining your brain of the ability to do all other necessary tasks like sleeping, eating, talking, forming close relationships, and basically everything else that isn’t directly related to avoiding death via wild animal. Another negative effect of stress is that it can cause things like panic attacks. An effect of this is having trouble breathing, like a fish out of water. Fun fact: the most stressed animal in the world is trout.

The biggest downside of stress is another side effect of producing cortisol. When the body produces too much cortisol it causes rapid drops in the amount of lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) in the bloodstream. This means that the immune system is unable to protect the body due to too much stress. This can lead to a number of illnesses, but most commonly it just leads to common colds and sore throats.

So next time you start to feel stressed out, just remember to breathe in and out slowly, otherwise you might just lower your lifespan. Always remember to keep your ears to the pavement and your eyes on the road.

Till' next time Howe Sound!