If there is one thing that almost all of my patients — young and old — have in common, it’s stress. There’s no denying that we live in a stressful world. From daily time pressures, to the stress of a toxic environment, it can sometimes seem like we’re swimming in a pool of stress and gasping for air. Along with the more obvious stressors, emotional stress — stress from the stories of our lives — often goes unnoticed, and can sit at the root of many health issues.

The sad truth is that stress is probably the most significant contributor to disease — and it is the most difficult to treat. The World Health Organization estimates that by the year 2020, psychological and stress-related disorders will be the second leading cause of disabilities in the world. It’s fascinating to me that something which can be perceived in our minds can have that kind of effect on our physiology. But if we look at the science, it makes perfect sense. Stress — real or perceived, acute or chronic — affects your health. It changes hormonal pathways and the way neurotransmitters relay information. If these disruptions remain ongoing, there are serious implications for your body. The good news is, it’s never too late to do something about stress.

Part of what makes stress so difficult to treat is that what’s stressful for me and what’s stressful for you can be entirely different. And we often need to dig a little deeper than simply attending a stress management workshop or trying to get to yoga once a week. Let’s take a closer look at this hidden health hazard, on the surface and deeper, so you can work on maintaining your overall health — and youth — by reducing stress.

Let’s start by looking at the different kinds of stress. Short-term or acute stress is the kind of stress we feel when we’re rushed to finish something, can’t find a parking spot, or get pulled over by a police officer. Thankfully, this kind of stress isn’t permanent. It comes and goes with the threat. But you might recognize some of the physical symptoms listed to the right when this type of stress falls on you.

Long-term or chronic stress, is stress that stays with us for months or sometimes years. In my patients I’ve found that chronic stress can be strongly associated with our life stories — whether it be traumatic events from childhood or events that have affected us as adults, emotional stress plays a large role in the ongoing stress that can lead to disease.

In both acute and chronic stress, the power of the mind-body connection is clear. What we perceive as a stressful or dangerous situation — whether it truly is dangerous or not — has implications in the body. For example, if you’re standing in the street and you think you hear a truck coming, your body physically prepares you to move out of the way, even if the sound is something else entirely. Likewise, our past emotional experiences can color the way we see current situations. If your father had a volatile temper that scared you as a child, you will likely feel scared as an adult when a boss, a husband, or some other male authority figure gets angry, even when that anger isn’t directed at you. So the stress we feel as children can repeat itself and have a lasting effect on how we think and experience life as adults.

And there is no doubt that chronic stress affects many systems in the body. To list just a few: We now know that psychological stress disrupts blood sugar metabolism and can lead to diabetes. Chronic stress also affects the immune system, increasing our risks for autoimmune-regulated disorders like allergies, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and hypothyroidism. Studies done in 2006 revealed increased cardiovascular disease with ongoing stress.

Being under stress can also influence our perception of pain, sometimes dulling it and sometimes heightening it (again, much of the way we perceive both stress and pain depends on our histories ), as well as altering our neurotransmitters, often reorganizing the way we think and sometimes leading to anxiety disorders and depression. On top of everything else, stress can age our individual cells, making it more likely for us to suffer from age-related diseases earlier. In a study done on 58 healthy women, both real and perceived stress were shown to increase oxidative stress and cellular aging.

So you can see there’s so much more benefit to be gained with stress prevention and relief than simply feeling better in our heads. With the pandemic levels of stress in this world, researchers don’t have far to look for test subjects! As more and more of this research is bearing out, unbalanced stress takes a significant toll on our physical bodies.