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How stress affects your body - Sharon Horesh Bergquist

IntermediateAmerican accentAnimated lesson4 min

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Transcript: 40 sentences

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  1. 0:09 Cramming for a test?
  2. 0:11 Trying to get more done than you have time to do?
  3. 0:14 Stress is a feeling we all experience when we are challenged or overwhelmed.
  4. 0:20 But more than just an emotion, stress is a hardwired physical response that travels throughout your entire body.
  5. 0:29 In the short term, stress can be advantageous, but when activated too often or too long, your primitive fight or flight stress response not only changes your brain
  6. 0:40 but also damages many of the other organs and cells throughout your body.
  7. 0:46 Your adrenal gland releases the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and norepinephrine.
  8. 0:55 As these hormones travel through your blood stream, they easily reach your blood vessels and heart.
  9. 1:01 Adrenaline causes your heart to beat faster and raises your blood pressure, over time causing hypertension.
  10. 1:09 Cortisol can also cause the endothelium, or inner lining of blood vessels, to not function normally.
  11. 1:16 Scientists now know that this is an early step in triggering the process of atherosclerosis or cholesterol plaque build up in your arteries.
  12. 1:26 Together, these changes increase your chances of a heart attack or stroke.
  13. 1:32 When your brain senses stress, it activates your autonomic nervous system.
  14. 1:37 Through this network of nerve connections, your big brain communicates stress to your enteric, or intestinal nervous system.
  15. 1:47 Besides causing butterflies in your stomach, this brain-gut connection can disturb the natural rhythmic contractions that move food through your gut,
  16. 1:57 leading to irritable bowel syndrome, and can increase your gut sensitivity to acid, making you more likely to feel heartburn.
  17. 2:06 Via the gut's nervous system, stress can also change the composition and function of your gut bacteria, which may affect your digestive and overall health.
  18. 2:17 Speaking of digestion, does chronic stress affect your waistline?
  19. 2:21 Well, yes.
  20. 2:22 Cortisol can increase your appetite.
  21. 2:24 It tells your body to replenish your energy stores with energy dense foods and carbs, causing you to crave comfort foods.
  22. 2:34 High levels of cortisol can also cause you to put on those extra calories as visceral or deep belly fat.
  23. 2:41 This type of fat doesn't just make it harder to button your pants.
  24. 2:44 It is an organ that actively releases hormones and immune system chemicals called cytokines that can increase your risk of developing chronic diseases,
  25. 2:54 such as heart disease and insulin resistance.
  26. 2:57 Meanwhile, stress hormones affect immune cells in a variety of ways.
  27. 3:02 Initially, they help prepare to fight invaders and heal after injury, but chronic stress can dampen function of some immune cells,
  28. 3:10 make you more susceptible to infections, and slow the rate you heal.
  29. 3:15 Want to live a long life?
  30. 3:17 You may have to curb your chronic stress.
  31. 3:20 That's because it has even been associated with shortened telomeres, the shoelace tip ends of chromosomes that measure a cell's age.
  32. 3:28 Telomeres cap chromosomes to allow DNA to get copied every time a cell divides without damaging the cell's genetic code, and they shorten with each cell division.
  33. 3:40 When telomeres become too short, a cell can no longer divide and it dies.
  34. 3:45 As if all that weren't enough, chronic stress has even more ways it can sabotage your health, including acne, hair loss, sexual dysfunction, headaches, muscle tension,
  35. 3:57 difficulty concentrating, fatigue, and irritability.
  36. 4:01 So, what does all this mean for you?
  37. 4:04 Your life will always be filled with stressful situations.
  38. 4:07 But what matters to your brain and entire body is how you respond to that stress.
  39. 4:13 If you can view those situations as challenges you can control and master, rather than as threats that are insurmountable,
  40. 4:21 you will perform better in the short run and stay healthy in the long run.

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