To give you a quick overview, when youre experiencing acute stress, your body releases stress hormones (such as cortisol) that prepare your body to either fight or flee the stressful event. Your heart rate increases, your lungs take in more oxygen, your blood flow increases, and parts of your immune system become temporarily suppressed, which reduces your inflammatory response to pathogens and other foreign invaders. When stress becomes chronic, your immune system becomes less sensitive to cortisol, and since inflammation is partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation to get out of control. Inflammation, in turn, is a hallmark of most diseases, from diabetes to heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimers.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 19:15:05 +0000
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