Stress helps you meet your daily challenges and motivates you to reach your goals, ultimately making you a smarter, happier, and healthier person. However when you are stressed, what body reactions or clinical manifestations do you often experience? After studying the endocrine system and the stress response, can you explain how these clinical manifestations occur?
We all know that stress is inevitable in our lives, especially when we are bombarded with a lot of circumstances that may affect us positively or negatively. As a student, being stressed is a common occurrence for me since I am dealing with a lot of things every day. Whenever I am stressed, one thing that I would usually notice is that some parts of my body would twitch unconsciously, especially my cheekbones. This usually occurs whenever I don’t get enough sleep and the reason behind this is that when we are sleep-deprived due to stress, our body produces more cortisol than usual and this increases the likelihood of muscle twitching. Another thing that I would usually observe in my body is that I would frequently experience hair loss. The hormone cortisol also plays a role in this because whenever we are stressed, cortisol signals our hair follicles to shift from the growth phase into catagen which is a transition phase, and then after that, the hair will fall out. These clinical manifestations indicate that it is important for us to have enough rest all the time so that our body will not release excessive amounts of cortisol. Even if we have a lot of tasks, we still need to make sure that we are sleeping and eating properly so that the stress that we feel will not take a toll on our bodies.
References:
Zoe, W. (2019, January 8). Here’s a Hint That Hair Loss Might Be Attached to Stress. Well+Good. https://www.wellandgood.com/what-does-stress-hair-loss-look-like/
Jim, F. (2021, May 19). Muscle Twitching Anxiety Symptoms. AnxietyCentre.com. https://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-disorders/symptoms/muscle-twitching/