How Does Stress Affect The Body?

We all experience stress. From everyday responsibilities, family, and work, to experiencing hardships or trauma, your body responds to these situations with a rapid response that can take a toll on your health. Stress is more than a feeling, and actually has damaging effects to your health, changing your body on the cellular and genetic levels. Over time, side effects of stress can make having stress feel that much more overwhelming and harder to manage, trapping you in a chronic stress cycle that can have serious negative impacts on your long-term health.   

When stress hits, your body goes into a “fight or flight” response, with high levels of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin circulating through your body. If you’re unable to relax and destress, your body will stay in this stressed state, with damaging impacts to your heart, brain, muscles, and overall health.  

It’s no surprise that stress can make you feel physically ill. When your body is in the fight or flight mode, and cortisol and adrenalin take over, the constant surge of stress hormones can cause out-of-control inflammation, with widespread damage to cells, tissues and organs.  

From headaches, to upset stomach, fatigue and frequent infections, ongoing stress can cause any number of physical symptoms.^1-6 

• Inflammation 
• Muscle tightness and pain  
• Gut health issues: diarrhea, constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain 
• Stubborn weight gain 
• High blood pressure 
• Headaches 
• Heartburn and risk of heart health conditions 
• Insomnia 
• Hormone and sexual function impacts 
• Immune issues and suppression 

Stress can be especially hard on your immune system, with the potential to cause both immune overreactions that can lead to autoimmune disease, and under-reactions, leaving your immune system and body susceptible to viruses and the common cold.  

Stress can also seriously derail your brain function. Stress floods your brain with cortisol. When this happens over time, your brain function is reduced, causing symptoms like:⁷ 

• Brain fog 
• Difficulty concentrating 
• Trouble retaining new information 
• Inability to adapt to change 
• Memory loss 

Research also shows a strong connection between chronic stress and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.⁸

Experiencing chronic stress has also been linked to many serious conditions, including:⁹ 

• Cancer 
• Heart disease 
• Diabetes 
• Alzheimer’s disease 
• Obesity 
• Anxiety 
• Depression 

Chronic stress derails your immune system, burns out your brainpower, harms your heart, and increases your risk of serious health conditions. Maintaining the upper advantage against stress can help you defend against numerous long-term impacts to your health.  

Practicing healthy stress management with methods like meditation and breathing exercises can provide powerful relief from chronic stress, while improving stress responses and reducing stress reactivity. Healthy stress relief exercises are also shown to help defend your long-term health against chronic conditions like heart disease, neurological degeneration, and more.  

Taking time for yourself, getting enough sleep, exercising, practicing selfcare, taking a bubble bath, reading a book, or meditating can help your body naturally calm and slowdown from the high alert fight or flight response it may be stuck in.  

In addition, natural ingredients can help improve your response to stress, promote natural relaxation, and support a clear, calm mind and a healthy mood. Antioxidants and pure honokiol have been found to defend against your body’s stress reactions to promote healthy relaxation and promote a calm and stable mood. 

When it comes to reducing stress and supporting overall health, HonoPure pure honokiol is a super-antioxidant botanical extract that provides calming relief, mood support, cognitive function, and healthy stress responses to support your overall health. 

Purified from Magnolia officinalis bark, honokiol crosses the blood-brain barrier and promotes a feeling of calm and relaxation, with support for healthy mood and sleep—without being habit-forming. Pure honokiol also offers powerful neurological and cognitive benefits, and supports nerve growth and healthy inflammation responses. Produced with a superior supercritical CO2 extraction method, HonoPure provides the highest purity and potency honokiol available, for healthy relaxation and stress responses for overall wellness.*  

Honopure helps you stay stress free and clear, and is shown to support balanced cortisol levels, which helps stabilize your energy, mood, and inflammation response, so you can handle whatever the day throws at you.* 

Stress is a fact of life, especially in today’s age, and requires natural solutions to increase your resilience and protect your long-term health. Find natural support and peace and clarity with Honopure pure honokiol, a powerful resource and ingredient in an easy daily supplement for healthy stress management, calming mood, relaxation, cognitive function and neurological wellness.

Sources:

1. Liu YZ, Wang YX, Jiang CL. Inflammation: The Common Pathway of Stress-Related Diseases. Front Hum Neurosci. 2017;11:316. 
2. Henderson NC, Sethi T. The regulation of inflammation by galectin-3. Immunol Rev. 2009 Jul;230(1):160-71. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-065X.2009.00794.x. PMID: 19594635.
3. Hannibal KE, Bishop MD. Chronic stress, cortisol dysfunction, and pain: a psychoneuroendocrine rationale for stress management in pain rehabilitation. Phys Ther. 2014;94(12):1816-1825.  
4. Mayer Ea. The neurobiology of stress and gastrointestinal disease. Gut. 2000;47:861-869. 
5. van der Valk ES, Savas M, van Rossum EFC. Stress and Obesity: Are There More Susceptible Individuals?. Curr Obes Rep. 2018;7(2):193-203. doi:10.1007/s13679-018-0306-y
6. Morey JN, Boggero IA, Scott AB, Segerstrom SC. Current Directions in Stress and Human Immune Function. Curr Opin Psychol. 2015;5:13-17. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.03.007
7. Lupien SJ, Maheu F, Tu M, et al. The effects of stress and stress hormones on human cognition: Implications for the field of brain and cognition. Brain Cogn. 2007 Dec;65(3):209-37. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2007.02.007. Epub 2007 Apr 26. PMID: 17466428.
8. Machado A, Herrera AJ, de Pablos RM, et al. Chronic stress as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Rev Neurosci. 2014;25(6):785-804.  
9. Yaribeygi H, Panahi Y, Sahraei H, et al. The impact of stress on body function: A review. EXCLI J. 2017;16:1057-1072. Published 2017 Jul 21. doi:10.17179/excli2017-480