Stress is in the biological or medical sense a physical, emotional or mental factor that puts the body on alert. Stress can be triggered by external influences (e.g. environment, social interaction with others) or internal influences (e.g. illness, medical intervention, fears).
The term stress was first coined in 1936 by the Austrian-Canadian physician Hans Seyle, who distinguished between good (eustress) and negative stress (distress). Today, the word stress is generally used to refer to the negative variant. Stress influences the body extremely. This goes back to the Stone Age, when our ancestors had to be extremely concentrated and capable of action in stressful situations (e.g. hunting).
Symptoms
If one understands the processes in the body described above, which are triggered by stress, many of the symptoms caused by stress can be easily explained. These include physical symptoms such as headaches, a weakened immune system, cardiovascular complaints, gastrointestinal complaints, high blood pressure, muscle twitching or difficult-to-control diabetes. Affected people often cannot concentrate, are restless, forgetful and extremely easy to get out of control.
Constant stress also has an influence on the emotional level. Stressed people are often easily irritable, depressed, listless, lacking in drive and generally feel overstrained. Stress also leads to sleep problems and restlessness.
Untreated, burnout occurs in many cases. Stress therefore has a great influence on many different levels and is therefore perceived as very stressful for those affected. Due to the multitude of different symptoms, many people do not even think of stress at first, but treat only one symptom of it.
Only in a later phase, when many symptoms occur at the same time, most people go to the doctor. If stress is recognized and treated in time, the affected person can often be helped well and alternatives can be sought to reduce the stress factors from everyday life. Comprehensive articles on this topic can be found in the following article: Muscle Twitching
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