In our every day lives, we face situations that trigger different emotions, from happiness, sadness, to frustration, anger, worry. While these emotional responses are typical, how we handle cases that call forth the latter emotions can significantly impact your life.

Stress is our body’s response towards any kind of demand, wherein it can be caused by both good and bad experiences that surround us. Today, the discussion of stress will highly focus on the adverse effects it brings to one’s body and how can an individual possibly protect one’s self from its harmful consequences.

What is Stress?

First and foremost, let us discuss the root of any underlying conditions that awaits us if left neglected for so long—stress. Stress is actually the body’s reaction to any harmful situation whether it is real or perceived.

During stress response, your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, muscles tighten, and breathing quickens. This reaction of the body is also known as the fight-or-flight wherein it is a way of protecting one’s self from any threats.

Stress is every little thing that concerns us, from small, simple things like having a deadline to meet, thus making you frustrated and anxious, to heavy situations like life-threatening situations.

With this said, it is undeniable that we face situations every day that might trigger our stress response. And if you are always stressed out, then your health might be at risk, and you might caught be in some serious health complications.

How Stress Affects the Body

Think that stress only affects your emotions and mind? Think again. Not only does stress affect your mind, but it also brings harm to your body. Sure, a little stress is not something to be concerned about now and then, but chronic stress can exacerbate or cause serious health problems.

This includes mental health problems like depression and anxiety. For your heart, cardiovascular diseases are present such as heart disease and high blood pressure, which are both common effects of stress.

For your lifestyle, obesity and eating disorders might be present, since you will surely be craving for sweets or calories in an attempt to alleviate the stress you’ve been feeling.

For reproduction problems, chronic stress might cause menstrual problems for women and sexual dysfunction like impotence and premature ejaculation for men. For both genders, loss of sexual desire might occur.

Surely, if you are a person that has continually suffered stress, you might find the illnesses listed above familiar, right? Or at least has experienced its symptoms now and then.

Health Benefits of Meditation to Your Body

Meditation has been used as a useful technique to work with the mind for many centuries in different cultures, in which it was proven to provide relaxation, well-being and promotes better health.

Long before the development of modern science and medicine, dedicated meditators from various spiritual traditions had already discovered the immense benefits of their practice, which has inspired today’s increasing practice of meditation for health reasons.

With this said, a growing corpus of research studies that are linked between meditation and mental and physical health has grown rampant. Here’s the list of science-based facts meditation’s health benefits to your body.

Reduced Stress

This is the number one reason as to why many people turn to meditation: Stress. There is a study wherein 3,500 adult participants have shown that meditation lives up to its reputation for stress reduction.

Mental and physical stress causes increased levels of the hormone cortisol (which is a stress hormone) wherein many of the harmful effects of stress is produced, such as the release of inflammation-promoting chemicals, also known as cytokines.

Due to this, you may experience sleep disruption, which later on can develop into depression and anxiety, increased blood pressure, and then contributes to fatigue and cloudy thinking. The reason for the sleepless nights and moody days you might have been experiencing seems connected to this, don’t you think?

Moreover, many researches have shown that meditation can also improve symptoms of stress-related conditions like PTSD or post-traumatic disorder, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia.

Increased Immunity

There is a study at the Ohio State University that has suggested that progressive muscular relaxation, may reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence if practiced daily.

In another study, a month of relaxation exercises boosted natural killer cells, making the body of high resistance to tumors and viruses. With these studies, we may conclude that relaxation boosts immunity in recovering from illnesses, like cancer.

Anxiety Control

Less stress equates to less anxiety. An example of this is the eight-week study of mindfulness meditation which has helped participants reduce their anxiety.

Additionally, it also reduced symptoms of anxiety disorders like social anxiety, phobias, overthinking, panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Another followed up study is three years after with 18 volunteers that completed the mindfulness meditation wherein, they had been continuously practicing regular meditation which made them maintain lower anxiety levels in the long run.

Lower Blood Pressure

As what was said beforehand, stress heightens an individual’s blood pressure, which may turn into serious health complications.

With this said, a study at Harvard Medical School has found that meditation lowers blood pressure by making the body less responsive to stress hormones, which is in a similar way of blood-pressure lowering medications.

In another report from the British Medical Journal, it has been found that patients that have trained how to relax had significantly lowered their blood pressure.

Promotes Emotional Health

Some cultures practice meditation because of how it can lead an individual to an improved self-image and a positive outlook on life.

Here’s a science-based fact for this, two studies have found that meditation decreased depression in over 4,600 adults. One study has followed up and found that the participants have experience long-term decrease in depression.

How did it come to this? Well, inflammatory chemicals called cytokines (which are released in response to stress, affecting the mood, leading to depression) are reduced due to meditation, which results in a decrease in depression.

In another study, people who practiced mindfulness meditation showed measurable changes in activity in areas related to positive thinking and optimism than those people who did not practice meditation.

Self-Awareness Enhancement

There are many forms of meditation, and some forms help you develop a stronger understanding of yourself which enables you to grow into the best version of yourself.

For example, since self-inquiry meditation aims to help you develop a greater understanding of yourself, then you may know how you are to others or how you relate to those around you. 

Other forms of meditation may teach you to recognize thoughts that may be harmful or self-defeating. Such as in depression, you might want to harm yourself in a way to alleviate your negative feelings, but through meditation, you may reduce this type of risk.

There’s a study of 21 women participants fighting breast cancer that had found that when they took part in a tai chi program, their self-esteem improved more than those women who received social support sessions.

Lengthens Attention Span

Since meditation is also about focusing, it serves as a weight lifting for your attention span which helps increase the strength and endurance of your attention.

For example, the eight-week mindfulness meditation course has found that it improved the participants’ ability to maintain and reorient their attention.

A similar study has shown that human resource workers who practice meditation regularly focused on a task longer and remembered the details of their tasks better than their peers who did not practice mindfulness meditation.

Moreover, one study found that four days of practicing meditation is enough to increase an individual’s attention span, reversing patterns in the brain that contributes to mind-wandering, worrying and poor attention.

Relieves Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Meditation has also helped patients that have suffered from irritable bowel syndrome to reduce the symptoms they feel. The patients that began practicing relaxation meditation have improved their symptoms of bloating, constipation, and diarrhea.

Even the State University of New York recommended meditation as an effective treatment for this condition since it was so useful!

Calmness

How you deal with the situation around you significantly affect your body, in which is you are susceptible to emotional responses then your body might suffer greatly from stress.

The simple yet significant difference between those who meditate and those who do not is that the thought only occurs in the meditative mind but is not witnessed. On the contrary, the ordinary mind makes the thought the boss, which tips off their response to almost every stressful situation.

So, you can say that in both minds, an upsetting thought may occur, but their response to it is different since it is just another thought for those who meditate, while in the ordinary mind, the thought instigates a storm which rages on for a long time.

Takeaway

Stress may be common that it is often overlooked, especially in this fast-paced world wherein we have our plates full enough not to notice the harm that we do physically and mentally.

Which is why I believe meditation needs to be practiced regularly to be able to help yourself out and be prepared for any physical and mental attacks. Having a healthy lifestyle is a help too, which is why you should read more and know more through reading books or visiting sites like Pharma Quotes to improve your knowledge about your body and health.