What Is The Role Of Stress And Its Contribution To Anxiety?

We know from laboratory research with rats and from common sense that external stress leads to anxiety. Stress comes in many types, including but not limited to overwork, inadequate sleep, single parenting, two-career marriages, transition from one culture to another, change of job, divorce, death of a loved one, sickness in a loved one, or living with a medical or mental illness.

Stress lowers the barrier of any potential event to make someone anxious; physiologically, stress, as the body sees it, is anxiety in overdrive. Dr. Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller University has studied the long-term impact of stress and concluded that in chronic stress, the very chemical changes that help us fight or flee can create damage over the long run.

Hence, we find immune system weakness, heart dam-age, damaged memory capacity, change in fat deposits, bone demineralization, and chronic anxiety or aggression in lieu of increased alertness and readiness to run or fight. These kinds of thoughts are the backbone of the new field called psychoneuroimmunology, which has directly linked the stress we experience with a decrease in immune function or increased disposition to get sick or perhaps develop cancer. These studies help clarify the inseparability of the mind from the body.