Emotional Triggers: 3 Dangers to Your Physical Health 

A difficult child, a parent in need of senior home care assistance, debt, fluctuating weight, heartbreak – the truth is that negative emotional triggers, defined as stimuli evoking distressing feelings or memories, are unfortunately a real problem and you want to keep this in mind to take steps to manage it. Why? 

Here are 3 reasons why.

Cardiovascular Strain

The fact is that constant stress often means your body’s dealing with increased levels of cortisol and adrenaline. This really amps up your heart rate and blood pressure, and over time, it can cause serious damage to your blood vessels so that you’re more susceptible to cardiovascular issues.

When you’re constantly on high alert due to stress, your body’s “fight or flight” is regularly signaled. And you don’t want this ongoing heightened state that puts a strain on your heart as then there’s a real chance of atherosclerosis and problems like heart attacks.

Take a lawyer who deals with work-related stress every single day. This non-stop pressure triggers the release of stress hormones, enough to make their heart work overtime. Chances are this very well leads to hypertension and really just significantly increases the risk of him developing heart problems.

Digestive Disorders

Yes, emotional triggers can mess with your gut health. Often, this means disruptions in the gut-brain axis, causing digestive issues because of changes in gut motility and sensitivity.

See, when stress and anxiety kick in, your brain and gut connection gets a bit wonky until stress hormones, like cortisol, cause inflammation in your gut and leave you to deal with conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Think about a chef battling high-stress levels at work. The emotional strain messes with their digestive system until soon enough symptoms like belly pain and irregular bowel movements become more and more regular. Over time, chronic stress could mean a higher chance of developing or worsening digestive disorders for her. 

Weakened Immune System

Then, you really should know that stress often means your immune system takes a hit. Stress hormones, especially cortisol, have a way of suppressing your immune function over time.

Here’s the thing, when cortisol levels are up, your immune cells don’t work as efficiently; this suppression weakens your body’s defense against infections so that you’re more vulnerable to illnesses and slow to recover from what you catch. 

So, say a student is going through a prolonged period of emotional stress – maybe they’re flunking out, or perhaps they have serious housing issues. With cortisol levels constantly on the rise, their immune response weakens until consequently, they find themselves getting sick more often and taking longer to bounce back from common infections.

So, really, your mental health is far from all you have to worry about when it comes to negative emotional triggers. From therapy to viable solutions, you want to be very proactive about handling such triggers for the sake of your overall health.