Regular Illness
Every year, the common cold and other viruses make rounds, forcing people to stay home from school and work. Yet, if you find that you are calling out more often than most people or feel under the weather more often that not, it could be your body sending you a signal that it is stressed. Stress burdens the immune system and will cause more vulnerability to certain strains of bacteria and other infections.
A study looking at 61 older adults found that, when individuals with chronic stress were vaccinated for the flu, they had a much more weakened response to the vaccine when compared to those who were less stressed. Another study looked at 235 adults who were placed in low or high stress groups. At the end of the research period, those who were in the high stress study group had gotten respiratory infections 70 percent more than the other group and spent 61 percent of the research ill.
Now, you may be wondering exactly how stress affects your immune response. Whenever you are stressed, the body releases hormones like cortisol, and that can cause an inflammatory response within the body. Chronic stress lowers your sensitivity to cortisol, so the body has to release more of it. Since the immune response has been desensitized, however, you also become more susceptible to colds and influenza.
