How does stress affect health and your body

While this is not a free essay on stress and I'm not an expert except for what I know about the effects of stress on my body. Can stress affect a person in a bad way? Stress effects the immune system and stress affects your overall health in ways you may not even know about.

I seldom appear stressed out but instead almost always look calm, cool and collected. That's the outward appearance and it's not true of what's going on inside. I learned a long time ago, around 3rd grade, to hide my stress symptoms from everyone.

I was always being told to sit still, stop wiggling my feet, stay in my seat, etc. So I leaned to wiggle my toes inside of my shoes so no one could see or complain about my movements. I still almost constantly an wiggling my toes.

How does stress affect health? If can cause a lot of different symptoms including tightness of muscles, pain in the neck, headaches, stomach aches and even ulcers and high blood pressure. Stress even effects the immune systems and makes it easier for you to get sick. Dr. told me in my mid 30's that stress is what probably caused my shingles to flair up in my mid 30's. Now there's a painful disease you don't want.

Along with being depressed all of my life I've probably been stressed out all of my life. It's tough not to be when you don't know if you are going to be hit in the next few seconds or totally ignored. BTW, both can cause stress.

Now along with all of my childhood stress I was also diagnosed with ADHD at a later age in my life. For me It doesn't work like the tv add says tho. You know, the one where they say it's like a tv in your mind and the channels are constantly changing. Mine is more like I get a dozen channels at once. I can even focus on one channel most of the time but I'm very aware the others are there and running along.

One of the good side affects of the ADHD is I can multi task better than most people I know and one of the bad is if I don't have all that input at once I get very bored. Another side affect is unless it's totally interesting or challenging I can lose focus very quickly.

I once worked in tech support and could handle about 4 times the call volume of anyone else I worked with. It excited me to be working on 4 or 5 problems with people on the phone, all at the same time. It was simple for me.

As a rule I have 4-5 things I'm always working on at once and they aren't always related. To me that's not stress or ADHD that's just how I am and how much stimulation I need to feel alive.

Of course the stress effects body wise aren't good. Between the stress and the depression I'm assuming that's where a lot of my headaches come from. I've had two ulcers, stomach problems frequently and tend to be very irritable as really stupid people also stress me out.

Stress, ADHD and depression are not a good combination to live with, yet, I've done it for 60 freaking years. When they gave me the Straterra for ADHD it calms some of the symptoms but I hated it because my mind no longer worked a fast as it used to so in the end I quit taking it.

I've had it so long I feel lost without it. Lol, that's not a good thing. I've started meditating daily to calm my mind and relax my body and that seems to help more than the drugs did.

Stress and depression are just two of the things I blame on the way I was raised. However now that I know I have major problmes with it, it becomes my responsibility to deal with it. I'm working at it but it is a slow process.