Stress gets a bad rap. And it’s something that many people in the wellness industry spend their days trying to ward off. But stress is a normal part of life in small doses.
There are many times throughout the day when we experience stress. Someone cuts us off in traffic, we run late for an appointment, or we have a frustrating interaction with a neighbor or coworker. But the stress response is designed to be temporary. You get revved up, your heart starts pounding, your breathing speeds up, and your body mobilizes energy to help you respond to whatever is happening. And ideally, when the moment passes, your body settles back down into its normal state.
But in today’s fast-paced world, many of us are experiencing stress for longer stretches of time. Job insecurity, inflation, caregiving roles, chronic conditions, and relationship challenges are just some of the many things that can keep us in a constant state of stress. When that happens, your body doesn’t always get the chance to fully come down from its stress response before the next stressful situation hits. And over time, the effects of chronic stress can affect more than just how you feel mentally. It can take a toll on everything from your brain and heart to your gut and metabolism.
Here’s a closer look at how stress affects the body when stress sticks around.
When the stress response doesn’t switch off
Your racing heart, that knot in your stomach, faster and shallower breaths, tight shoulders or a clenched jaw can often tell you when your body is under stress. While these symptoms may seem inconvenient in the moment, they serve an important purpose during acute, or short-term, stress.
That’s because stress activates your body’s built-in survival response. You may know this as the fight-or-flight response: stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol help prepare your body to respond to a perceived threat, increasing alertness and making energy available. But fighting or fleeing aren’t the only possible reactions. Some people freeze, momentarily feeling unable to move or act. Think of encountering an aggressive dog: you might instinctively stand your ground to defend yourself (fight), scramble out of its path (flight), or go still for a moment, unable to react (freeze).
Thankfully, most of our modern-day stressors don’t require us to physically fight or run away. But your body can still activate the same stress response, even when the threat isn’t physical. When the stressful situation passes, your stress hormone levels typically begin to fall, allowing your body to return to its natural state.
But if this stress response gets triggered over and over again (for weeks or months) it can become chronic. That’s when it can start to affect your health. Chronic stress isn’t simply one stressful moment that lasts longer. When your stress response keeps kicking in, your body has fewer opportunities to fully return to baseline before the next stressor hits. Over time, this repeated activation can begin to affect different systems throughout your body.
Related: How stress affects your entire body
What chronic stress may do to your brain
If you’ve ever gone through a stressful period and felt extra forgetful, brain foggy, or emotionally blah, you’re not imagining it. Chronic stress can affect several areas of the brain involved in how we think, remember and regulate our emotions.
When our stress response stays activated for longer periods of time, such as weeks or months, it can begin to affect regions like the hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex—areas involved in processes like memory, emotional regulation and focus. This can lead to an array of symptoms such as trouble concentrating, low mood, and disrupted sleep.
Researchers have also found measurable structural and functional brain changes associated with chronic stress. These include differences in volume in some of these same regions, suggesting that prolonged stress may be associated with differences in the structure of certain areas of the brain. It's important to note that these are associations observed in people under prolonged stress, not a guarantee that a stressful season puts you on an inevitable path toward cognitive decline or neurodegenerative disease. And while the brain remains capable of changing throughout life, researchers are still trying to understand how much these stress-related changes can improve when stress is better managed.
Chronic stress can also lead people to turn to unhealthy coping habits, such as drinking more alcohol than usual. But regularly reaching for a drink to manage stress can lead to health concerns of its own. Prenuvo's research team looked at over 1,100 whole body MRI scans and found that people who had two or more drinks a day, without a diagnosed alcohol use disorder, had more brain shrinkage than those who didn't drink.* This was especially the case in areas linked to memory, movement and decision-making. Researchers also found differences in the liver, kidneys and visceral fat.
*Outcomes were based, in part, on patient-reported data and may be subject to responder bias. The observations from this study are preliminary and have not been independently replicated.
Related: Why our culture gives this Group 1 carcinogen a free pass
If you’re interested in learning more about your own brain health, Prenuvo’s Advanced Brain Health Scan combines MRI with volumetric analysis to provide information about brain structure, volume, and blood flow. It can help support monitoring over time, but it can’t determine whether any individual finding or change was caused by chronic stress.
What chronic stress may do to your heart
When you get stressed, your heart is one of the first organs to react. Your heart rate begins to increase and your blood pressure rises. For a one-off stressful moment, that's not a big deal. But when stress sticks around, those repeated spikes can start to add up. This can put your heart and blood vessels under ongoing strain instead of just once in a while. There are also more subtle changes happening behind the scenes. Chronic stress has been linked to ongoing inflammation, which plays a role in the development of cardiovascular disease.
Stress can also lead to habits that don’t do our hearts any favors, including skimping on sleep, moving less, reaching for a cigarette or a drink, or stress eating ultra-processed foods. When used as regular coping mechanisms, these behaviors can quietly add to your cardiovascular risk.
Related: What the science says ultra-processed foods do to your body
What chronic stress may do to your gut
There’s a reason you get butterflies in your stomach the day before a big presentation or have to suddenly run to the bathroom when nervous. Your brain and gut are in constant communication through what’s known as the gut-brain axis, a two-way network that links your central nervous system with your gastrointestinal tract. So your gut can send signals to your brain, and what’s happening in your brain can also influence what happens in your digestive tract.
Because of this, chronic stress can change the way your digestive system works. Food may move through your gut faster or slower than usual, and your gut may become more sensitive. This can make normal digestive sensations feel more uncomfortable, showing up as stomach pain, bloating, diarrhea or constipation. Stress can also affect your microbiome, as research has shown it may alter the balance of bacteria in your gut and disrupt the protective barrier that lines your intestinal tract.
If you already have a digestive condition, stress may make your symptoms worse. Studies have associated chronic stress with increased symptoms in conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). In a 2023 study, people with moderate to high stress had nearly twice the odds of experiencing GERD symptoms compared with those with low stress. While stress isn’t necessarily the underlying cause of these conditions, new symptoms or flare-ups during stressful periods are worth mentioning to your healthcare provider.
What chronic stress may do to your metabolism
The long-term effects of stress can also influence how your body uses and stores energy. During periods of acute stress, you may lose your appetite. But when chronic stress lingers, cortisol can increase appetite and may make you more likely to reach for sugary and fatty "comfort foods” like chocolate and potato chips. Cortisol can also interfere with how your body regulates blood sugar, which may eventually make it harder to keep glucose levels steady.
Cortisol can also influence where your body stores fat, and chronic stress has been associated with more fat accumulating around the midsection. Visceral fat, the fat that sits behind the abdominal wall and wraps around your organs, is more metabolically active than fat elsewhere on your body. Visceral fat has been linked to higher blood pressure, higher blood sugar, and a greater risk of conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Beyond that, stress can make us less likely to eat balanced meals, make it to the gym, and can interfere with our sleep. Together, these changes can put a strain on your metabolic health and body composition.
If you’re curious how much visceral fat you may be carrying and what your body composition looks like, Prenuvo’s Body Composition Analysis uses MRI to measure visceral fat around your organs, along with subcutaneous fat, liver fat, and lower body skeletal muscle. While it can’t tell you whether stress caused any changes in your body composition, these measurements can give you a clearer picture of your body’s composition and can be tracked over time.
Related: Why you should be tracking your body composition
The effects you can’t neatly assign to one organ
Some effects of chronic stress extend across the body, including changes in how your immune system works. Inflammation is part of your body’s defense against infection and injury. Normally, signals help keep that response in check. But research suggests chronic stress can make immune cells less responsive to cortisol, a hormone that helps regulate inflammation. This may make it harder for the body to bring inflammation under control and create the potential to contribute to lingering, low-grade inflammation.
Stress can also alter the hormones tied to reproduction, in both women and men. Elevated cortisol can disrupt the hormones that regulate a woman's menstrual cycle, sometimes leading to irregular or missed cycles. In men, chronic stress has been linked to lower testosterone, which can affect sex drive and reproductive function. While stress isn’t the only reason someone may have fertility struggles or hormonal symptoms, it can be one of many factors that can impact reproductive health.
Related: How your body composition affects your fertility
Can your body recover from chronic stress?
While the effects of chronic stress on the body can be a lot to wrap your mind around, there is a silver lining—your body has remarkable ways of healing itself. Taking steps to manage your stress response can help your body return to a more balanced state with meaningful benefits for your physical and mental health.
Some science-backed ways to reduce the impact of chronic stress include:
- Get moving: Physical activity can help reduce stress, improve mood, and support better sleep. The key is finding something you enjoy, whether that’s walking with a friend, dancing, or riding a bike. Even gardening can help!
- Prioritize sleep: Stress can impact your sleep, and poor sleep can make it harder to cope with stress. This creates a vicious cycle. Keeping a consistent sleep schedule and getting adequate sleep can help support your physical and mental health.
- Try mindfulness, meditation, or breathing exercises: Focusing on the present or paying attention to your breath are practices that can help reduce your stress load. One study found that meditating for as little as five minutes a day was associated with greater reductions in perceived stress.
- Connect with loved ones: Spending time with friends and loved ones can help you feel supported and has been shown to have a calming effect. Even when you can't get together in person, reaching out may help. In one study, people who texted a friend after a stressful experience reported less stress than those who simply sat quietly.
- Take breaks from scrolling: If your feed leaves you feeling more anxious or overwhelmed, pay attention to how long you spend scrolling on social media. Try turning off nonessential notifications, setting specific time limits, and putting your phone away before bed.
- Make time for things you enjoy: Hobbies and activities that you enjoy can give your mind a break from stress.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help: If chronic stress feels overwhelming, talk to your healthcare provider or a mental health professional who can help you find better ways to cope.
Related: You may not be the same person you were last year
Chronic stress is only one part of your health picture
Stress can have a noticeable impact on your body, but it’s important not to chalk every symptom or health change up to stress. Fatigue, headaches, digestive issues, and changes in sleep are often associated with chronic stress, but they can also have many other causes. And some health changes can develop without causing obvious symptoms. So how stressed you feel isn’t always a reliable way to know what’s actually happening inside your body or what may be behind a particular symptom.
For some people, having more information about their health can help provide peace of mind. A Prenuvo Whole Body Scan can provide a detailed look across major organs, the brain, spine, and more as part of a broader, proactive approach to your health.
It’s important to remember that a Prenuvo scan doesn’t measure stress levels, diagnose “stress damage,” or determine whether a particular finding was caused by chronic stress. It also isn’t a replacement for regular medical care or guideline-recommended screenings. If you experience persistent, new, or concerning symptoms, talk with your healthcare provider.
To learn more about a Prenuvo Whole Body Scan or other offerings, book a call with our Patient Services Team.
