eli5: How does stress cause physical health issues?
In: Biology
There are many connecting points.
Under adrenaline response your muscles are privileged in terms of energy usage (so you can either fight or flight). That means other systems are underprivileged, including the immune system. So if you spend more time under adrenaline surge (stress), then your immune system is at lower privilege for a longer total time, giving more chance to infections or cancers to emerge. This is kind of an indirect effect though.
A direct effect is that high stress levels lead to glucocorticoid release which is has a downregulatory effect on immune cells. It is probably just a side effect as this is a steroid hormone and a lot of steroids have such effect on immune system. Glucocorticoid hormone has its primary effect on metabolism but directly knocks down the immune system.
Elevated heart rate under adrenaline response is per se hurting your cardio vascular system.
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