I’ve heard it multiple times that stress is the worst enemy. But how exactly is stress an enemy to body, like how does long term exposure to stress increase risks of getting diseases?
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Because psychological states of mind are rooted in physical changes within your brain, and stress — whether running from a tiger to save your life, or working three jobs to feed your kids on one income — produce the exact same physical changes. Chronic stress, regardless of source, produces profoundly elevated levels of cortisol, often called ‘the stress hormone,’ which causes genuine and significant physiological changes in the operation of your adrenal glands (which produce even more cortisol and several other steroid hormones) and just about every other organ in your body — they’re all made of cells, and every nucleus in every cell in your body is listening to several steroid hormones to decide what to do next.
Stress of any kind produces marked biological changes outside normal operating parameters with downstream effects on every cell in your body.
My ELI5 answer would be that your brain is an imperfect soup with imperfect methods that are not adapted to the way we live today. If you thought you were running from a tiger every day for decades at a time, you’d probably develop liver disease and cancer a lot quicker too. For people in chronically stressful conditions, that is literally what every cell of their body believes to be happening.
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