7/30/2019 8 Signs That Indicate You Are Stressed

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8 signs that indicate you are stressed

8 signs that reveal you are stressed (Thinkstock photos/Getty Images)

Our body warns us when we're stressed out.

Ignoring them can cost our life because chronic stress increases risk for a host ofhealthproblems, including high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokeand depression, to name a few.

Experts have revealed eight sneaky symptoms of stress that we might mistakenly chalk up tosome other health problem or brush off as nothing to worry about,Huffingtonpostreported.

The first is weird and/or recurring dreams.

"Unfortunately, the stress we deal with during the day tends to follow us to bed at night and

plays out in our dreams," Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, author ofDream On It -- Unlock Your

Dreams, Change Your Life, wrote forDoctorOz.com.

Maybe you don't realize you're burning the candle at both ends until that dream comes back

where you miss your bus or your house is on fire, two of the five most common stress dreams,according to Loewenberg.

However, these dreams might help you pinpoint what exactly is stressing you out -- and can help

you work through why you're feeling that way,Fitness magazine reports.

Second symptom is tight muscles. Stress causes us to tense our muscles and can even trigger

muscle spasms, leaving us in some serious pain, Woman's Day reported.

That funny eye twitch could also be sign of stress. While there's not exactly hard evidence to

prove it, many people who complain of a twitch also say they're tired or stressed.

Your teeth can also tell you that you are stressed out.

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7/30/2019 8 Signs That Indicate You Are Stressed

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A number of people grind their teeth in their sleep -- or "chew over the day's stressors," Debbie

Mandel, author of Addicted to Stress: A Woman's 7-Step Program to Reclaim Joy andSpontaneity in Life, toldFitness.

For women, changes in your menstrual cycle can be another sign of stress.

Women may experience late or missed periods due to stress. Some may even experience a

condition know as secondary amenorrhea, when the cycle seems to completely stop, according toEveryday Health.

Other stressed women may find their periods continue on a regular schedule -- but feel far worse.

Stress can make cramps up to twice as painful, according toFitness.

Losing hairor going gray could be another sign.

We're more likely to lose hair when stressed,HuffPost Style reported.

However, if you are already genetically predisposed to going gray, traumatic events and periodsof intense stress could speed up the process. The Mayo Clinicexplains that stress can cause

white blood cells to attack the hair follicle and stop growth, and it may also put hair follicles into

a "resting phase," so hairs fall out during washing or combing.

Others experience trichotillomania when stressed or anxious, which gives them an irresistible

urge to pull out hair on the scalp or other areas, like eyebrows and eyelashes.

Stress can also cause more serious reactions, including irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS.

While the link between stress and gastro problems is not entirely understood, it seems to makethe intestines more sensitive and contract more, according to the A.D.A.M. Medical

Encyclopedia.

Stress also lowers our immune system, leaving us at risk for frequent colds.

One study found that the people who reported high levels of stress were twice as likely to catch a

cold. The stress hormone cortisol seems to turn down the volume on the body's inflammatoryresponse, Health.com reported, to "free up energy" to fight off whatever the threat that's causing

the stress.

"Stressed people's immune cells become less sensitive to cortisol," Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., the

study's author and a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told

Health.com.

"They're unable to regulate the inflammatory response, and therefore, when they're exposed to a

virus, they're more likely to develop a cold," he stated.

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