You’re not feeling well, you go to your doctor or you tell a friend, and they almost immediately ask you if you are under any extreme stress. Maybe there’s tension between you and the nagging boss or that school exam has you all tied in a knot. So how does a seemingly psychological problem end up affecting you in such physical ways…why does stress make you sick?

When your brain perceives stress, you get reactions from the stress-reactive area, and an elevation of stress hormones, cortisol and norepinephrine, increase in concentration in the blood. What happens next? Experts believe that each person has different organ vulnerabilities. One person will respond with panic attacks, another with headaches or stomach ulcers. When you're under stress, it influences our behavior, which can in turn affect our health.

Apart from the often reported symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, and emotional imbalance, stress can cause some very specific adverse health effects. Stress may make it harder to control diabetes by raising blood glucose levels and may even raise cholesterol levels.

We all respond differently to stressful situations, some more dramatically than others. One thing is for sure, stress-induced health reactions aren't strictly physiological. Exercise is one of the best days to deal with stress. Before real panic sets in, find balance in your lifestyle to relieve your stress levels. And as Lily Tomlin once said about stress, “for fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”