Is stress dangerous?

The answer is yes. Of course depending on how serious your stress level is. Associations between stress and diseases have been established, particularly for depression, CVD and HIV/AIDS.


But why psychological stress is so dangerous? Stressful events influence the pathogenesis of physical diseases by causing negative affective states (e.g. feelings of anxiety and depression), which in turn exert direct effects on biological processes because they activate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis and the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary syste or behavioural patterns that influence disease risk.

Sounds scary? Don't worry. You might feel you should contact a therapist but you can do something yourself, just as a good and healthy start, practicing some validated relaxation techniques as perfomed in the new iPhone application MyRelax 3D.