Stress Awareness Month: Impacts of Stress

We spent much time in the last post talking about the different kinds of stress. Now we will come back to this point. There is a lot of overlap of impact between the different types of stress. Let’s look at environmental stress as our example. In one study they looked at air pollution, climate change, solar radiation, and meteorological conditions and their impact on different health outcomes, such as respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic and gastrointestinal, renal and urogenital, neurological and psychological health, infectious and skin diseases, and major cancers, and let’s say the outcomes were not good (Sundas et al., 2024). Additionally, many of us experience many types of stress throughout our lives, which leads to cumulative impacts. For people who report high levels of cumulative stress in many different life domains and across time the negative impacts of daily stress are worse for their health (Haight et al., 2023). It’s time to take stress seriously. Do not wait. Today is the day.