Stress has a negative effect on your immune system – no surprise here. You’ve probably noticed how easily you seem to catch a cold when you’re dealing with work woes, relationship problems or in the middle of exams. That’s because chronic stress causes us to overproduce cortisol, a stress hormone which depletes immunity and makes us more vulnerable to colds and infections.

Some stress good, chronic stress bad
We’re designed to handle the normal ups and downs of daily life. The immune system benefits from short-term, acute bursts of stress. This “healthy” kind of stress response increases your defences and strengthens your immune system. On the other hand, chronic, relentless stress never gives your body a chance to recuperate and gradually depletes your defenses and makes you more susceptible to disease.

The link between emotional well-being and risk of infection
Research shows that the more psychological stress a person is under, the greater their risk of respiratory infection. It also suggests that our personality and emotional state greatly influences the likelihood of getting sick whenever we’re exposed to infections like the common cold. In other words; the more positive your mental outlook, the more resistant you are to seasonal bugs.

More Stress, more misery
Chronic stress also increases the severity of colds and makes them harder to kick. Again, cortisol is to blame because of its inflammatory effect. Most people don’t realise that symptoms such as a runny nose, sore throat, cough, congestion, headache, aches and pains, are not caused directly by a virus, but by the inflammatory response to the infection. The idea is to trigger enough inflammation to fight off the infection, but not so much that you experience miserable symptoms. Cortisol serves as the “off switch” for the body’s inflammatory response. However, the more stressed you are, the more you overproduce cortisol and the more your immune cells becomes resistant to its effects. Hence the “off switch” doesn’t work and inflammation and cold symptoms linger long after the actual virus is gone.

Stress gets under the skin
The fact that people who are overstressed are more likely to develop a cold than people who aren’t, obviously has wider implications for inflammatory issues like asthma, autoimmune and cardiovascular disease, since these conditions are also likely to be affected by stress.

Bottom Line

Stress management is essential to make us less vulnerable to getting sick in the first place, not just colds and infections, but to all kinds of disease. The good news is, you can do plenty about it through diet and lifestyle. Learn how you can manage stress and other root causes inflammation with the Foodwise “Immune and Inflammatory Plan” at:  https://www.foodwise.life/program/inflammatory-immune