So like I said I am wondering what effects stress due to mental illness has had on me. If I am well I handle stress very well naturally and I have learned many coping mechanisms over the years that I use. Since it is the mental illness that is the main source of my stress then obviously successfully treating the mental illness is the best strategy for reducing it.
So I am doing some research of the effects of stress no matter what the source and how it effects us.
Press Release: How Stress Influences Disease: Carnegie Mellon Study Reveals Inflammation as the Culprit-Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University
Quote:
PITTSBURGH—Stress wreaks havoc on the mind and body. For example, psychological stress is associated with greater risk for depression, heart disease and infectious diseases. But, until now, it has not been clear exactly how stress influences disease and health.
A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University's Sheldon Cohen has found that chronic psychological stress is associated with the body losing its ability to regulate the inflammatory response. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research shows for the first time that the effects of psychological stress on the body's ability to regulate inflammation can promote the development and progression of disease.
"Inflammation is partly regulated by the hormone cortisol and when cortisol is not allowed to serve this function, inflammation can get out of control," said Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty Professor of Psychology within CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Cohen argued that prolonged stress alters the effectiveness of cortisol to regulate the inflammatory response because it decreases tissue sensitivity to the hormone. Specifically, immune cells become insensitive to cortisol's regulatory effect. In turn, runaway inflammation is thought to promote the development and progression of many diseases.
|
A whole NIH section on PTSD
NIMH · Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Happiness & health | HSPH News | Harvard School of Public Health
https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/stress.aspx
From what I am reading it can cause depression, and if depression causes stress that leads to a viscous cycle and hard to break without effective treatment.
Also heart disease, coronary artery disease, and atherosclerosis. Given all the factors I am facing- family history, stress from mental illness, hypertension, out of shape and over weight party due to depression, and so on, I have decided I am going to take a statin drug. I have no way to predict how depression and anxiety will effect me in the future. Hopefully I will be in a much simpler less stressful financial situation a year or so from now and I will be able to tolerate depression and anxiety much better as it will not have as big of an impact on my life. I intend to have a much simpler life but that is the hands of SSA.