What is Stress?
Stress is the feeling of tension or emotional distress brought about by a stressor. Stressors can come in physical form—a wild dog baring its fangs at you or a robber you see in your house—but it can also be an emotional trigger, similar to when you’re experiencing heartbreak or facing an excessive workload.
When faced with a stressor, it is not only a perception or feeling that rises in your mind because your body reacts to it as well. An increased heart rate, higher oxygen intake, and the capability to hyper-focus are merely some of the immediate effects of stress. This is largely the cause of your brain inducing the release of hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, pumped into your body to handle what your body perceives as a threat to your well-being.
The Physical Manifestation of Stress
This jump in perception and cognitive ability brought by adrenaline is what people usually understand as a “fight-or-flight” mechanism. Your body tenses up when a threat is found in front of you, giving you an extra edge that pushes you to survive. While it was a basic auto-response perfect for survival against wild animals, your body cannot distinguish this from a “regular” workday stressors.
Initially, the added boost of cognitive faculty can help you overcome the obstacle in getting through a difficult workday. However, the constant activation of your “fight-or-flight” response due to the stress felt on a near-daily basis has been found to take a toll on your health.
Stress is a well-researched factor that has been linked to numerous health issues. While it is initially something that many people thought to be strictly psychological, studies show that excessive stress for prolonged periods will begin manifesting into physical maladies. Headaches, nausea, gastrointestinal distress, and muscle spasms are only some of the temporary negative effects of stress. More long term issues, such as heart disease, weak immunity, and constant fatigue have also been linked to it.
Can Stress Induce Fever?
With all these physical manifestations discussed, the bigger question is, “can stress actually be enough to induce a fever?” The short answer is: according to recent data, it actually can.
Fever, while many perceive to be a negative occurrence, is actually your body’s auto-immunity response to foreign bacteria and viruses that invade your system. Your body tries to heat up, attempting to burn off the foreign bodies to avoid your health from deteriorating further. Data shows that stress can induce what scientists call a “Psychogenic Fever.”
Psychogenic Fever
This psychosomatic-rooted fever can cause fevers of up to 105 F and is now considered as one of the major effects of stress. The difficulty of psychogenic fever is that over-the-counter medications do not work to alleviate it but sedative drugs used for depression and anxiety would. It is most commonly seen in young women under 18 but has also been observed to have occurred to adults of all ages. Unfortunately, not much is known about the illness at the time.
How to Treat Psychogenic Fever
Interestingly, the most effective way to combat psychogenic fever is to alleviate the source of stress. Psychogenic fever is directly related to the advent of stress, and targeting the stressor has been found to lower the fever.
Some of the best ways to help alleviate the effects of stress are by doing relaxing activities, such as meditation, yoga, and walking. It would also help to build a relaxing environment around people who have a psychogenic fever and making sure the source of stress is removed. Another approach is to directly attack the stressor, such as taking away or resolving work issues for job stressors or helping the individuals with their studies for stressed students.
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