STRESS can make you SICK! This is because of the hormones and nerve pathways which are activated by stress change the way the immune system responds, making it less able to fight invaders.
Stress triggers the release of the cascade of hypothalamic pituitary and adrenal hormones- the brain stress response. It also triggers the adrenal glands to release epinephrine or adrenaline and the sympathetic nerves to squirt out the adrenaline-like chemical norepinephrine all over the body.
From the immune system response, cortisol decreases the amount of lymphocytes released from the lymph nodes and from the thymus.
-When does stress turn from good to bad, as far as your immune system is concerned?
Differences in response time between the nervous and immune system...
The nervous system and the hormonal stress response react to a stimulus in milliseconds, seconds or minutes whereas the immune system takes hours or days. Therefore, when the stress turns chronic (continuous), immune defenses begin to be impaired.
As the stressful stimulus hammers on (in the context on continued stress), stress hormones and chemicals continue to pump out. Immune cells floating in this milieu in blood or passing through the spleen or growing up in thymic nurseries never have a chance to recover from the unabated rush of cortisol. Since cortisol shuts down immune cells' responses, shifting them to a muted form (less able to react to foreign triggers), this results in less ability to defend and fight when faced with new intruders.
Therefore, (for example) when we are exposed to flu or common cold virus, our immune system is less able to react and we become more susceptible to these infections.
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