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How Unmanaged Anxiety and Depression can Harm Your Physical Health
About one-fifth of Americans suffer from mental illness, including millions who suffer from depression, anxiety, or both. The emotional effects of these problems are well known, including feelings of hopelessness, sadness, self-loathing, guilt, and pervasive worry.
But what’s less well-known is that these disorders can have significant impacts on your physical wellness, too. Learning to recognize those physical impacts can play a central role in helping many people recognize their need for mental health treatment.
At Conduit Behavioral Health, Temika Heyward, PhD, FNP, CRNP, PMH, and her team focus on helping patients with depression and anxiety find solutions that relieve their symptoms and improve their overall health and quality of life. In this post, Dr. Heyward reviews eight ways depression and anxiety could be taking a toll on your physical health to help you understand when it’s time to seek treatment.
1. Sleep problems
Both depression and anxiety can make it hard to relax and “turn off” your mind. Lack of quality sleep leads to persistent feelings of fatigue, problems concentrating, lowered immunity, and increased risk of chronic medical problems like heart disease and diabetes. Sleep problems can also exacerbate symptoms of both depression and anxiety.
2. Lower immunity
Both anxiety disorders and depression interfere with regular immune system function, making it harder for your body to fight off diseases and infections. Both disorders also promote chronic inflammation that also leads to lower immunity.
3. Cardiovascular effects
Anxiety and depression involve elevated levels of a stress hormone called cortisol. Persistently elevated levels of this hormone can lead to high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure, significantly increasing your risk of heart disease, as well.
4. Gastrointestinal problems
Emotional disorders like depression and anxiety have a direct effect on gastrointestinal health and function via a unique connection called the gut-brain axis. As a result of that link, people with emotional health issues can also experience symptoms like belly pain, bloating, diarrhea, and acid reflux.
5. Chronic pain
Depression and anxiety can make even minor pain issues feel a lot worse or last a lot longer, and symptoms can be harder to treat. People with depression or anxiety may have frequent headaches, muscle pain, or joint pain that takes a toll on their activities and increases depression and anxiety symptoms, as well.
6. Appetite changes
Both anxiety and depression can also affect your appetite and your eating habits, ramping up feelings of hunger or dulling the desire to eat. Binge eating, overeating, or not consuming adequate calories can all lead to other health problems, like weight gain or nutritional deficiencies.
7. Hormonal fluctuations
Cortisol isn’t the only hormone affected by depression and anxiety. These conditions can affect the levels of other hormones, too, leading to issues like low sex drive, erectile dysfunction, and irregular menstrual cycles.
8. Thinking and memory changes
Both depression and anxiety can take a toll on cognitive functioning, making it harder to focus, reason, and remember things. Not surprisingly, this “symptom” can impact work and personal relationships, too.
Help is here
Anxiety and depression are both treatable, yet only a fraction of those affected seek treatment to help them relieve their symptoms and improve their quality of life. If you’re ready to learn how we can help you manage your depression or anxiety, request an appointment online or over the phone with the team at Conduit Behavioral Health in Baltimore, Maryland, today.