Does Your Busyness Affect Your Health?

Sudden stress, like the kind you have after narrowly avoiding a fender bender, triggers a part of your brain called the hypothalamus. It sends signals that tell your adrenal glands to flood your body with cortisol and epinephrine. Those hormones rev your body up for “fight or flight.” Low-level, constant stress keeps your body pumping out those hormones in a steady stream. So you stay on high alert, even if you’re not in physical danger. 

There’s a strong link between workaholics and things like ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety, and depression. It’s likely that having these disorders makes you prone to working too much. You may use work to avoid depression, or you may work more because your ADHD, OCD, or anxiety won’t let you stop. Likewise, stress can affect your mental well-being and lead to symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Chronic stress may raise your chances for heart attacks and strokes by raising plaque buildup that clogs your arteries. You’re also more likely to have high blood pressure. You might think stress would sharpen your senses. It actually dulls them over time. It’s also no weight-loss plan: High cortisol levels make your body hang on to fat. That can lead to extra pounds.

Exercise is one of the best ways to prevent disease. If you’re glued to an office chair (or seat of a vehicle) all day, and you’re not offsetting that stillness with some muscle movement, you’re really raising your chance of some kind of health problem, whether it’s heart-related, cancer-related, or something else entirely.

Burning your candle at both ends can wear you down, but it also weakens your immune system. The result? You’re less protected from germs that come your way. The older you get, the more prone you are to stress-related immune changes, too.

There’s a difference between being drawn to your work and being controlled by it. Workaholism can be like an addiction. When you’re a workaholic, you have a hard time keeping a good quality of life because of your obsession with work. Your job often doesn’t satisfy you. You also may not be productive, even though you’re putting in extra hours.

Studies say the things that can make you a workaholic include:

• Being in charge of other employees
• Working for yourself
• Being a younger adult

Workaholism is also more likely to affect you if you have a higher education.

Being swamped and stressed all the time can do a number on your digestive system. It makes a difference in how quickly (or slowly) things move through your system. That means you can either be stopped up or sprinting for the bathroom. Stress can also keep your body from taking in the nutrients you need from the food you eat.

The stress that comes with keeping your nose to the grindstone tenses up your muscles, which can bring all kinds of side effects. You might grind your teeth, have sore shoulders, or deal with a stiff neck. You’re likely to get headaches from all this muscle tightness. It may even trigger migraines.

Studies show women who carry a big workload often do so on top of many tasks at home. So their health risks tend to run higher than men’s. Women are three times as likely to get cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions if they work 60-plus hours most weeks. Those odds start going up once you pass 40 hours. They jump again after you pass 50 hours a week.

Burnout is real, and it happens when stress piles up to a level you can’t deal with anymore. Long hours of work and a calendar that's too full can cause it. You may be headed to burnout if you:

• Feel tired all the time
• Spend most of your day doing tasks that feel overwhelming or boring
• Feel underappreciated
• Think most days are bad days

There may be a link between sleep problems and workaholism. Even though your work pace may make you feel sleepy when you should be awake, you’re more likely to have problems falling asleep or getting good-quality sleep once you do.

Taking breaks from work, whether it’s short stints during your workday or days and weeks away from the office, can boost your well-being. The benefits are especially high if you spend that time doing physical activity, learning something new, or practicing relaxation so your body can fully recover from the stress at work.

You aren’t likely to get an ulcer because of a busy, stressful schedule. But if you have an ulcer, it may get worse. Most ulcers are caused by a germ called H. pylori.

Stress hormones can mess with your reproductive system. In men, it can curb sperm production and lower testosterone levels. Women can have irregular cycles and less sexual desire when their bodies are swamped with stress.