How Depression Affects Your Physical Health
According to statistics, Depression Affects- nearly 50 million Americans are experiencing mental illness. Now more than ever, mental health awareness is becoming a widespread topic, most especially thanks to social media.
Nevertheless, it’s no question that learning more about mental health is an important thing to do. By understanding your mental health, you know if you or your loved ones are suffering from a mental illness.
From here, you can become an advocate and help combat the stigma. Furthermore, there are several kinds of mental illnesses, some being more widespread than others. Some examples of this would be depression and anxiety.
Depression Affects- is one of the most common and fatal mental illnesses that affect millions of adults and adolescents alike. It’s described as causing a person to be persistently sad and hopeless.
Additionally, it accounts for a significant number of suicide cases worldwide. However, it can be treated through therapy and medicine. As such, it’s important to understand how dangerous depression is, how to identify it, and how to seek treatment for it.
Depression Affects- It goes without saying that if you or anyone you know is suffering from this, then don’t hesitate to seek help and gain treatment for depression. On top of suicide, depression has other adverse effects, such as mental fog, wherein mental processes, like memory, are significantly affected.
Depression Affects- People with depression may also suffer from anxiety due to this mental illness. Alongside this, people are known to suffer from the physical toll of dealing with depression.
On that note, it’s evident that the negative impacts of depression go beyond a person’s mental and emotional health and well-being. This is as they can suffer from physical issues too as a result of it.
By recognizing and understanding what impact depression can have on your physical health, you’ll fully recognize its harm and learn how to identify it better. As such, here is how depression affects your physical health:
- Cause Sleeping Issues
Depression Affects- The first physical sign of depression affects that you may notice is that they have developed a sleeping disorder. In fact, this has been known to be one of the main signs that doctors look for when diagnosing someone with depression.
This could mean they’re constantly sleeping yet feeling fatigued or sleeping less due to developing insomnia. This is usually because they find it difficult to fall asleep or gain restful sleep.
In addition to this, it’s worth noting that it goes both ways, where a lack of sleep can contribute to depression. Essentially, individuals with sleep apnea and other sleeping disorders are more at risk of depression.
Moreover, depression can alter an individual’s brain functionality, affecting the number of hormones they need. An example of this is serotonin, a hormone needed to promote sleep.
Therefore, people suffering from depression are more prone to having a weaker immune system as their bodies fail to heal and recover through sleep.
- Increases Risk Of Illness
Depression Affects- Next, depression can negatively impact one’s physical health by increasing the risk of contracting illnesses. As mentioned, due to depression causing poor sleep, your immune system will be weakened. Consequently, you may constantly suffer from diseases such as the common cold.
Alongside that, it can also increase your risk of heart disease. This is because when you suffer from depression affects, you may make poorer life decisions, such as your diet and the frequency of your physical activity.
On top of this, since those with depression have weaker bodies, they may develop chronic inflammation. As a result, they are more likely to suffer from inflammation-related illnesses, such as irritable bowel syndrome and autoimmune diseases.
- Causes Digestive Issues
Depression Affects- Aside from sleep, depression can also affect one’s digestive system, making one more prone to developing digestive issues. These may include irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), diarrhea, nausea, bloating, and more.
Moreover, this may result from depression altering the brain’s reaction to stress, having it alter activity in the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands.
Alongside this, the digestive issues may also be caused by the poor eating patterns that an individual can develop when they’re suffering from depression. This may mean that they’re overeating or not eating at all, causing either obesity or malnutrition, respectively.
- Causes Weight Fluctuations
In relation to this, Depression Affects- can harm your physical health, causing weight fluctuations which means that you may either unintentionally gain or lose weight.
This is mainly due to the stress, lifestyle, and diet that a person suffering from depression deals with and has. For instance, they may overeat to cope with stress. On the other hand, they may lose weight due to nutrition deficiency.
Furthermore, their weight may also be affected by the sleeping issues they’ve developed from suffering from this mental illness. Consequently, this can result in heart disease, developing diabetes, and other obesity-related illnesses.
- Increased Pains
Finally, depression affects your physical health that is worth noting is how it can make you suffer from physical pain.
This unexplainable pain that you may develop can either be chronic or significantly increase as you grow more sensitive. For instance, you may experience more joint and muscle pain and an increase in headaches.
This, unfortunately, can’t be remedied by medication. In addition to this, it’s been explained that it may be caused by depression altering the brain’s neurotransmitters such as serotonin which help with pain tolerance.
Conclusion
Mental health is a component of your well-being that you should pay attention to just as much as your physical health. Furthermore, failing to address any mental illness that you may have can heavily impact your emotional and mental well-being and your physical.
That being said, depression is a widespread mental illness that millions of people suffer from, and it has negatively impacted their physical health.
By understanding the effects that depression has on the body, you’ll be able to understand the gravity of a mental illness like depression truly.
As such, hopefully, the explanation above on how depression affects your physical health has helped you get a better grasp of this mental illness.
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