On the other hand, all of us can learn to manage our stress more effectively. It's hard to open a magazine or newspaper without seeing at least some mention of stress. The increased concern about stress has paralleled discoveries in psychology and medicine which have shown that stress has an intimate relationship to many illnesses. Prolonged stress, by lowering the efficiency of your immune system, can make you more susceptible to a wide range of illnesses. In some cases such as gastric ulcers and cardiovascular illness, the biological responses involved in chronic stress can cause serious illness and even death.
Stress can also cause illness indirectly by altering a person's behaviour pattern.
Consider, for example, the case where a person tries to deal with it by increasing alcohol consumption or smoking. Both of these stress caused behaviours can ultimately produce illness. Besides producing physical illness, stress can also produce a variety of other serious consequences. Prolonged stress can lead to feelings of tenseness, depression, fatigue, sleep disturbances, distractibility, jumpiness, and problems in getting along with others. When we experience stress our body produces a complex set of hormonal and physiological changes designed to create biological arousal.