How an Overabundance of Work Tasks Can Harm Your Physical and Mental Health
How an Overabundance of Work Tasks Can Harm Your Physical and Mental Health
There are many people who wouldn’t believe that overworking yourself can genuinely harm you, and instead would think that you’re just soft. You shouldn’t listen to them, though, as there are many mental and physical repercussions to overworking yourself.
One of the most common physical effects you’ll find from overworking yourself is chronic sleep deprivation. This is when you’re unable to get enough sleep every night, and it goes on like that for years.
Sleep deprivation has horrible effects on your body in so many ways. It puts you at a much higher risk for dangerous things like heart attack or stroke, and it can also contribute to things like weight gain and becoming diabetic.
There are similar effects seen from another physical aspect of overworking yourself – being too stressed out. When you’re stressed, your body releases more cortisol, the stress hormone.
While it’s normally fine to have cortisol released as a response to stress, being stressed out every single day will leave you with far too much cortisol, leading to things like high blood pressure, thinning hair, mood swings, and more.
The mental effects are just as bad. Being unhappy for extended periods of time can naturally lead to conditions such as depression, which has a wide variety of negative effects on your physical and mental health.
People are often quick to dismiss the importance of mental health, especially those who are a bit older. However, it’s been proven time and time again that your mental health can have serious and extreme impacts on your physical health.
In the same way that poor mental health can negatively affect your body, good mental health can be great for you. When you’re in a better mood and your hormonal levels stabilize, there’s tons of rewards in store for you.
Once you’re in a better spot with your work-life balance, you’ll be decreasing your risk of things like heart attacks and other major diseases. Less amounts of cortisol in your body has even been shown to boost your immune system function.
You’ll be able to sleep better, your weight will stabilize if you tend to gain a lot or lose a lot, and you’ll feel much more refreshed when you wake up in the mornings. All of this is caused by improving your mental health by improving your work-life balance.