Stress is ubiquitous it affects all of us one way or another. Low-level stress that you can easily overcome is usually not bad for you. In fact, it can even be good for you. Stress can motivate you, improve your athletic performance, and help you adapt to your environment.

But long-term or excessive stress can have a profoundly negative effect on your health and even reduce your lifespan. Research shows that stress reduces testosterone levels, which may be one reason why stress is strongly linked with weight gain, poor sleep, and erectile dysfunction (ED).

Getting your stress under control is one of the most important ways to achieve a healthy, satisfying life. In this article, Ill dive into exactly what stress is and what it is doing to your health, testosterone, and sex life. Then Ill explain exactly how to beat it.

We throw the term around all the time, but what exactly is stress?

Stress is a feeling of psychological strain or pressure. It occurs from our own perception of an event or stressor as threatening or challenging to us. To be clear, stress is not the actual events or stressors in your life. Your response to those stressors is what triggers your feeling of stress.

Psychologists sometimes classify stressors into four types (1):

1. Ambient stressors, like noise in a cafe or traffic.2. Hassles or micro stressors, like not being able to find your keys.3. Major life events, like getting fired, getting married, or having a child.4. Crises or catastrophes, like a natural disaster.

These have different effects on your overall well-being, but even hassles or micro stressors, when they are constant, can create levels of stress that ultimately affect our health.

Stress has a massive physiological effect on our bodies. When we feel stress, our brain sends out a signal to our body and activates a fight or flight response. Our pupils dilate, our heart rate increases and our body releases a number of hormones and chemicals to get us ready to react such as adrenaline, endorphins, and cortisol.

This response is useful if were encountering a situation where we really do need to fight or get away. Athletes, soldiers in combat, or even firefighters benefit from this reaction to stressful situations.

But for most of us, this bodily response is unnecessary. And, when stress is chronic, occurring over a long period of time, these effects can be toxic and dangerous to our health. The amount of stress that you have, and your stress resiliency, can even predict how long you will live.

Risk of Disease

One of the most worrying effects of stress on our health is its relationship to disease; research shows that chronic, severe stress vastly increases a persons risk for several chronic health conditions.

For example, theres significant evidence that stress increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases like heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, and hypertension as well as diabetes and certain types of cancer (2, 3, 4). Stress is also clearly associated with mental illness, including depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety (5, 6).

Immune Function

Studies have shown that stress clearly reduces immune function and can cause a person to be more susceptible to illnesses like colds. Scientists have suggested that stress can affect immune system function at the cellular level, changing the bodys chemical immune response.

Poor Lifestyle Habits

The way that we cope with stress may also have an impact on our health. When individuals cope with stress by consuming excessive alcohol, smoking, or binge-eating, the result is poorer health. Stress can cause some people to engage in unhealthy habits as a way to cope with the psychological discomfort.

Stress has such a powerful effect on us in part because its psychological. It affects the hormonal balance in our body, but it also affects our mental health. Both aspects can impact sexual function and performance.

Stress has been shown to directly affect testosterone levels. When youre stressed, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol. And high cortisol levels crush your testosterone.

Research has found a clear association between high cortisol levels and low levels of testosterone. The lowered testosterone levels caused by stress, in turn, leads to low energy, weight gain, loss of mental focus, and loss of sexual function.

And stress is one of the most common causes of ED. Sexual function depends on the complex interaction between physiological and psychological factors. Besides reducing testosterone levels, which contribute to erectile dysfunction, it can also affect the psychological processes associated with sexual arousal.

Finding ways to effectively cope with stress is an essential part of creating a healthy lifestyle, achieving optimal testosterone levels, and supporting a fulfilling sex life. But how?

Develop Stress Resiliency

This is one of the most important things that you can do to reduce stress: develop ways to cope effectively with stress and create stress resiliency.

Stress resiliency refers to your ability to respond to and cope with the stressors that you face in everyday life. Creating resilience to stress can help you experience it less often, for less time, and thus reduce the negative health effects.

To develop stress resiliency, try the following:

1. Start to think of stress as an opportunity for growth. Ask yourself: What is the stressor? Why am I stressed about it? Where can I feel the stress in my body? What can I do right now to cope and calm myself down? What can I learn to grow from it?

2. Develop healthy coping habits. These include exercise, meditation, breathing techniques, hobbies you enjoy, and even sex.

3. Sleep! Sleep is critical for optimal health, but especially when it comes to stress resilience. Good quality sleep allows your body to heal and recover. And good quality sleep lowers cortisol.

4. Get social support. Engaging with the important people in your life is one of the most effective ways to cope with stress. Even giving social support can improve your stress.

5. Focus on eating good quality food. The foods you eat can directly promote or reduce inflammation in your body, and thus affect cortisol production.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the most effective ways to beat back stressors (15). Research shows that people who exercise consistently are better able to develop stress resilience and reduce the health consequence of stress (16).

Meditation

Research is increasingly finding the benefits of meditation on everything from cognitive health to physical energy levels. Meditation also turns out to be an effective way to cope with life stressors, even if you do it for just five to ten minutes a day.

The benefits of meditation include:

Stress reduction Better sleep Feeling relaxed Better focus and attention More positive mood Reductions in depression and anxiety.

Everyone experiences stress. If stress becomes chronic, and you lose your ability to cope with it, stress can crush your health, leading to weight gain, low testosterone levels, poor energy, and increased risk of erectile dysfunction.

But, when you have effective coping mechanisms and view stress as helpful not harmful, you can overcome it and rise to the occasion. Learning to beat stress will help you boost your immune system, lose weight, feel healthier, and enjoy the benefits of higher testosterone.

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Here's What Stress Is Doing to Your Health and Testosterone - The Good Men Project