Stress symptoms: what stress does in your body, how often the symptoms occur and what a stress scan measures

Stress symptoms: what stress does in your body

In this article you will read which stress symptoms the body gives you, how common those complaints are in the Netherlands, what long-term stress does to sleep, the gut, blood pressure, the heart and the brain, and when a complaint is a reason to contact your GP. That matters, because from the inside stress complaints feel like an ordinary bad week, while the studies below follow people for years and see more than a bad week. The BioProfile stress scan measures how much these complaints affect you and gives you an indication of where you stand today in this area, one of the 11 health areas the full scan looks at. This is not a diagnosis. It is insight, to see where you stand today and to help you make better choices in what you eat and how you live. What this scan does not do is point to a cause. Only a doctor can name what sits behind a complaint.

Thuisarts names the physical complaints that come with stress plainly: being tired, sleeping badly, headaches, stomach trouble, bowel trouble, diarrhoea, neck pain, back pain, getting angry more quickly or crying more easily, a low mood, forgetting things and worrying a lot.⁠¹ That list is the answer to the question most people type in. Single signals on their own are normal, even when you feel ill from stress. What makes these signals symptoms of stress is that several turn up at the same time and keep going for weeks.

How many people carry these symptoms

In 2025, 20.7 percent of working people aged 15 to 74 in the Netherlands had burnout symptoms, measured in the Nationale Enquête Arbeidsomstandigheden by CBS and TNO: 23.5 percent among women against 18.0 percent among men, 28.2 percent in the 25 to 34 age group and 8.5 percent in the 65 to 74 group.⁠² For you as a reader, that means about one in five working people carry something similar, women slightly more often than men, and that the youngest working years weigh the heaviest.

Stomach, gut and nausea

In a population study, 1,002 participants were followed for 12 years. A higher anxiety score at the start predicted new functional gut complaints on its own: odds ratio 1.11 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.19; p = 0.006), across 217 new cases. The road ran both ways: participants who started with gut complaints and without raised anxiety or low mood scored higher on anxiety twelve years later (mean difference 0.76; p < 0.001) and on low mood (0.30; p = 0.01).⁠⁴ Read it this way: tension and a difficult gut feed each other over the years, and which one came first differs from person to person. Thuisarts lists trouble with your stomach, trouble with your gut and diarrhoea among the complaints that go with stress. Vomiting is not among the complaints on that page, and for that you ask a doctor.⁠¹

Sleep

A meta-analysis of prospective and cross-sectional research from Europe and Asia found more insomnia with high work stress: odds ratio 1.73 (95% CI 1.46 to 2.05). High job demands gave 1.35 (1.20 to 1.51), work-home conflict 2.32 (1.53 to 3.51) and a disturbed balance between effort and reward 2.63 (1.22 to 5.69); the links were comparable in men and women.⁠⁵ In plain words: the night is where work stress shows itself first, and what you take home with you weighs more than the size of the workload.

Blood pressure, heart and brain

In the Isfahan Cohort Study, with data from 2007 and 2013, participants with a high stress level had a 38 percent greater chance of high blood pressure: odds ratio 1.38 (95% CI 1.18 to 1.59). After full adjustment for other factors, total perceived stress gave a 15 percent greater chance: odds ratio 1.15 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.29). The domains that counted for both sexes ran from conflict at work and job security to personal conflict, sex life and daily life, with money worries added for men (P < 0.01).⁠⁶ So yes, blood pressure is one of the places where long-term stress lands, and the link is modest in size.

Over the years the numbers add up. In 13 European cohorts with 197,473 participants, followed for 7.5 years on average, there were 2,358 new cases of coronary heart disease, and work stress gave a hazard ratio of 1.23 (95% CI 1.10 to 1.37) against no work stress.⁠³ In INTERHEART, 11,119 people with a heart attack were compared with 13,648 controls from 52 countries, and lasting stress at work gave an odds ratio of 2.14 (99% CI 1.73 to 2.64) against 1.38 (99% CI 1.19 to 1.61) for stress that came and went.⁠⁷ A meta-analysis of 14 studies found a pooled hazard ratio of 1.33 (95% CI 1.17 to 1.50) for a stroke in adults with perceived psychosocial stress, stronger in women (1.90, 95% CI 1.4 to 2.56) than in men (1.24, 1.12 to 1.36).⁠⁸ In 283 older people living independently in the Netherlands, a high Cortisol level in scalp hair, which covers a longer period than a single measurement in blood or saliva, went together with cardiovascular disease in the medical history: odds ratio 2.7 (P = 0.01) for the highest quartile against the lowest.⁠⁹ These are group risks over years and not a prediction for one person. That is the reason to give a stress complaint a number instead of a shrug.

How do you get stress out of your body

A systematic review of 47 randomised trials with a total of 3,515 participants, with a search up to June 2013, looked at meditation programmes for psychological distress. Mindfulness meditation gave an effect size of 0.38 (95% CI 0.12 to 0.64) on anxiety scores and 0.30 (0.00 to 0.59) on scores for a low mood after 8 weeks against a non-specific active control group, and 0.22 (0.02 to 0.43) and 0.23 (0.05 to 0.42) after 3 to 6 months.⁠¹⁰ In plain words: about eight weeks of practice shifts anxiety and mood scores a small step, and part of that step is still there months later.

When to contact your GP

Thuisarts advises you to contact your GP if you cannot bring the stress down and you want help. The same page lists more reasons: complaints such as anxiety or low mood that are getting worse, work that no longer works, trouble getting up or eating badly, worries about alcohol or drugs, and people around you who are very worried.⁠¹ Those reasons weigh more heavily than any score.

What a stress scan measures and what the scan does not measure

The stress scan asks you about your symptoms over the past weeks and turns your answers into a stress score in your dashboard, with the reading band the score falls in. What you get is a picture of how much stress you are carrying and a starting value. Repeat the scan in two weeks and you have two numbers instead of a memory of a difficult month.

What a questionnaire cannot do is point to a cause. Poor sleep, a heavy stomach, a low mood and a body under strain all read the same way in a set of questions. Blood values, blood pressure measured at the practice and a conversation are the layers that turn a picture of complaints into an explained picture, and that is something you ask a doctor for. The scan gives you self-insight. It is not a diagnosis.

In summary

Stress shows itself in the body as tiredness, poor sleep, headache, stomach and gut complaints, neck and back pain, getting angry more quickly and a head that keeps going.⁠¹ About one in five working people in the Netherlands had burnout complaints in 2025, women more often than men.⁠² Over the years, perceived stress and work stress go together with insomnia,⁠⁵ a higher blood pressure,⁠⁶ coronary heart disease⁠^3,7 and a stroke,⁠⁸ and long-term Cortisol in scalp hair carries a comparable signal.⁠⁹ An eight-week meditation programme shifts anxiety and mood scores a small step.⁠¹⁰ Thuisarts lists the reasons to contact your GP.⁠¹ The BioProfile stress scan measures how much those complaints affect you, and gives you an indication of where you stand today in this area, the first of the 11 health areas the full scan assesses. This is not a diagnosis. It is insight, to see where you stand today. And to help you make better choices in what you eat and how you live. What this scan does not do: point to a cause.