How can emotional stress cause real physical symptoms?

Dr. David Clarke explains that almost everyone has had the experience of stress-related symptoms at one time or another.

If you have ever blushed with embarrassment, ever felt a knot in your abdomen when your are in a tense situation, that’s a psychophysiological reaction, a mind-to-body reaction that produces real physical symptoms.

They are not imaginary, they are not in your head. They are real. If the level of stress is high enough or goes on for a long enough period of time, that can turn into an illness.