Your favorite, adrenaline-rush TV show may be the reason you’re gaining weight, finding it difficult to sleep and feeling a tightness in your chest. 

Experts say watching stressful shows and movies before bed can trigger the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response, leading to a spike in heart rate and increasing cortisol levels and stress hormones.

Intense or dramatic shows can also have a lingering impact on your mood and can affect the way you approach situations in real life. 

And depending on the content, people who have experienced trauma may be triggered and could suffer flashbacks and post-traumatic stress disorder.  

Dr Thea Gallagher, clinical psychologist and co-host of the Mind in View podcast explained to Yahoo: ‘They could potentially trigger memories of the past, which may not be good. The content can also just get stuck in your head.

‘You might notice your heart racing or feeling a little restless while watching intense shows.’

A 2014 AHA Journal study found watching films and shows with stressful scenes can lead to changes in the heart’s beating pattern and cause damage to previously weak hearts. 

Stressful TV shows, true-crime documentaries or intense movies may also impact sleep as they rev your brain up, which can make it hard to fall and stay asleep – and a lack of quality sleep can lead to a whole host of problems, including obesity, dementia and mental health problems. 

Intense or dramatic shows can also have a lingering impact on your mood and can affect the way you approach situations in real life

A group of researchers from the University College London and King’s College London showed emotionally charged clips to 19 people and observed their breathing rate increase by two breaths per minute while their blood pressure significantly spiked. 

Dr Ben Hanson, of UCL Mechanical Engineering and one of the researchers, said: ‘Our findings help us to better understand the impact mental and emotional stress can have on the human heart.

‘This is the first time that the effects have been directly measured and although the results varied from person to person we consistently saw changes in the cardiac muscle. 

‘If someone already has a weakened heart, or if they experience a much more extreme stress, the effect could be much more destabilizing and dangerous.’

Over time, fluctuating blood pressure forces the heart to work harder, potentially leading to weakened heart muscle, thickening of the heart chambers and ultimately, increasing the risk of heart attack and heart failure. 

Apart from impacting heart health, violent shows can also damage your mental health. 

TV shows and movies that focus on darker themes such as horror, tragedy, violence and crime tend to set off an alarm system in the brain’s hypothalamus – a small region responsible for processing emotions and responding to stress – and cause a surge of adrenaline and cortisol in the body. 

While adrenaline makes the heart beat faster, leading to an increase in blood pressure to give you more energy, cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugar in the bloodstream. 

Pictured: Dr Paul Weigle, associate medical director of ambulatory programs at Natchaug Hospital

As a result, the body stays in a state of stress. However, as you turn off the TV, both hormones return to normal levels and the mind becomes more calm. 

But as explained by Dr Gallagher, dramatic shows can trigger bad memories or stay stuck in the head – putting the body in constant stress. 

The long-term activation of the stress response system and too much exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can disrupt almost all the body’s processes. 

This can lead to anxiety, depression, muscle tension and pain, weight gain, problems with memory and focus. 

Dr Paul Weigle, associate medical director of ambulatory programs at Natchaug Hospital, told Hartford Healthcare: ‘Shows with positive messages such as Parks and Rec or Ted Lasso can lighten our mood and better prepare us for sleep. 

‘But on the flip side, shows with dark or violent content can increase feelings of stress and disrupt sleep.

‘Watching depictions of suicide on TV and on the news has been shown to make viewers more likely to attempt suicide themselves. 

‘The National Alliance on Mental Illness has clear recommendations for the media portrayals of suicide, but they are tragically ignored by some TV and news programs.

He added: ‘The month after 13 Reasons Why aired, the suicide rate among 10- to 17-year-olds spiked nearly 30 percent.’

‘I treated a 12-year-old fan of the show after a serious suicide attempt, who told me that she believed this the way most teenagers deal with bullying.’