Study conducted at German University found that students who held negative beliefs about stress like “stress is bad for health”, were more likely to report somatic symptoms like muscular tension, back pain, headache, migraine, chest pain, fatigue during stressful periods like academic examinations. Even after controlling for factors such as existing health status, neuroticism, and optimism, negative stress beliefs still predicted higher symptom reporting. This is because chronic stress may involve a wear and tear of stress responsive bodily hypothalamic pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system.