Facts about Stress

Here are some facts about how stress impacts our lives:  

• Stress has been linked to all the leading causes of death, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, accidents and suicide.
• Almost 90 percent of all visits to primary health care providers are due to stress-related problems.
• Nearly one-half of all adults suffer adverse effects from stress.
• It is estimated that 1 million Americans miss work due to stress-related complaints.

• Workplace violence has been attributed to stress. Homicide is the second leading cause of fatal occupational injury.  

What is stress?

"The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them"

Stress is not an illness but if it becomes excessive and/or prolonged, mental and physical illness may develop.

Work is generally good for people if it is well designed, but it can also be a great source of pressure. Pressure can be positive and a motivating factor, it can help us achieve our goals and perform better. Stress is a natural reaction when this pressure becomes excessive.

Are you stressed?

Stress produces a range of signs and symptoms, the following is not an exhaustive list of the symptoms of stress but if you feel that your attitudes or behaviour is changing due a situation at work or home, these may indicate stress and a need to seek further advice from your GP.

Anyone can suffer from work related stress, no matter what work they do.

Behaviour

you may:

• find it hard to sleep;
• change your eating habits;
• smoke or drink more;
• avoid friends and family;

Physical symptoms

might include:

• tiredness;
• indigestion and nausea;
• headaches;
• aching muscles;     

Mentally

you may:

• be more indecisive;
• find it hard to concentrate;
• suffer loss of memory;
• feelings of inadequacy;         

Emotionally

you are likely to:

• get irritable or angry;
• be anxious;
• feel numb;
• be hypersensitive;

Stress

In the middle of the 20th century physiologist Hans Selye, the father of stress theory, labeled our reaction to life's challenges with a simple word: stress. Now, 50 years later, there's a conversation you hear so often, it's almost a chorus: You ask a friend, "How are you?" and she replies, "I'm OK, but I'm feeling a little stressed." Stress is the principal contributor to life that is out of balance; but the opposite is right as well.

In fact, in the 21st century,stress has become synonymous with life. It is part and parcel of the very essence of living today. Stress is associated with almost every aspect of our lives, personal and professional alike. Stress does however become a danger for health and your performance when it goes unrecognized, is poorly managed or becomes pent up over long periods of time.

Research shows that women in relationships do greater than 60% of the household maintenance and childcare. Divorced and single women, living alone, more than likely have 80-100% of childcare responsibilities as well as the household chores. Consequently, women do not spend enough time for their own stress reducing self-care.

We women strive to be perfect in all areas of ourr lives, juggling multiple roles: spouse, mother, caregiver, friend and business owner. We continue meeting household and family responsibilities, while at the same time working and trying to maintain personal interests. As demands increase to fulfill these roles, women often feel a sense of losing control and helplessness, making them prone to stress and burnout.

Have ever stoped to consider that You are your most precious asset.

 

Find out your stress level...then go straight to stress management coaching .

 

Are you ready to manage stress before it manages you, and your business and personal life?

Ready to shorten your learning curve?

Learn more how Stress Management Coaching can help you.

Email me on info@action4balance.com now to find the best way to take action.  

Stress and Cortisol

Imagine that you are a zebra strolling across the savanna. You are minding your business when a lion comes charging toward you from bushes. The classical stress reaction “fight or flight” starts – your body quickly paces itself through a series of neurological, biochemical, hormonal, and physiological actions – to escape and survive.

What is "fight or flight" response?

"Fight or flight" response is a complex process of reactions in the body, is developed in every mammal and prepares it to fight or flee during actual situations of danger, such as when one of our ancestors was being chased by a saber toothed tiger. Now that's stressful! Our brain reacts to these situations by pulling blood to the large muscles of our body so we can react. Heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing speed up. We get a rush of adrenaline. All of these changes enable us to fight better or run faster.

For zebra stress response runs its complete course, in a relatively short period. The stress occurs (lion), which causes the zebra’s brain and hormonal system to release a series of stress hormones (one of them - cortisol), which enables to fight or run away. After getting away from the lion, the zebra’s cortisol levels return to normal - end of story.(adapted fromThe Cortisol Connection )

We humans are not so lucky. The majority of our daily stressors come from job, family commitments, mortgage payments, traffic jam and project deadlines. Our modern day stressors are much less easy to escape the lion. In many cases we can’t run away or fight.

We become victims of chronic stress and chronic or constantly elevated cortisol level.

When we encounter something that causes us to feel stress our cortisol level goes up in order us to overcome the stressful situation. In fact, small increases of cortisol have some positive effects:

• A quick burst of energy for survival reasons
• Heightened memory functions
• A burst of increased immunity
• Lower sensitivity to pain
• Helps maintain homeostasis in the body

Unfortunately, nowadays we are exposed to enormous amount of stressors that we experience stressful events on regular basis and our cortisol levels stay constantly elevated above normal level and we are in chronic stress state.

Over the long term, elevated cortisol levels can be as damaging to overall health:

• Increased appetite and food cravings
• Decreased bone density
• Decreased in muscle tissue
• Suppressed thyroid function
• Increased anxiety
• Mood swings (anger and irritability)
• Increased body fat (especially abdominal fat)
• Higher blood pressure
  
• Lowered immunity and inflammatory responses in the body, slowed wound healing, and other health consequences
• Memory and learning impairments
• Develop IBS, colitis and ulcers.
  

Prolonged high levels of cortisol can lead to many serious health problems.(Read How Does Stress Affect Health?)

We have choice.

The easiest choice is to do nothing (like most of people) and let chronic stress and elevated cortisol levels slowly break down our bodily defences and increase your risk for diseases.

The more effective choices are to do something – about either your stress level, the way you handle stress or how your body responds to stressful situations.

Lets face it - stress is here to stay, and its already well known that stress is going to be the number one health/wellness/wellbeing problem for majority of mankind in many years to come.

You simply cant afford to leave it unresolved.

I would like to encourage you to start investing time, efforts and money and learn really effective and long lasting stress management solutions in order to maintain a low-stress lifestyle.

Contact me at info@action4balance.com now to find the best way to take action.

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How Does Stress Affect Health?

Teeth Clenching & Grinding, Migraines, Sleeplessness & More

Scientific evidence has demonstrated a fundamental connection between mental and physical health. In fact, 43 percent of adults suffer adverse health effects from stress, and 75-90 percent of all physician office visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints.

Stress is linked to the six leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide. Perhaps it is simpler to say that stress affects every part of your body, mind and emotions.

Stress can create medical symptoms directly—headaches, palpitations, body pains, fatigue, rashes and high blood pressure, to name a few—and can also make symptoms due to other causes worse.

With stress on the rise for women, tension is taking it's toll on the body! What you may not know is that stress can be released in many unexpected ways!

According to Robert Sapolsky , stress can cause a “staggeringly diverse” range of ailments:

“…from the common cold and lower-back pain to Alzheimer’s disease, major depressive disorder, and heart attack. Stress hollows out our bones and atrophies our muscles. It triggers adult-onset diabetes and is a leading cause of male impotence. In fact, numerous studies of human longevity in developed countries have found that psychosocial factors such as stress are the single most important variable in determining the length of a life. It’s not that genes and risk factors like smoking don’t matter. It’s that our levels of stress matter more.”

Although stress is a normal physical response to the perception of a threat or danger– a protection mechanism. It helps you stay focused, energetic, alert and even save your life in emergency situations.

But your body does not distinguish between your physical and physiological stress! It will react just as strongly to an argument with your boss or spouse, job instabilities, an overloaded schedule, or financial difficulties.

If you are feeling overwhelmed with problems, your body's emergency stress reaction is “on” all the time and can seriously undermine your physical health and emotional well-being.

Chronic stress disrupts nearly every system in the body. Stress weakens the immune system, wreaks havoc on sleep patterns and metabolic function, increases blood pressure and the risk of stroke.

Some of these are common, but did you know that stress can cause other physical symptoms?

Stress speeds up the aging process, causes digestive upheaval, and tension headaches.

Managing stress levels can prevent the unhealthy snowball effect on your body's interconnected systems. For example, if your worried about losing your job and your stress is through-the-roof, this could be causing bruxism. Your bruxism can cause disrupt sleep routines, which in turn can affect your metabolism and emotional health, causing you to gain weight and feel emotionally sensitive or down. It's all related!

Learning to reduce your stress can impact dramatically on how you feel and on the quality of your life. In fact, reducing your stress can mean the difference between feeling fully alive and functioning at your peak, versus feeling ill and functionally compromised.

Your health is your most important asset.  Protect it by investing in your stress management. 

• Learn how stress management coach can help you to manage stress before it manages you, your professional and personal life.

• Contact me at
info@action4balance.com now to find the best way to Take Action and de-stress your life.

• Join my mailing list and learn practical and doable tips how to destress and rebalance your life!

 

Stress Can Make You Fat

STRESS CAN MAKE YOU FAT AND RUIN YOUR OVERALL HEALTH

Chronic stress can cause cravings for cookies, candy, chips and other high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.

The stress-driven appetite for these foods leads to dangerous weight gain, primarily around the waist. 60 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, many due to stress-related food cravings. Over 20 percent of American adults are obese with a stress-related condition known as "metabolic syndrome." This condition is characterized by a beer belly, high blood pressure, poor cholesterol readings and high blood sugar.

According to Dr. Pamela Peeke, a former scientist at the National Institutes of Health and associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, people with an apple-shaped figure are at greater risk for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some types of cancer. "It's not just what you weigh; it's where you weigh it," says Dr. Peeke, author of Fight Fat After Forty .

The women who are high reactors to the stress hormone cortisol, consume more calories and more sweet foods under stress.

Their recent study also demonstrated that greater food consumption occurred in high cortisol reactors when they were in a negative mood.

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