What is stress? What can you consider stress? How are we affected by it? Are there severities to it? Can it affect our health? Can we manage it? These are a few of the large number of questions we have about the topic. For us to be able to manage stress, we need to know how it works. The solution cannot be obtained if the problem is not known.
So in starting, stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. When you sense danger, your bodys defenses kick in to high gear in a rapid automatic response called the fight-or-flight reaction. While this reaction can be helpful in a lot of ways, too much of it will cause breakdown in health, mood, work, relationships and the overall quality of life.
Since our body cannot distinguish between the physical and psychological threats around us it can be easy for us to get stressed because of a busy schedule, an argument, a traffic jam, a mountain of bills, etc. For some of the occasion this can be helpful since we will be able to work faster, harder and concentrate more, the problem is when it turns into what we call chronic stress. Chronic stress is the long term exposure to events and situations where the bodys fight-or-flight mechanism is taken into overdrive.
Chronic stress causes serious health problems. It causes blood pressure to rise, lowers immunity, increases the risk of heart diseases, contributes to infertility, and speeds up aging. Chronic stress has also been strongly linked with anxiety and depression.
Once the toll of stress has reached very high levels it can be observed in its physical, emotional, behavioral and cognitive symptoms which include; memory problems, inability to concentrate, poor judgment, moodiness, irritability, agitation, feeling of getting overwhelmed, depression, difficulty in sleeping, eating either too little or too much, isolation, chest pains, nausea and a lot more. Which can also be factors for other disorders; its important that when you start to experience any of these symptoms collectively, you should visit your doctor in order to get professional opinion and advice.
Stress has many negative effects. But with the right attitude and a few stress-management techniques, we can handle stress. Stress is often unavoidable. It is up to us as to how high our stress levels can get. By knowing how stress works, it is easier for us to face it head on and not let it go out of control.
