Stress is a feeling of strain and pressure. Small amounts of stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress helps improve athletic performance. It also plays a factor in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, however, may lead to bodily harm. Stress can increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, ulcers, and mental disorders such as depression.
Stress can be external and related to the environment, but may also be created by internal perceptions that cause an individual to experienceanxiety or other negative emotions surrounding a situation, such as pressure, discomfort, etc., which they then deem stressful.
When we think the demands being placed on us exceed our ability to cope, we then perceive stress.
A stressor is any event, experience, or environmental stimulus that causes stress in an individual. These events or experiences are seen as threats or challenges to the individual and can be either physical or psychological. Researchers have found that stressors can make individuals more prone to both physical and mental problems, including heart disease and anxiety.
Stressors are more likely to affect an individual’s health when they are “chronic, highly disruptive, or perceived as uncontrollable”. In psychology, researchers generally classify the different types of stressors into four categories:
- crises/catastrophes. (Riots, Cyclne, Erathquake. Chnge to dicttaorship etc.)
- Significant life events, (Loss of job, death of a close realtion, Finnacial loss, etc.)
- Daily hassles/microstressors, and
- Ambient stressors.
The strategies to improve stress management include
Support systems – to listen, offer advice, and help each other
- Time management – develop an organizational system
- Guided imagery and visualization – create a relaxing state of mind
- Progressive muscle relaxation – loosen tense muscle groups
- Assertiveness training – work on effective communication
- Journal writing – express real emotion, self-reflection
- Stress management in the workplace – organizes a new system, switch tasks to reduce own stress.
- Meditation and Yoga
- Heart disease. Researchers have long suspected that the stressed-out, type A personality has a higher risk of high blood pressure and heart problems. …
Studies have found many health problems related to stress. Stress seems to worsen or increase the risk of conditions like obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma.
Before you get too stressed out about being stressed out, there is some good news. Following some simple stress, relief tips could both lower your stress and lower your health risks.
to successfully manage life’s unavoidable stresses — as much as they can.
- Asthma. Stress can worsen asthma. Some evidence suggests that a parent’s chronic stress might even increase the risk of developing asthma in their children. One study looked at how parental pressure affected the asthma rates of young children who were also exposed to air pollution or whose mothers smoked during pregnancy. The kids with stressed out parents had a substantially higher risk of developing asthma.
- Obesity. Excess fat in the belly seems to pose greater health risks than fat on the legs or hips — and unfortunately, that’s just where people with high stress appear to store it. “Stress causes higher levels of the hormone cortisol,” says Winner, “and that appears to increase the amount of fat that’s deposited in the abdomen.”
- Diabetes. Stress can worsen diabetes in two ways. First, it increases the likelihood of dangerous behaviors, such as unhealthy eating and excessive drinking. Second, pressure seems to raise the glucose levelsof people with type 2 diabetes directly.
- Headaches. Stress is considered one of the most common triggers for headaches — not just tension headaches, but migraines as well.
- Depression and Anxiety. It’s probably no surprise that chronic stress is connected with higher rates of depression and anxiety. One survey of recent studies found that people who had stress related to their jobs — like demanding work with few rewards — had an 80% higher risk of developing depression within a few years than people with lower stress.
- Gastrointestinal problems. Here’s one thing that stress doesn’t do — it doesn’t cause ulcers. However, it can make them worse.
- Alzheimer’s disease. One animal study found that stress might worsen Alzheimer’s disease, causing its brain lesions to form more quickly. Some researchers speculate that reducing stress has the potential to slow down the progression of the disease.
- Accelerated aging. There’s actually evidence that stress can affect how you age. One study compared the DNA of mothers who were under high pressure — they were caring for a chronically ill child — with women who were not. Researchers found that a particular region of the chromosomes showed the effects of accelerated aging. Stress seemed to accelerate aging about 9 to 17 additional years.
- Premature death. A study looked at the health effects of stress by studying elderly caregivers looking after their spouses — people who are naturally under a great deal of stress. It found that caregivers had a 63% higher rate of death than people their age who were not caregivers.
