Stress and Its Effects on Your Body

- By: Bertil Hjert, 2008-04-30

Stress can be defined as a nature’s way of letting you know that your mind and body have had enough. In case of stress, forces present in the outside world affect the individual in an adverse manner. People tend to respond to stress in many ways.

These responses in turn, affect both the individual and the environment in different ways. This is the reason that all living being constantly interchange with their surroundings in terms of behavior as well as physically.

There are major differences in the way a living creature relate to the environment. These differences play an important role in the survival of an individual.

A lot of stress experienced in daily life can make one think negatively or take stress as a negative experience. However, experts feel that biologically stress can be either of the below:

• Negative experience

• Positive experience

• Neutral experience

Generally, stress is associated to internal as well as external factors. The internal factors include your body’s capacity to respond to stress producing factors, your body’s ability to deal with external factors that induce stress.

The external factors include the following:

• The physical environment

• Your job

• Your relationship with people around you

• Your home

• Challenges

• Difficulties

• Expectations

• Obstructions

The internal factors tend to put an impact to your ability to handle stress. The nutrition that you get, your health, level of fitness, emotional state, and amount of sleep and rest you get are responsible for your ability to handle stress.

Stress has known to result in evolutionary change. Experts feel that the species that tend to adapt the best to major causes of stress survived. These evolved in to the planet and different animal kingdoms we get to see around us.

The human being is considered to be the most adaptive creature existing on this planet. This is because the evolution of human brain and the important part known as the neo-cortex existed. This adaptability is contributed by the transformation and stressors that one has suffered and mastered.

- Stress and Its Function

As soon as we come across something that upsets us in a certain manner that scares, makes angry, nervous, sad or pissed-off, a portion of your brain just out stress hormones inside the body. These hormones bring about certain changes in your body. You can feel your heart beating faster, palms sweat and give your knots in your stomach.

There are several bad effects of stress on your body. You can suffer from bad health. Too much stress can make you feel lousy and induce negativity. You will feel unhappy about everything that happens around you.

The stress hormones in your body will make you feel upset. Stress can also result in mental and a lot of physical strain. You may also suffer from headaches, irritability, tensions and in severe cases, heart palpitations.

You should take special care to keep yourself away from stress as far as possible. Take counseling sessions to come out of stress creating situations.

For more Articles, News, Information, Advice, and Resources about STRESS please visit STRESS TIPS and FREE FROM STRESS and MEDITATION ADVICE

how to manage stress: a step by step approach

- By: Anthony Galz, 2008-03-01

Everyone needs to have some knowledge on how to manage stress. After all, we each have our life moments when stress becomes to hard to deal with. When this happens our bodies could suffer from health problems. You can follow some good techniques to deal with stress. There is however, a need to look into some concrete steps that are necessary for the effective application of stress reduction techniques.

Step 1: Find Out Why You are Stressed

The first thing you have to do is to find out the exact cause of your stress. It is common for some of us to immediately conclude that work responsibilities are the ultimate reason behind stress. This is not always the case. Staying at home to manage a household can be stressful too. The same can be said about personal or professional relationships. Once you know which of your life factors is stressing you out the most, you can find ways and means to deal with it.

Step 2: Move Away or Deal with It

You would have found the answer to how to manage stress if you find out whether to fight or fly. This means that after finding out the cause of stress, you need to determine if it is something you can confront or abandon. Naturally, many stress reduction techniques work on the fight or confrontation principle. This only makes sense because it wouldn’t be good if you had to run away from every issue you encounter. You should remember however that certain aspects that are beyond saving should really be abandoned. This includes toxic relationships that don’t work no matter how hard you try to salvage them.

Many stressful factors however cannot be abandoned at all. Examples of these are family problems and work responsibilities. You would have to deal with these situations using some stress reduction techniques. You may consider going on regular vacation trips to put a break on stressful moments. You may also consider enrolling for stress reduction classes that may teach you yoga, hypnosis, simple deep breathing, imagery techniques and progressive muscle relaxation.

Step 3: Practice Daily Habits

Scheduling relaxing events and activities are a good idea. Often though, you need to learn to manage stress on a daily basis. Dealing well with stress everyday is what you need to ensure that you do not suffer from stress related health problems like heart disease, infections and depression.

One example of a good daily habit that you shouldn’t miss is eating healthy food. Add regular exercise and good nights’ sleep to the formula and you have a guaranteed stress buster. These good habits will ensure that you have sufficient nutrients in your body and that you are sufficiently rested. Another good habit is to put breaks in between your daily tasks. Take brief time outs to have a refreshing health drink or meal. Sometimes, talking to someone during break time can also make a difference.

There is really no mystery behind how to manage stress. Sometimes all you really need is a basic and common sense approach.

Take control of your life. Discover ways on how to manage stress and information on how does stress affect health.

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