How are you Coping with Stress?

A lot of people think and talk about stress as a bad thing.

This is not necessarily true.

Stress is actually your body’s natural response to dealing with difficult conditions and to galvanize you into action.Your body’s ‘fight or flight’ mode, is what kicks start things and your body’s stress response to what ever it is that is a threat to you. This is natural. However, what is not natural, is for this stress reflex to keep going, for an extended period of time.

I like to reduce stress by exercising! 

Looking deeper at the fight or flight response, it is a mechanism that is as simple as either to stay and fight or run away. Now both these reactions involve the release of chemicals and hormones in the body, to heighten awareness and give us a instant boost of energy & strength.

For short term stress situations, this chemical response is fine and causes no health problems for a fit human body. However most of today’s modern problems, situations and issues are not short term and can carry on for weeks or even months at a time. This is when the chemicals released due to prolonged stress, start to become toxic to the body. This can cause a long list of health problems associated with stress.

There’s more bad news, if you are living a life, where you’re constantly stressed. In one clinical trial in rats, the relationship between levels of stress hormones in the brains of mice and their memories were studied. It was shown that the rats that were stressed could not remember as well.

The highly stressed mice had higher quantities of proteins called beta-amyloids, and these are very similar to the structures found in human patients with Alzheimer’s Disease.

High levels of these amyloids are thought to cause brain synapses to malfunction and accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s disease. And although we can’t say for sure, that chronic stress causes Alzheimer’s, I think it is scary enough that these beta-amyloids form in the brain. Surely living a stress free life also mean you will live longer, and be yourself for longer too.

Here are some warning signs and symptoms that you are too heavily stressed and you need to take a break before it is too late. Look at the list, if you are suffering from quiet a number of things listed here, then chances are you are probably suffering from excessive stress levels. You should take action to reduce stress asap.

Symptoms:

Lack of interest in anything other than work
Waking up tired even though you just slept 10 hours
Excessive and continuing irritability with other people
Substance Abuse
Not being able to make decisions, large or small.
Unable to concentrate
Increased and suppressed anger
Loss of sense of humor
Obesity and Over-eating
Increased or excessive drinking of alcohol
Loss of appetite or anorexia
Increased frequency of smoking
Increased coffee consumption
Paranoia
Not being able to cope with life & feeling out of control
Jumping from one job to another without finishing things
Excessive show of emotions & crying at small irritations
Decreased sex drive / libido
Nail biting

Next, we look at ways to de-stress. Stay tuned…