| “Stress is life. Life is stress,” says Dr. Esther Sternberg, Director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program at the U.S. Government’s National Institute of Mental Health. You can’t avoid stress, but although you might think of it only in negative terms, a little bit of stress can actually add excitement to your life and it’s essential for keeping you motivated. Too much stress, however, leads to distress, and that, according to many health researchers, can have negative effects on your immune system. People in distress also tend to secrete an overabundance of the stress hormone cortisol, with numerous health consequences including heart disease, stroke, obesity, respiratory disease, chronic inflammation, sleep disturbances, migraine and tension headaches, and even accident proneness.
 Distress can also affect your performance at work, at play, or at school. Dr. Elizabeth Droz, Director of Student Counseling at Binghamton University, lists some major causes of distress:
Change – Any change (either positive or negative) that requires adaptation to your daily routine can cause overproduction of the stress hormones that can lead to distress.
Attitudes – Negative, critical, fearful, and/or pessimistic attitudes about yourself or others can cause emotional distress. That can lead to “sickness behavior,” in which the sufferer loses interest in work, daily activities, and social interaction.
Poor Nutrition – An imbalanced diet causes physiological distress, reducing the body’s ability to maintain itself and to resist disease.
Lack of Physical Fitness – Exercise is more than just building muscle. It also tones the vital organs and promotes the flow of stress-fighting brain chemicals.
Other causes of distress include bad relationships, boredom, noise pollution, congested travel and living conditions, and economic pressures. All of these common conditions can wreak havoc on your health and well-being.
How can you help yourself to de-stress instead of distress? Here’s what the experts at the National Institutes of Health recommend:
- Identify the things in your life that cause you stress: relationship problems, conflict at work, a death or illness in the family. Once you know what’s stressing you out, you can begin to figure out ways to change your environment and manage your stressors.
- Take control of stressful situations. If there’s a problem that can be solved, it is better to solve it now than to let it become a chronic and distressing annoyance.
- Manage those chronic stressors that you can’t control. Support groups, relaxation, meditation, and exercise are all tools you can use to manage your stress. If nothing you do seems to work for you, seek a health professional who can help. Also seek professional help if you find that you worry excessively about the small things in life.
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June 28th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Well, let’s see, I think I have every stress causing situation going on except boredom! LOL. No wonder I’m going bonkers!
So today I am taking a me day and relaxing!!!
I find it helpful to sit down and make a list of my priorities - sometimes you say “this is important but THAT is not so it’s going to the bottom of the list and I’m not worrying about it”
I also find that doing something I love - hobby or work - takes my mind off stressful thoughts!