How Can Stress Play a Significant Role in My Life?

Stress in everyday life plays a dual role: it can be what we need to keep our edge physically and mentally, or it can contribute to health problems. Understanding what causes stress and how to manage it effectively contributes to better overall life balance and enjoyment of challenges as they occur.

What Stress Is

• Stress represents strain on a system. Whether stress is referring to an engine or our body, there are maximum levels of capacity that a system can handle. When the system runs at capacity for a prolonged period, the strain develops into exhaustion. Untreated, the strain can eventually lead to serious system breakdown. In health terms, stress represents a basket of possibilities; it can be a physical strain as well as a mental or emotional one.

Types of Stress: Good and Bad

• Stress comes in different forms in life. Active enjoyment of an activity or an exciting event represents "uestress" which contributes to healthy living and vitality. Alternatively, acute stress manifests as a reactionary type of stress, an example being how you respond to a sudden road hazard while driving or an immediate deadline crisis in the office. Acute stress plays a dual role; it can be positive or negative, but the effect goes away soon after the cause has ended. Episodic acute stress is an ongoing series of stress causes that keep a person at a heightened sense of pressure and demand, creating an ongoing sense of exhaustion. Finally, chronic stress stretches out over a long-term period and can produce depression, unhappiness and physical deterioration from wear and tear. Common examples of chronic stress include a marriage going through a divorce process or being in a battlefield as a military unit.

Creation of Physical Stress

• Stress emanates as a primal reaction to harm or perceived immediate risk. The natural inclination to fight or run in the face of challenge comes from a physical reaction to a stress cause. The body and mind reacts to them by releasing hormones to deal with strain. These chemicals, adrenalin and cortisol, fuel heart rate increases, eliminate feelings of hunger and push circulation into the muscle groups to react on demand. After the perceived risk is gone, the body adjusts back to normal levels and the hormone surge goes away. However, in abnormal situations caused by ongoing problems, the body can't relax, causing wear and tear and eventual exhaustion and burnout.

Health Impact

• Short-term good stress improves health over time by building higher levels of resistance to strain, work, pressure and endurance. The body and mind get a chance to recover and rebuild stronger for the next challenge.

  Bad stress results in physical and mental tear-down because a person's health doesn't have a chance to recover fully. Starting small with mental behavior changes such as less patience, lack of humor, more anger and frustration, stress breakdowns eventually migrate to physical problems. Bad practices also begin to occur such as drinking, smoking and overeating, to get quick relief and pleasure.

Proactive Reduction of Stress

• Stress reduction occurs in a number of easy, doable ways. Sleeping more, exercising more and taking vacations or timeouts from busy schedules all drastically improve health quickly and reduce negative stress reactions. The core goal focuses on allowing rest and recovery away from the causes of stress.

  Stress management is the second step. By anticipating what may cause daily stress in the office or at home, steps can be taken to mitigate the issues, thus reducing their sudden pressure effect. This in turn reduces stress and the response becomes more routine. Health is improved as a result because the body no longer has to amp up for extended periods of time.