Basics of stress
What is stress?
Stress is the body's response to a real or perceived threat. This response - fast heartbeat, tight muscles, and sweating - is intended to prepare you to react to a situation or to get yourself out of harm's way.
Stress can sometimes be helpful. But too much stress can be harmful to your health and increase your risk for heart disease and stroke.
You could say that there is good and bad stress. It is possible to deal with good stress. It can stimulate you and help you achieve the goals you set for yourself. Good stress won't hurt you.
Bad stress can make you feel like you are no longer in control of yourself. It can make you sweat cold and make your heart beat faster. It can cause a feeling of fear and make you feel sick. Bad stress, which can last for hours, days, weeks, or even longer, can cause a lot of damage. It can adversely affect your health and well-being.
Your perceptions, thoughts, and actions can go a long way in turning bad stress into good stress. By gaining a better understanding of your personality and your reactions to stressful situations, you can learn to cope better.
Heart disease, stroke and stress
There are definite links between heart disease, stroke and stress.
Stress places a greater workload on the heart, and increases blood pressure, as well as cholesterol and glucose levels in the blood. These effects can in turn increase the risk of blood clots forming and transporting in the heart or brain, causing a heart attack or stroke.
Plus, it can be difficult to lead a healthy lifestyle if you're under stress. Instead of being physically active to relieve your stress, you may overeat, eat unhealthy foods, drink too much alcohol, or smoke. These behaviors can in turn increase your risk for heart disease or stroke.
An angry reaction to stress can also make things worse. When you are angry, your pulse and blood pressure increase, putting you at risk for heart disease. People who are prone to anger are also more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors.
Having had a serious health problem - such as a heart attack or stroke, or been diagnosed with a serious illness - can also cause stress. And that stress can slow down the recovery process or even create health problems that weren't there before.
Understanding stress
To manage your stress, you need to be able to recognize the situations in which you experience stress and the effects it has on you. Examine the causes of your stress, your thoughts, how you are feeling and how you are reacting.
What is a stressor?
Situations that cause stress are called stressors. These factors are virtually ubiquitous in our everyday environment.
Stressors can be major events, such as:
the death of a loved one;
a change of job;
moving;
the end of studies;
a loss of employment.
Stressors can be common events, such as:
traffic jams;
pressures at work;
family responsibilities.
Stressors can be ongoing events, such as:
difficulty affording food;
difficulties in finding a job;
difficulty finding affordable housing.
If you can find your stressors, you can begin to learn how to overcome them.
The stress response
Stage 1: Energy mobilization
Your body is reacting to a sudden, frightening stressor like narrowly avoiding a traffic accident by sharply applying the brakes on your vehicle. This is called primary stress.
You can also deliberately put yourself in a stressful situation, especially when going to a job interview. This is called secondary stress.
In either case, you might experience the following symptoms:
your heart rate increases;
your breathing is rapid, panting;
you have a cold sweat;
you have butterflies in your stomach - indigestion or lack of appetite;
you feel dizzy or light-headed.
Stage 2: Energy consumption
If you do not recover from the effects of Stage 1, your body will begin to release its stores of sugars and fats, consuming vital resources. You could thus:
feel pressured;
feeling exhausted;
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