Healthy Living

Recognizing Stress

Stress is a normal part of life, but it can become a serious health problem if a person experiences too much of it over a long period of time. In fact many serious, life threatening illnesses and diseases are caused, or made worse by too much stress. When you are stressed, your body responds as though you are in danger. This “fight-or-flight” response gives you a burst of energy by releasing hormones in the body that cause your heart rate and breathing to speed up. This response can make a person feel very uncomfortable, edgy and nervous. Feelings of stress can happen for many different reasons and in all kinds of situations. It is important to know how stress affects your health, what your stress level is, and what situations cause you to feel the most stress.

Effects of Stress

The main result of stress on the body is poor health. Health problems related to stress include:

• Digestive upsets or ulcers.
• Frequent colds, or muscle aches (lowered immunity).
• Migraine headaches.
• Lower sex drive.
• Restlessness, tiredness and difficulty sleeping.
• Depression and anxiety.
• Obesity.
• High blood pressure and high cholesterol leading to heart disease or type 2 diabetes.
  
  

Figuring Out Stress Levels

Sometimes our biggest stressors are clear to us, but many times they’re not. You can count on feeling stressed during major life changes such as losing a loved one, getting married, or having a baby. Other times though, stressors and your stress level may not be so clear.

Types of Stressors

Many different situations in life can cause people to feel stressed. Generally though, it is common for people to feel stressed when they have more things going on in their lives than they feel they can handle. For example, if you are raising a child on your own without a lot of help and support you probably have far more daily responsibilities to deal with than is comfortable for you and probably feel stressed much of the time.

Being in this position can make normal things in life, such as working, going to school, changing jobs, cooking healthy dinners, and being stuck in traffic, much more stressful and difficult to handle than they already are. All these situations, and many more, are called stressors if they cause you to feel stressed.

It’s important to identify what things cause you the most stress so that you can learn how to lower the amount of stress in your life and deal with it in a healthy way. This means figuring out what things matter to you most (your health and the health of your child) and what things matter the least (whether the house stays messy for a few days). Figuring these things out will help you to concentrate on the things that are most important to you and let go of things that aren’t that important.