Stress in your body?
Guess who put it there?
There is STRESS in your body-well, let us clarify: We LET stress in, and it can affect overall health, but it doesn't have to. Where does stress live in your body?
Stress in Your Body
Stress is a common word in our vocabulary. How much do you know about stress and what happens to your body? It isn't complicated, and small changes can make big differences. Let's get a bit clear about stress and the body.
Fact:
Stress can be positive or negative
Have you ever felt so delighted that you almost jumped right out of your shoes? Your heart raced, your palms sweat and you weren't exactly focused on what was going on around you. These are the same results of negative stress.
There are differences in how our bodies respond, but even great things can be stressful to our bodies. How about childbirth? What a glorious event, but it sure is tough on a woman's body and how about that lack of sleep? Need I say more?
Don't worry- I won't suggest you get rid of the great times, I'm just trying to bring the topic of stress to light.
Stress in Your Body
Fact:
We can have high and low levels of stress
Not all stress is created equally. We are all familiar with the daily, annoying type stresses like traffic, pet peaves, bad hair days, mandatory overtime and so much more. I'm sure you can think of more. Big time stress might be divorce, major ongoing fights with your spouse or other person you love, loss of a job, serious illness and so on.
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about the kinds of stress since most of us are quite the experts on stress.
Stress in Your Body
Fact:
Your thoughts can cause you serious harm.
Hey, this is true. Your thoughts can be a great cause of stress for you EVEN if nothing is going on around you.
Consider this, when you have an argument with someone, the effect of stress can linger for hours, even days. This is
because even when the conflict is over, we tend to go over it in our minds-over and over and over. Many of us do this-some for longer and some for shorter times. You know who you are! A key thing to remember is that our body cannot distinquish between reality and thought.
Try this: imagine a loud, dynamic verbal battle with someone who really irritates you. They come back at you and you go at them. Got the picture? How are you feeling right now?
Did your heart race? This is an impact of stress in your body. The imagination is very, very powerful. This is why creative visualization and imagery can be such powerful healing tools.
Take a look at the STRESS AND EMOTIONS. Our
thoughts and emotions have a powerful impact on our health.
Stress in Your Body
Fact:
Stress can be a good thing.
Although this seems a bit nutty, it is true. The heightened awareness that happens when we're stressed prepares our body and mind to either get up and run away or to stand up and fight. Of course, longterm stress eventually dulls Our sense of fight or flight and wears us down. This response is meant to be short term and intermittent for us-not constant. Many of us have nearly constant stess, and even when the stessor is gone-we think about it all the time. So, it never really goes away. This is when 'good' stress goes 'bad.' I heard of a very beautiful story about stress and recognizing the damage to ourselves and our family. Keep reading...
Stress in Your Body
Fact:
Stress can kill
Yep, that's right. Stress-especially the long, drawn out kind of dull roar stress causes serious physical damage.
Our response to stress depletes our immune system so that it can't protect us like we need. Stress can lead to abnormal heart beats and even cause deadly heart problems.
How does this happen? When you perceive stress in your body, the body responds by flooding the blood with chemicals.
When we have too much of these chemicals (stress hormones) produced by the brain, they travel around through our
blood and impact just about every single part of your body.
For instance, we feel stressed and then we lose sleep, which leads us to make some bad judgements (say eat too much junk food) and then our poor body doesn't even have decent fuel to work properly.
These stress hormones work to prepare your body for real stress-that fight or flight response-one response of stress in your body. However, they also work on various parts of the brain and everything is impacted from mood, pain tolerance, fear, appetite, memory and judgement. They also bombard the immune system (our body's protection). Our immune system needs to be strong if we expect it to keep us safe and healthy.
Little bits, and short periods of stress are okay, but when our bodies are flooded continually or often with the stress hormones, anxiety, depression, fatigue, chronic and serious illnesses, and premature aging happen. This is one of the negative aspects of stress in your body.
Guess what? Just when you think things couldn't sound worse, there is more. When we are stressed and not focused clearly, we tend to get into more accidents-both minor and serious. But don't stress over this! You have more control over this than you know.
Stress-Busters can help you out and even save your life!
Stress in Your Body is one part of the stress-story.
What are the other chapters about?
Stress in Your Body
THE WORRY TREE
A TREE FOR ALL SEASONS
I heard a lovely little story about stress and family. I'll do my best to do it justice. The morale of the story will be correct, though.
Here goes...
A woman had car problems and she took it to the mechanic. The mechanic worked on it all day and finally got it fixed. He looked so tired and had some tool problems and she noticed stacks of bills on the counter. They both left at the same time, and only his truck wasn't starting. She offered him a ride home, and he agreed. He sat in silence the entire ride to his home. He invited her in to meet his family, and she followed him to the front door. She noticed that he rubbed some of the leaves of a tree near his front door with his hands before going in. Upon entering his home, this quiet, tall man became a glowing, smiling, crawl on the floor with his kids man. He hugged his wife and was obviously happy to be home. He seemed like a different guy. He offered to walk her to her car when she left, and she thanked him for a lovely evening. She just had to ask, though.
Why did he rub the leaves of that tree before he went in?
His answer was quite clear, "That is my worry tree. Before I enter my home, I hang my worries on the tree so that I don't take them in. My family needs me 100%. I leave them there for God to take of for me. The wonderous thing is that when I come out in the morning, not nearly as many of those worries are waiting for me."
Clearly, we could all use a worry tree at our front door!
Stress in Your Body?
Need a Worry Tree of Your Own?
Stress in Your Body
Stem cells and why you want to protect yours!
Stem cells are remarkable cells in our bodies that have the remarkable ability to develop into many different kinds of cells such as blood cell, muscle cell or even brain cell. As our cells naturally die off or are damaged by stress hormones, the stem cells are there to replace them. Sounds great, right? But what if the stem cells can't keep up?
This is what happens when our chromosomes become damaged too fast. Let's see how those chromosomes get worn down so
that we can see how to keep them healthier.
A brief look at Genes and your Health
You've probably heard alot about genes and how your family's history can become your reality. We know that certain diseases seem to run in families and some tend to be carried in the genes. Before you get worked up about the negative sides of your family history, keep in mind that studies on identical twins have shown us that longevity (which you may not have if you've got serious chronic or fatal illnesses!) seem to be based about 1/4 on your genetics and 3/4 on your lifestyle choices and behaviors. See? You do have control over your health!
Controlling Your Genetics
It is possible to rebuild your damaged chromosomes. This is important so that we can lighten the load of our little
stem cells that work so hard to keep our cells healthy and young. (Remember, stress hormones break the cells down and then stem cells come in and replace them.)
The tips of our chromosomes are called telomeres.
In his book, You Staying Young, Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz describe these telomeres to those little plastic tips of shoelaces. When the cells reproduce, the little telomere get worn down and get smaller and when the telomere is gone, your DNA begins to fray. When this happens, the cells stop diving and growing. This smart little cell realizes that it isn't any good to you anymore and commits cell suicide, also known as apoptosis. This apoptosis can contribute to age-related conditions and diseases. This is kind of sad, isn't it?
The good news here is that there is a protein called telomerase that helps out those telomeres and keeps the end of those chromones healthy and strong. More good news: Research has shown that if you can become more stress resistant or reduce the impact of stress on your body and mind, you can improve your chance of rebuilding the telomeres and keep the cells alive alive longer. This, in turn, helps out those little stem cells.
Stress in Your Body
The message here is that if you can resist the effects of stress through prayer, meditation, exercise, yoga, healthy eating, sleep and rest and happiness, you can keep your cells healthy longer. This way, your stem cells can keep up with the natural death of cells (which is normal, by the way) and keep you strong and healthy. I've devoted a page with a bit more about stress busting techniques.
Stress in Your Body
How does Stress affect overall health?
According to the National Institute of Stress, up to 90% of all health problems are related to stress. In other words, our response to stress in our lives is causing about 90% of our health problems.
Stress in the Body: How else does stress affect health?
As if 90% of our health problems being the result of stress isn't enough of an eye opener, consider this: your health problems are also made worse by your response to stress. It is a vicious cycle that has a bad ending. You can make a change, though, and stop that negative spin. It is not too late to start working some STRESS BUSTERS into your life today.
Stress in Your Body
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Stress in Your Body
Some Common Problems Related to Stress
HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
Persistent high blood pressure (possibly the result of stress in your body) is one of the risk factors and can lead to strokes, heart attacks, heart failure and is a leading cause of chronic renal failure. Renal failure can lead to dialysis. The bad news is that these health problems lead to other health problems kind of like building blocks-only not in a fun way. Even moderate elevation of blood pressure can lead to a shorter life expectancy. At severely high pressures a person can expect to live no more than a few years unless appropriately treated. I see people with the moderate and severe levels quite often.
Guess what one of the biggest obstacles is?
If you guessed that people do not get their blood pressure checked regularly, then you were right!
If you do not know that you have the problem, then you set yourself up for more problems.
People do not get it checked because they feel 'okay.'
Can you feel okay and have high blood pressure?
YES!!!! In fact, our body becomes accustomed to the higher pressure, since it usually creeps up, and we don't know it is even high. This is why high blood pressure is called the Silent Killer.
High blood pressure is present when a person's systolic blood pressure (the top number) is consistently 140 mmHg or greater, and/or their diastolic blood pressure (bottom number) is consistently 90 mmHg or greater. In 2003, the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure has defined blood pressure 120/80 mmHg to 139/89 mmHg as "prehypertension." If you have diabetes or kidney disease, if your blood pressure is 130/80 mmHg, it should be treated. Your kidneys will thank you.
Already have high blood pressure?
Start working some stress busters into your lifestyle TODAY.
You can start small with a practice that seems to intrigue you, and then keep going. You can make some big changes to help yourself and maybe even prevent further damage.
Follow the advice of your health care provider! Many people don't take their medications for various reasons-maybe they don't want to admit that they have a problem; the pills are an added expense; they conveniently forget; they don't like some of the side effects; they don't like the feeling of having a normal blood pressure (because it is a big difference and you do need to get used to it); they just don't realize how serious the problem is.
Be sure you put yourself first, and get the treatment needed.
Okay, I wanted to talk about high blood pressure, because there is such an 'epidemic' of this condition and it impacts our society in huge ways. But, there are other conditions that are considered stress related. Remember, stress can cause problems and can make them worse. Don't wait to develop some terrible condition before you integrate some stress busting techniques.
HEART DISEASE
CHRONIC FATIGUE
ANXIETY ATTACKS
MOOD SWINGS
DEPRESSION
SLEEP PROBLEMS
EATING DISORDERS
GASTRO-INTESTINAL DISEASE
CHRONIC PAIN
COLDS/FLU/VIRUSES
HEAD-ACHES-INCLUDING TENSION AND MIGRAINE
PREMATURE AGING
BREATHING PROBLEMS
DIABETES
SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE DYSFUNCTION
MEMORY, CONCENTRATION AND LEARNING PROBLEMS
ALLERGIES
SKIN DISORDERS
HAIR LOSS
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Stress in Your Body
Don’t wait for that serious illness to wake you up when it is so simple to start taking care of yourself or a loved one today! Begin to live an optimal holistic lifestyle today!
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