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Friday, July 04, 2008

Kill Stress or It Might Kill You

I feel like I’ve had this conversation with more people than I can count. I’ve warned my family members and my friends, and now my readers. Stress seems to be everywhere and when it really digs in and grabs a hold of your body, it can cause a huge array of problems in how you feel and act.

Let’s take a look at just a few health problems that have been directly linked to stress by a wide array of recent studies:

• Heart Disease
• Back Pain
• Diabetes
• High Blood Pressure
• Headaches
• Tooth Grinding
• Digestive Issues
• Skin Problems
• Depression
• Weight loss and gain
• Sleep Loss
• Confusion and Irritability

Dealing with stress is one of the single most important things I tell people they can do to combat essentially any common discomfort or ailment, even if it is caused by something medical. Your body just doesn’t operate as well when you are stressed and that means you are more susceptible to not only these problems, but almost any additional disease or illness you may encounter. If you don’t learn to handle stress early in life, that stress might just shorten your life.

Stress Management that Works

What can you do to manage the stress in your life in a more effective, consistent way? There are a number of possible actions you can take to ensure you not only handle stress as it comes in, but that you minimize stress before it becomes an issue.

Eat Better – Eating better is an essential step in making sure you body is ready to handle stress when it comes up. If you are alert, healthy, and in good shape, your body will better be able to ward off negative effects of stress and to maintain its immune functions.

Time for Yourself and Family – Many people spend too much time focusing intently on their work or their finances and forget to take the necessary time for themselves and their family. It is vital that you take an hour or two each night reading, talking, or simply relaxing alone or with loved ones to balance out the effects of an otherwise stressful life.

Get out for a while.  If you’re behind a computer screen all day, take a break and go outside.  Sun will do wonders for your health, and this also gives you time to relax your eyes which have most likely been focused on your monitor the whole day.

Prioritizing – Make sure you balance out your schedule and your life to a degree that you can maintain your responsibilities and your personal time in turn. If you make sure that everything has its place and time, you will experience less stress from conflicting schedules. In turn, make sure that when something comes up that interrupts your schedule and throws off your plans, you handle it gracefully and do not let it overwhelm you. This can best be done by ensuring you have a little extra time in that schedule for unexpected events to come up.

Relaxation, effective scheduling, and loved ones are all important steps to ensuring that your life remains as stress free as possible. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is vital to preparing your body to handle any stress that does arise and together you can manage stress as it comes. You will experience stress – that cannot be avoided, but how you prepare for and handle it will ultimately decide how healthy you remain as a result.

I have two dogs that melt my stress away.  No matter how bad my day may be going, they have a way of cheering me up.  Find your own stress relievers and you’ll live a longer and healthier life because of it.


Caroline Cardenas
Caroline Cardenas Signature

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