Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand. It can be caused by both good and bad experiences. Too much stress on your mind and body can make you feel miserable, worried, sad and ill. Stress can cause both mental and physical symptoms. Common stress reactions include tension, irritability, inability to concentrate, and a variety of physical symptoms that include headache and a fast heartbeat. However, anything that forces us to adjust can be a stressor. This includes positive events such as getting married or receiving a promotion. The potential causes of stress are numerous. Your stress may be linked to outside factors such as the state of the world, the environment in which you live or work, or your family. Stress affects your body as much as food and exercise. A combination of emotional and physical pressures, it can either help you with challenges and problems or make them many times worse.

Stress can affect both your body and your mind. Stress affects virtually everyone at some time in their life. Stress can be brought about by a traumatic accident, death, or emergency situation. Stress can also be a side effect of a serious illness or disease. Stress triggers changes in our bodies and makes us more likely to get sick. It can also make problems we already have worse. The long term and short term effects of stress on the body manifest itself irrespective of the age groups. When the trigger is repetitive, prolonged or unanticipated, then it becomes pathological. The effects of stress affect not only man, but also animals. Like pain, stress should also be viewed as a warning. One of the more debilitating symptoms of stress is panic attacks, which can be really frightening, and take over your life if you don’t learn how to deal with them.

Causes of Stress

The common causes and risk factor’s of stress:

• Alcohol or drug abuse.
• Caring for a chronically ill family member.
• Lack of social support.
• Family history.
• Perfectionism.
• Threats of physical violence.

Symptoms of stress

Some sign and symptoms related to stress are as follows:

• Shortness of breath.
• Lack of confidence.
• Moods change for no reason.
• Excessive fatigue.
• Tired a lot of the time.
• Disturbed sleep.

Treatment of stress

• The treatment of your stress will vary greatly depending on the types of symptoms you are experiencing and how severe they are.
• Behavioral therapy helps you weaken the connections between troublesome situations and your habitual reactions to them.
• Estrogen therapy can be used to improve urinary frequency, urgency and burning in postmenopausal women, and the tone and blood supply of the urethral sphincter muscles.
• Meditation can help relaxation, and practising yoga or the alexander technique may help to relieve muscle pains and help to control breathing in stressful situations.

Man must know how to live in good terms with himself, how to manage and control and sometimes improve himself. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity. Just being free from disease is not enough. One needs to include emotional, interpersonal, social, intellectual and spiritual well-being. We must take the responsibility on ourselves to keep healthy. To keep well, by being confident, and to the extent possible, being in control of our own little world.

Is there something holding us back from this endeavour and preventing us from being in control of situations? This niggling, nagging demon is Stress, STRESS, and STRESS. While it is very common to blame all ills on stress, do we even realize what exactly stress is? Stress is simply the body’s non-specific response to any demand made on it. Simply put, stress is something that happens in your body whenever you are faced with a situation.

The situation can be anything, from a life threatening illness to merely being late for work, from losing a loved one to a school admission, from uprooting yourself from known surroundings to a quarrel in the family. No two individuals need react to the same stress in the same way, or even regard the same situation as a stressful event.

Stress is not synonymous with nervous tension or anxiety, as is commonly believed. Stress has its good points, and an optimum level provides the means to express talents and energies and pursue happiness. The important thing to remember is that stress is
normal and essential.

In fact, stress is a motivating factor. It is just that continuous and accumulating stress is detrimental to health. Stress is needed to perform. Before we begin to discuss what exactly are the body’s responses to stress, let us start with the attitude that a little bit of tension, a little bit of anxiety, in short, a little bit of stress is a good and essential requisite for our well-being.