Everyone is familiar with stress. In small doses, stress can actually be beneficial to us. Mental responses to stress include anxiety, adaptive stress, and depression. 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. Where stress enhances function it may be considered good stress. However, if stress persists and is of excessive degree, it eventually leads to a need for resolution, which may lead either to anxious or depressive behavior. In small doses, stressors can help give us increased energy and alertness, even helping to keep us focused on the problem at hand. This type of stress is good. People may refer to the experience of this type of stress as feeling “pumped”. Everyone reacts to stress differently. Each of us has a different level of pressure and anxiety that we can handle without a bad outcome. Only you can assess your level of tolerance to stressful situations.

Some stress is normal and even useful. It can help if you need to work hard or react quickly. 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. The best treatment for stress is to prevent getting into situations that are likely to overwhelm your ability to cope. This is not always possible because the stressors may often come from outside sources that are beyond your control. Relaxation techniques such as meditation, physical exercises, listening to soothing music, deep breathing, various natural and alternative methods, personal growth techniques, visualization and massage are some of the most effective of the known non-invasive stress busters.

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.
• 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.
• Practice deep breathing exercises.
• 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.
• Eat a nutritious meal or snack.
• Behavioral therapy helps you weaken the connections between troublesome situations and your habitual reactions to them.