Inescapable stress

VERY OFTEN PEOPLE WORK UNDER PRESSURE AND THIS LEADS TO STRESS While the pressure to perform does enhance one's ability, too much of it can be detrimental to health...

Stress is a nat ural component of the human condition and at times, some level of stress is almost essential in order to survive. After all, at some point in our lives, we have all felt that we work best under pressure. However, over the past few decades, the degree of stress that people perform under has increased owing to urbanisation, globalisation and the rise of the corporate world. Very often, an individual works under "emergency" circumstances on a daily basis and this leads to excess stress, which in turn, leads to mental and physiological illnesses.

Therefore, the need of the hour, especially for people in the corporate world, is to understand what causes stress and learn stress management. STRESS AND ANATOMY Our anatomy has not changed for over a billions years but the thing that has changed, is our lifestyle. In fact, what makes urban stress detrimental is the fact that it is mental stress, as most jobs require no physical activity but tremendous mental activity.
However, the body can only release stress through physical exertion. Therefore, besides a modified life style, indulging in any kind of physical activity is recommended.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS The following are the most common distress symptoms: Physical: Hypertension, coro nary artery disease, backache, arthritis, osteoporosis, headache, allergies, peptic ulcer, diabetes mellitus, irrita ble bowel syndrome, skin dis ease, liver cirrhosis, respirato ry diseases, impotence, insom nia and metabolic syndrome. Psychological: Depression, alien ation, anger, suspi ciousness, irritabili ty, mood swings, lack of self-confi dence, neuroticism.

Behavioural: Increased substance abuse, unsafe behaviour pattern, suicidal tendencies, aggression, restless ness and speech disturbance.
LIFESTYLE AND STRESS We can easily combat the ill effects of stress by modifying our lifestyle. The first thing you can do is to give yourself a "stress audit." The audit will help identify the symptoms of excess stress so that you can then find ways to combat it.

In order to ascertain what kind of changes one needs to make one needs to know what triggers stress. Improper diet pattern.

Lack of sleep. Lack of aerobic activity.

Imbalance between work and personal life.

Excess smoking or alcohol consumption.

THE CURE Proactive lifestyle modifications can help in preventing premature onset of stress related illnesses. Once we have detected what triggers excess stress in our life, we must then work to remove or minimise these factors. The best ways to do this are: Exercise.

Change your diet.

Reprioritise.

Lifestyle modifications help in regressing the progress of any stress related disorder and can serve to be both a complementary and supplementary treatment. treatment.