From Your Health Journal…..”A great article on a local ABC affiliate web site via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette entitled Stress takes toll on physical health. I always try to promote many articles I find online from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as they have so many quality articles. So, please visit their site for the full article (link provided below). Stress affects many of us in so many ways, but it is a contributor to heart disease. Stress can cause atherosclerosis, a disease which produces coronary artery disease, stroke, and peripheral artery disease. Stress is also responsible for many of us having a heart attack. Stress has a negative impact on one’s blood pressure as well. As the article also suggests, stress causes cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cognitive and memory problems, and mental disorders including depression. Stress is part of our daily lives, as it helps us be consciousness and diligent, so a little stress is not a bad thing. Please visit the link below to view the complete article.”

From the article…..

Alarms sound and firefighters jump into fire trucks in a flash. Soldiers struggle to survive war. A mother grows exhausted caring for her children.

People live wholly different lives, but there’s one thing they share: Life is full of stress.

Expected and unexpected daily challenges on the job, at home or out and about expose people to a constant barrage of forces that threaten their normal equilibrium.

What people don’t fully realize is the toll that stress takes on our physical health.

Uncontrolled stress causes cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cognitive and memory problems, and mental disorders including depression — a biological rather than mental disorder caused by such a continuous cascade of stress hormones that the person can be disabled by it. In addition, an inability to cope with life’s pressures can lead to behaviors — such as smoking, overeating and alcohol abuse — that compound the negative health effects.

Much as the antelope sprinting from a charging lion, people experience a fight-or-flight response when confronted with a threat or confrontation, even if it poses no threat to their lives. Early ancestors responded efficiently to stress by running faster or fighting harder to survive the dangers of the day. Those who didn’t got eaten.

“We are the progeny of those who could escape danger,” said Bruce S. Rabin, the noted University of Pittsburgh stress expert who successfully developed a stress management program more than 10 years ago.

Now we find ourselves unable to turn off the stress response.

However, Rabin points out that people actually can do this. His program promotes tested, efficient and free methods to control stress, based on the word and acronym RELAX — Reflection, Expectations, Laughter, Acquaintances and eXercise. Managing stress requires mindfulness, optimism, humor, friends and family, and exercise.

Stress is a normal part of life that occurs when the brain perceives a troubling situation that it cannot cope with. It becomes a problem when a person cannot turn off the brain’s reaction to stress.

Stress signals from the cerebral cortex convince the body and rest of the brain that controls routine body functions to react as though a life-or-death situation were occurring.

To read the full article…..Click here