Health News. Lots of resources and information

Stress is something that we generate inside ourselves in response to ‘stressors’. Stressors can be major events such as crumbling relationships, a dead-end job or delinquent children – but they can also be simply the accumulating daily hassles of constant deadlines and snatched meals. In other words, they can be anything that leads to stress.In fact not all stressors are nasty. Winning the lottery, or going on holiday can trigger as much of a stress response as having your handbag snatched on the way to work.Intense emotion such as excitement, anxiety, frustration and anger is the trigger for the body’s stress reaction.In primitive times the stress response was a vital part of our defence against danger such as being chased by wild animals. The stress response makes us ready for immediate physical action whether running as fast as we can to escape or stopping to fight. This is known as ‘the fight or flight response’.The body responds to a stressor in several ways:• adrenalin and glucose flood into the body• breathing becomes shallow and fast to take in more oxygen• muscles contract ready for use• blood pressure increases• the heart beats fosterStress can feel good. Adrenalin can give you a buzz and almost make you feel ‘high’. This is fine when you are racing to meet a deadline, for example, and you need that extra burst of energy to rise to the challenge.But stress becomes bad when the chemicals released during the stress reaction stay in the body. In prehistoric times the stress reaction would always have been followed by a burst of physical activity which would have broken down the chemicals allowing the body to relax afterwards.In modem times it appears that often the chemicals produced by the stress reaction are not broken down before we meet another stressor which starts the whole process again. This means our bodies never return to normal and we are in a permanent state of stress.For many of us the image of a stressed-out individual is a middle-aged company executive who works all hours, eats too many heavy business lunches, smokes like a chimney and is well on his way to his first coronary. But women are not immune to stress.In bet the dual pressures of home and work are purring women under extraordinary levels of stress. A recent survey of 20,000 British men and women found that 42 per cent of the women reported being under stress compared with 30 per cent of the men. Women today, it seems, may be more stressed than men.In the UK women now make up more than half the workforce but are still responsible for 80 per cent of the country’s housework, in addition to taking most of the burden of caring for children. And ifs not just working women who are under stress,Studies of stay-at-home mothers have consistently found that they are more depressed and have lower self-esteem than their working counterparts.*33\120\4*