Stress

"Stress can play a bigger role in the development of heart disease than butter."

                                                                           - Dr. Jesse Hanley


Many of us are stress junkies. If life has not already given us enough stress we create it for ourselves. The reason this occurs is because our subconscious is programmed to stress mode. When things start slowing down and become more peaceful, our subconscious says, "There is something wrong. We are not feeling the need to fight or flight. This is weird and uncomfortable. Let's cause some stress." Much of why this happens is because our childhood environment was stressful. When we become adults we say we no longer want to live this way, but out subconscious keeps sabotaging our efforts to live more peacefully.

We also emulate our parents' ways to handle stress and life challenges. Therefore, many of us do not know any better even when we become adults. What is most likely to occur is that we pick up external habits in order to deal with stress, just like our parents did. It might not be the same poison that your parent chose to handle stress. Your choice could be any of the following.

• Drinking problems, even alcoholish.
• Smoking.
• Drug abuse.
• Overeating
• Busyness
• Over shopping and over spending.
• Excessive TV watching.

Our world has sped up quite a bit. Which only adds more stress. It  worsens as we age. When we get older we have more obligations: Work, bills, children, spouse, caretaking of parents, death of loved ones, etc. Not to mention dealing with our own health issues and problems that occur with age.

The worse news is that stress has been found to be the leading contributor for most illnesses. As though having stress itself was not bad enough.

• Stress creates a domino affect inside the body. Cortisol levels skyrocket, your arteries constrict, your immune system slows down, your heart rate increases, and your blood pressure climbs.
• Stress takes a toll in our bodies and forms diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
• Stress causes skin problems such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, hives, and vitiligo.
• Stress disrupts hormones in women and the results are abnormal periods (either none or excessive, and even menorrhagia), hot flashes, mood swings (basically the syptoms of menopause even before your time), and it is linked abnormal paps.
• Sress may induce a miscarriage.

You can see why it is best for all of us to learn how to manage our stress and use better coping mechanism when life presents us with challenging situations.  I wrote some tips on how to do this in my article titled Stress Management 3/29/12. I am still learning about stress myself. Actually I already know what to do, the challenge is to remember to apply it day by day.  I am a type A personality (which means I need to be in control and doing something). When an illness occurs, I lose all control which only exaberbates the illness itself .  I suppose my lesson in this lifetime is to surrender control to God. It must be, because every time I am going full speed ahead I become ill and my illness does not get better until I stop and let go.

I am also doing research on the subconscious. Mostly to gain the cooperation of the subconscious so that we are no longer okay with stress and therefore not create situations that bring more stress into our lives. I will keep you posted on my findings.