As we get older, our body begins to show signs of wear and tear. Aches and pains become common. Health problems begin to crop up one by one. Most of our health problems come from two sources:
Continue reading Stress Relief: Manage Stress by Managing Physical Health
There are several meanings to this phrase. The basic meaning is that instead of speaking out his feelings, one is acting them out. In its grossest form it means that a person is showing his emotions in the form of an overt action or behavior. One might slam the door, throw a book, crash a car, break a window, put a hole through a wall, spit on face, and what not to show his anger. Acting-out is an immature way of expressing one’s painful emotion. Children mostly act out. Adults are supposed to speak-out.
Many women of child bearing age suffer from what is called premenstrual syndrome. A few days before their menstruation they develop a variety of symptoms such as irritability, hostility, depression, mood swings anxiety, tension, agitation and many more. Immediately after the menstruation, these symptoms disappear or ease up. These women go on a fruitless search for a hormonal cure for their problem. The medications that have been found to be most helpful are certain antidepressant medications clearly indicating that chemical changes in the brain have something to do with their symptoms.
Continue reading Stress Relief: What happens in Premenstrual Tension Syndrome (P. M. S)?
Managing emotional health:
This entire Catogory is about managing painful emotions. To avoid repetition, I will give here only the bare essentials; Raise your awareness about your inner emotions; learn to express them appropriately; never let yourself be trapped in a life problem; learn to cancel-out emotions on a daily basis. By managing one’s emotions well, one could effectively avoid all stress related disorders we read about before. Besides good emotional health is essential for us to enjoy life to the fullest extent.
Continue reading Stress Relief: Manage Stress by Managing Emotional Health and Managing Money
We will consider a little background information to give some rigour to the term we have been using—stress. Living organisms have regular patterns and routines that involve obtaining food breeding, migrating, molting, and hibernating. The acquisition, utilization, and storage of energy reserves (and other resources) are critical to lifetime reproductive success. There are also responses to predictable changes, e.g., seasonal, and unpredictable challenges like storms and natural disasters.
Open the papers, watch the news on TV or read any general interest magazine and you will find some discussion on the ‘tensions’ or ‘stress’ that we face in this fast-paced computer age. Pseudo-science masquerading as solid scientific research is used to sell merchandise to relieve stress. From yogurt’ to ‘yoga’ all are touted as magic remedies to rid the body of toxins generated due to stress. The only thing that seems to work here is the money machine for the sellers! Here we will try to clear the air about what exactly constitutes stress, why it is bad and what it actually leads to.
Continue reading Stress Relief: What is Stress and How Do We Recognize It?
It was a moonless night with a light breeze blowing from the south. Walking alone in the dark she could see and hear the others go about their routine activities. She was not really listening but was occasionally startled by the loud noises in the distance. Suddenly, she tensed. She felt rather than saw the danger signals. Her ears pricked up and she became sensitive to the sights and sounds around her. Turn¬ing in every direction, she tried to pinpoint the source of her unease—maybe it was the rustle of a body or the silent footstep; she could not be sure.
From the standpoint of survival and health of the individual, the most important feature of mediators associated with allostasis is that they have protective effects in the short run. However, they can have damaging effects in the long run if there are many adverse life events or if hormone secretion is poorly regulated as in a sustained allostatic state that leads to allostatic overload. We shall now illustrate how the immediate effects of the secretion of mediators of allostasis such as glucocorticoids and catecholamines are largely protective and adaptive.
Consider the normal variations in blood pressure as an example: in the morning, blood pressure rises when we get out of bed and blood flow is maintained to the brain when we stand up in order to keep us conscious. This type of allostasis helps maintain oxygen tension in the brain. There are other examples: Catecholamine and glucocorticoid (stress-response hormone) elevations during physical activity mobilize and replenish, respectively, energy stores needed for brain and body function under challenge.
We begin our study of the body’s response to stress from the very top—the brain. Intuitively, we all understand that our brain controls the functions of our body. We know that we can think of moving an arm or a leg and it happens. In this article we will take a look at how the brain actually exerts control and which systems are activated or suppressed as we undergo stress. In subsequent articles, we will see what the effects of these stress-induced actions are and how they can make us sick.