I’m sure you’ll agree that stress controls life for many, if not most, people.
You can see the signs and symptoms of stress everywhere because stress seems to be everywhere. In fact, it’s absolutely amazing how we seem to be able to ignore all of it and keep living our lives as though there is no problem. It seems like there doesn’t seem to be an end to the level of stress we are willing to tolerate.
The question is, “Is being good at managing stress a good thing or not?” First of all, it’s one thing to be able to endure high levels of stress in the daily course of our lives, but have you ever stopped to ask yourself what all this stress is doing to your body? Even more importantly, have you taken the time find out how stress affects your health?
What Doctor’s Believe
Many doctors these days believe that stress is the root cause of all, or at least most, chronic degenerative disease. For example, you have most likely heard of the big six diseases– Cancer, Stroke, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Asthma and Arthritis, however, there is actually a list of more than 200 different chronic degenerative diseases that are all thought to be caused by stress.
Certainly, that’s a highly compelling reason to start working very hard to get stress under control. What are your thoughts on this issue?
Most people think of emotional stress when they hear the word stress and that is bad enough; however, there’s a new kind of stress on the block and it’s called oxidative stress or free radical damage and it is no laughing matter.
Probably, the most important thing to know about oxidative stress is that we make far too many free radicals every day for our bodies to be able to deal with naturally. In contrast, none of us seem to do nearly enough to give our bodies the tools needed to elminate all the free radicals we are busy over-producing.
Seems like our own bodies are actually very helpful at giving us really obvious clues about when stress is getting the better of us and when something needs to be done and done soon. All you really have to do is take the symptoms of stress seriously and you will likely live long and be healthy.
What Are the Major Symptoms of Stress?
Bodily Symptoms of Stress:
- Stress headaches;
- Back pain;
- Chest pain;
- Heart disease;
- Heart palpitations;
- High blood pressure;
- Decreased immunity;
- Stomach upset; and finally
- Sleep problems.
Emotional Symptoms of Stress:
- Anxiety;
- Restlessness;
- Worrying;
- Irritability;
- Depression;
- Sadness;
- Anger;
- Feeling insecure;
- Lack of focus;
- Burnout; and finally
- Forgetfulness.
Behavioral Symptoms of Stress:
- Over-eating;
- Under-eating;
- Angry outbursts;
- Drug or alcohol abuse;
- Increased smoking;
- Social withdrawal;
- Crying spells; and finally
- Relationship conflicts.
Not An Exhaustive List of All the Symptoms of Stress
While this list is far from exhaustive, it’s still a very good start. Maybe now, that you have a list of many of the symptoms of stress, you can start to compare them to your own life and determine if it’s time to get your own stress under control.
If you do this, you may begin to improve the quality of your life. Similarily, you can teach your children and help your family and friends to do the same and then everyone’s lives migfht imporve just a little, even a lot.
Above all, we all must remember that stress is not just emotional. Rather, these symptoms of stress can be caused by any of the four main fields of stress, chemical, physical, electro-magnetic and emotional. Hence, we must have a balanced approach to our lives if we really want to kick stress to the curb as much as possible.
To learn more about all the symptoms of stress and about stress management, in general, follow me on Twitter & Facebook.