Stressed Out?

If you often feel like the demands of your daily life exceed your ability to meet them, you’re definitely not alone, as I noted throughout many pages of my new book The Joy Factor: 10 Sacred Practices for Radiant Health. The state of feeling “stressed out” and “overcommitted” is a growing problem among millions of Americans. Time magazine may have singled out stress as the “Epidemic of the Eighties,” but that was well before the Internet and social media significantly sped up the pace of most people’s lives,  and the prolonged wars and global economic troubles at the turn of the 21st century piled on additional woes. Today, over one million North Americans are absent on any given workday due to stress and stress-related disorders and 79%-90% of all visits to primary health-care practitioners in North America are due to stress-related illnesses or complaints.         

As I write about in my new booklet/CD combo, Natural Stress Solutions: Discover Nature's Secret to Inner Calm, Restful Sleep & Newfound Energy, in mankind’s prehistoric days roaming the plains and sleeping in caves, the stress response was actually a good thing. Our built-in “fight or flight” system provided our bodies with the energy needed to escape from danger or secure scarce resources. Though this type of high-intensity, short-term stress was beneficial for our survival, our bodies were not designed to withstand the type of chronic, long-term stress that is so common today. The same cascade of hormones released during a physically stressful event (like running away from a lion) is also released when we undergo a psychological stressor like conflict in marriage, unreasonable work demands, and economic worries. The difference is that we typically do not respond to these kinds of chronic stressors with vigorous physical activity (e.g. fighting or running away), and they do not have a definite end point. Consequently, our bodies may be continuously exposed to stress hormones, especially cortisol, and over time, this can add up to serious health problems. How does chronic stress impact our lives? Read on...