I’m not sure anyone doubts the link between chronic negative stress and disease, specifically heart and cardiovascular disease not to mention immune system and digestive system compromise.
The real question is, do we really understand how destructive a power stress actually is on our bodies and our life?
Do we really get that stress KILLS?
EVIDENCE OF STRESS AND ILLNESS
Over the years studies have linked stress with heart disease, but today a Canadian magazine published a story on the link between stress and stroke.
The sample size followed was large at 69,000 over a 10-year period where the findings were very significant. Of the 562 people identified as dying from stroke, it was found that there was a 66% higher chance of dying from stroke with people who reported ongoing stress.
Even more interesting is that these people reported having the worse kind of stress…stress brought on by lack of control over their situation, frustration and anxiety, all very common stress reactions in our lives and ones that can be managed using the techniques outlined in Attracting Greatness.
The real takeaway from research like this is knowing that each of us will go through situations in our lives that bring on these stress responses (an illness, a job challenge, parenting issues, relationship challenges, financial issues, etc…). It WILL happen and more than once for most of us.
We also KNOW definitively that stress response brings direct physiological changes to our bodies resulting in inflammation of our arteries, higher blood pressure, constriction of blood supply and various other symptoms on the brain, lymphatic system, immune system and digestive system.
Stress may not account for every instance of illness, but you can bet that it is an underlying causal factor in the majority of illness we experience in our lives.
When you understand this, the only logical conclusion is that we MUST learn to manage stress in our lives…in fact, it should be a life skill we are taught as part of school and in our communities.
We talk about smoking, pesticides and junk food having a huge impact on our health and social system, stress is at least as important a factor as these others if not even larger.
Surely learning to identify the signs of stress, instant stress reduction techniques, meditation, yoga and other methods of handling this chronic problem are proven to work, yet why don`t more people know about them?
YOUR TURN…
Do you believe stress has made you ill or impacted your health – leave us a comment on the blog and let us know how.
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