The Effects of Stress on your body and how to treat it without drugs

Stress is the body's reaction to any change that requires an adjustment or response. The body reacts to these changes with physical, mental, and emotional responses.

Stress is a normal part of life. Many events that happen to you and around you -- and many things that you do yourself -- put stress on your body. You can experience stress from your environment, your body, and your thoughts.

How does stress affect health?

The human body is designed to experience stress and react to it. Stress can be positive, keeping us alert and ready to avoid danger. Stress becomes negative when a person faces continuous challenges without relief or relaxation between challenges. As a result, the person becomes overworked, and stress-related tension builds.

Stress that continues without relief can lead to a condition called distress -- a negative stress reaction. Distress can disturb the body's internal balance or equilibrium -- leading to physical symptoms including headaches, upset stomach, elevated blood pressure, chest pain, and problems sleeping. Research suggests that stress also can bring on or worsen certain symptoms or diseases.

Stress also becomes harmful when people use alcohol, tobacco, or drugs to try to relieve their stress. Unfortunately, instead of relieving the stress and returning the body to a relaxed state, these substances tend to keep the body in a stressed state and cause more problems. Consider the following facts:

Forty-three percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress.
Seventy-five to 90% of all doctor's office visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints.
Stress is linked to six of the leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA) declared stress a hazard of the workplace. In terms of lost hours due to absenteeism, reduced productivity and workers' compensation benefits, stress costs American industry more than $300 billion annually.
The lifetime prevalence of an emotional disorder is more than 50%, often due to chronic, untreated stress reactions.

Stress makes us fat in several ways.
First, although the behavioral response to stress is often thought to be a primary reason for weight gain (e.g. we reach for the Haagen-Dazs when we feel stressed out), there are two very powerful physiological reasons for the link between stress and weight gain.

Whenever we are under stress, our bodies release its primary stress hormone – known as cortisol.
In the body, cortisol is a potent signal to do two things – increase appetite and store fat. This means that whenever we’re under stress, the increased cortisol in our body tells our brain that we’re hungry, while at the same time telling our fat cells to store as much fat as they can (and then hold on to it as tightly as possible).