Stress management: taking stress seriously

Even if you're someone who performs well under stress or pressure, it can still harm you if you fail to manage it right. Here's why.

• Stress is one of the most significant indirect causes of illness in the modern world and plays a key part in triggering cardiovascular emergencies.
• It is one of the nine factors that underlies 90 per cent of all first heart attacks. Recent research has revealed that, if you are permanently stressed at work or at home, you double your risk of a heart attack.
• Factors carrying the highest risk include a major conflict between family members and intense financial pressures, such as business failure.
• Stress is also a significant risk factor for stroke.

• When we feel that an event or situation is stressful, our bodies' learned defence mechanism against danger — the "fight or flight" response — kicks in. This leads to an increased release of adrenaline and other stress hormones, causing the heart to beat stronger and faster, raising our blood pressure and breathing rate, promoting sweating (because the body anticipates intense activity, and sweat helps to regulate body temperature) and shutting down digestion and other non-essential functions.
• This response would have been helpful in the Stone Age, when we might have been confronted by wild animals; it is much less so in the face of irritating, automated telephone help lines and traffic jams. Persistent stress can lead to high blood pressure and a raised clotting tendency — a risk factor for both heart attacks and strokes.
• Stress also prompts the body to release a hormone called cortisol, long-term exposure to which has been linked with abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes.
• A sudden rise in blood pressure, stimulated by acute stress, can also cause hemorrhagic strokes (bleeding in the brain). Stress increases your risk of strokes by as much as 40 per cent.
• People under stress are more likely to smoke, drink, eat unhealthily, get less exercise and find it hard to sleep.

• Pressure or stress can have a detrimental effect on your health, but it is all a question of how you handle it.
• You may not be able to avoid pressure, but you can learn ways to cope with it — and some people actually thrive under pressure. If your stress is making you tense or miserable or interfering with your sleep — or if you react by smoking, eating high-fat sugary foods or drinking more alcohol — then your unhealthy habits are putting you at increased risk of a heart attack or stroke.
• Changing your lifestyle can help you to feel healthier and better able to cope with these demands, and there are plenty of things you can do to help you relax and manage stress.