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MAINTAINING
SPIRIT LEVELS
Experts from Mayo Clinic analyze the causes of stress in
modern life and outline the best ways to deal with it.
JÖRN KASPUHL
WHEN ONE TALKS about stress, it’s considered a negative thing. The pace,
challenges, and noise in most of our lives today add stress to even the most
mundane situations and can lead to feeling frustrated and overwhelmed.
What we sometimes forget is that even happy times cause stress. Stress is
an inevitable part of life. What we have to do is figure out how to manage our
stress levels for optimal health.
It helps first to define stress. At Mayo Clinic, we define it as a normal
psychological and physical reaction to the demands of life. Some stress can
be good, motivating you to perform well. But many daily challenges, such as
sitting in traffic, meeting deadlines, and paying bills, can push you beyond your
ability to cope. And while the effects of stress may seem temporary—you finally
unwind after making it home after a long day at work and then an extra hour
added on to your commute due to a traffic jam—we understand that continual
stress can have lasting negative impacts on health.
“When stress becomes chronic—lasting weeks, months, or even years—
then this stress can change the equilibrium (homeostasis) within our bodies
by affecting our immunological, hormonal, and other biomarkers of health,”
says Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh, a physician-researcher-coach with the Mayo Clinic
Executive Health program in Jacksonville, Florida. “These imbalances can lead
to negative impacts on our physical, emotional, mental, social, environmental,
and many other aspects of our well-being.”
His colleague, Dr. Adam Perlman, agrees. “Stress can impact every system in
your body and increase your risk of developing not only issues like depression
and insomnia, but also heart disease, chronic pain, and even the common cold."
While there’s probably no way to eliminate negative stress for most of us, we
can learn how to better manage our reactions to stressful situations and lessen
the impact stress has on our bodies. The best part is that the most common
ways to decrease the impact of stress on our lives are pretty easy to include in
our day-to-day lives.
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