Economic instability, fear of losing your jobs in the crisis – all this leads us to a greater or lesser extent of stress.
What is stress?
Many people tend to think that they experience stress only due to negative emotions. However, it is not true. Stress is a reaction to any external or internal changes.The cause of stress can be a banal lack of sleep, hunger, changes in atmospheric pressure, excessive physical activity, illness, and even too much fun. Meeting any of these factors, the body needs to respond properly, to adapt the work of all internal organs and systems to the situation, to make them act not as usual.
Experiencing stress, the cardiovascular system operating changes, blood pressure rises, heart rate accelerates, blood vessels constrict, bowel tone changes. Sometimes these changes have consequences, sometimes stress can cause serious diseases:
- cardiovascular disease;
- stomach and intestinal ulcers;
- even cancer.
As stress affects every cell of our body, it’s not always possible to guess which organ will be vulnerable. However, it’s possible to prevent the negative effects of stress.
Experiencing any stress factor, people pass through three stages:
The reaction of anxiety. The body mobilizes all its resources to cope with the situation. At this point, the brain makes a decision as to which of the body structures must work harder, and what organs, in contrast, should reduce their activity.
The stage of resistance: a person adapts to the situation and the body is able to operate in “emergency” mode for quite a long time. And when a stressful situation is solved, there comes a stage of exhaustion.
The stage of exhaustion: the time when you need to rest and make up for the resources. If all three phases are passed correctly, stress will bring no harm to the body. On the contrary, it will become a kind of training that will prepare the person for the meeting with the following non-standard situation.
However, if the body was not able to recover and have to face a new stress, it can lead to health problems – a person simply does not have enough strength to withstand stress. Canadian Health&Care Mall advises not to forget about preventive measures that can increase resistance to stress and protect against a number of diseases.
Follow your nutrition
Incorrect diet is an additional stress for the body. Therefore, make sure that there are enough vitamins and minerals in your organism, eliminate or at least limit the harmful products in your menu. Especially salt. Excess salt changes the adrenal glands – organs that are responsible for the production of adrenaline and cortisol, the so-called stress hormones. If the adrenal glands are not working properly, blood flows in an excess amount of hormones. And they, in turn, negatively affect all organs and systems. (more…)