How Stress Affects Health

How Does Stress Affect Health

Stress is the only cause of ill-health. May I be so bold? Let me explain.

There are three main stressors in life: Physical, Chemical (or Nutritional), and Emotional. Now, we mostly think about emotional stress. That is true. But add emotional stress to the other two and you’ve got a wallop of a problem.

The body is designed to survive the onslaught of everyday living. Can you imagine what we do to ourselves? We don’t eat well. We don’t drink proper fluids. We don’t exercise much at all. We sit/stand/walk incorrectly almost every day. We work long hours in jobs we don’t necessarily enjoy. Then we add the weight of the world on our shoulders: relationship, marital, emotional scars from the past

No wonder we are stressed people. And is it getting any better? Stress affects health in almost every way possible. But what would you do if you understood this? Would you change your life to live less stressfully? Would you really change your habits of living? Let’s look at each of these briefly.

PHYSICAL

The physical body needs movement and activity for proper health. Activity and motion are vital for body function. That is why breathing techniques, as simple as they are, can make a huge change in someone—they don’t even breath well, so by improving their breathing function, their body works better. Try it. Take a deep breath in for a count of two, that’s pretty fast, then hold it for a count of eight, and let it out for a count of four. If you’re not breathing, you’re in big trouble.

Next, do a little exercise and don’t get hung up just quite yet on the type. Just do something. Walk, skip, take a run if you’re so inclined. Get your blood pumping for some reason beyond emotional stress. Work your heart, vascular system, and lymphatic system. They will appreciate it.

CHEMICAL

This is what we put into our bodies that we call nourishment. Stop eating junk! You know exactly what I’m talking about. That drink you think works like water—try taking a bath in it. That’s what you’re doing to your body—bathing in the liquid you ingest. How does that sound now?

And the food! Why do you eat the white processed stuff they cram into a box and can? You surely can’t sustain life with that. Live raw foods are the best source of nutrition for your body. Try some. And don’t flavor them with artificial stuff. You need flavoring because your body can’t handle the good food.

And for goodness sakes, stop ingesting the foreign chemicals. The ones your body has never seen and cannot process. They are building up in your system as we speak. Remember, anything man-made can never compare to what is found in nature, no matter what they say. They’re just trying to sell you something, sweet, sour, hot, frothy…

EMOTIONAL

Here’s the biggy. Emotional stress is the silent killer. We all know about it but we can’t see it, can’t feel it, and don’t seem to do anything about it. Why is that? I know it’s frightening and uncomfortable. But why do we let emotional stress run and ruin our lives? There are specific things we can do on an on-going basis to release these effects of stress from our lives.

Start by acknowledging there is stress and if you can’t find something current, go into your past. There is something. Look at it and ask yourself if that sphere of emotional stress is worth the energy you are spending on it. That’s what every kind of emotional stress is—energy. Is it a positive energy or a negative, destructive energy? The key is to turn every negative emotional stress into a positive charge in your life. And that is also the big challenge. But if you don’t do it you will never be released from it.

There you have it, how stress affects health. You now have a little more idea about how to recognize these stresses and an idea about what to do with them. Right? Now go to it.