What is the stress
For thousands of years our body was programmed to respond to situations in the environment through physical reactions such as running to flee from danger, fighting to defend ourselves or applying physical force to move an object. The alert state is a natural mechanism of the human organism, and many other species, which allows the body to respond physically to the demands of the environment, carrying more blood to the muscles, alerting the senses, making the skin goosebumps.
Fight or flight response is the name we give to this reaction mechanism.The problem is that the demands of modern life no longer requires physical responses, thus the mechanism and energy that unfolds in alert situations do not find a way to channel themselves in most current situations.
Modern life
As individuals we are subject to a series of stressful factors: among them we can mention: work, family, economic pressures, the accelerated pace of life in big cities. Each of these factors represents a requirement for our person, a "load" that accumulates day by day.
But… where does it accumulate? In our body, of course. In the long run, this extra load that we carry diminishes our strength and undermines our health, so finally stress has a series of physical manifestations such as: headache, gastritis, high blood pressure, muscle pain, chronic fatigue, in general weakening of the immune system and therefore prone to contracting any infectious disease. On a psychological level, some of the first symptoms may be: irritability, sleep disorders (insomnia), attention deficit and mental concentration, depression, anguish.
Actually stress is an inherent condition of life, we could even say that there is a certain degree of positive stress. It is the one that makes us react to challenges, the one that gives us that extra energy to successfully complete a project and reach our goals.
However, chronic, acute and sustained stress is what wears out our body and upsets us emotionally, affecting our quality of life. It is essential to learn to manage stress to lead a fuller, more harmonious and healthier life. In the following pages we present the most important information you should know about stress and we give you several tools to avoid it or minimize its effects.
For questions or comments: atencion.gmbm@gmail.com