Monthly bills, daily expenses, family troubles, office workload, and other similar situations can all be sources of stress for people. While there are people who respond to these in a calm and composed manner, the other group of people tends to react in an opposite manner by excessively fretting over life’s hardships.
It is not that the former group of people does not experience stress. They do, but they somehow manage it and do not allow it to take a toll on their health. Yes, health. Excessive levels of stress can have a bearing on your health.
When you allow life’s tough situations to get the better of you, you start experiencing high levels of stress, something which has been found to lead to medical conditions such as hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, and even ulcers.
Can Stress Affect Your Heart Health?
Although so far limited research has been conducted to link stress directly with problems related to the heart, the reactions, both physical and mental, which high levels of stress brings about in people can contribute toward increasing the risk of heart disease.
Vito Proietti, the health expert, explains that to deal with chronic stress, people engage in unhealthy activities such as smoking, drinking, and overeating. And when you start indulging in all of this, you naturally become physically inactive. When that happens along with the aforementioned activities, your cholesterol levels go up, and so does your blood pressure as you slowly develop the problem of high blood pressure. When your blood pressure goes up, the chances of your artery walls getting damaged increase as well. If you feel that you’re developing these conditions in your body, get in touch with a doctor, who, upon examining you, may recommend an ECG resting test to check for abnormalities in your heart.
How to Deal with Stress Then?
It is important that people learn more about stress, what it is, what its causes are, and how we can manage it. See, life is always going to throw difficult situations at you. It is the same for everyone throughout the world. It is essential that we first accept its existence and then find ways to deal with it effectively.
People who are successful and healthy too experience stress, but they have found ways of dealing with it. How can you deal with it? By engaging in physical activities, be it aerobic exercises, weight lighting, or even playing sports. You need to eat healthy and clean food, which means less consumption of junk foods. When you engage in exercise and follow a healthy diet, you’ll maintain a healthy weight, which is another crucial factor in managing stress. Apart from this, stop smoking and consuming too much coffee.
Medicines are not the solution to stress. Taking will make you feel better, but its effect will be transient. It is best to practice relaxation or stress management techniques to better deal with stress. They are also what we call as long term solution.