Stress relation with health issues



Stress relation with health issues

Introduction

In this fast paced world, where the processes and the lifestyle if people are more complex than before, stress has become an inevitable outcome of daily life activities. Every individual in phase or the other in his life confronts situations, which can lead to stress. Stress is natural and cannot be avoided; however, the severity of stress can lead to certain health issues for the individuals. Stress varies from individual to individual depending upon certain external and internal factors. It is important to control the level of stress experienced by an individual. Hence, it is important to understand the concept of stress, the factors underlying stress, the symptoms and disease arising of out the stress, and ways in which it can be handled.

What is stress?

Stress can be defined as a physical response that an individual gives in a normal situation when he feels threatened by something, or when his balance is upset by something. When an individual feels danger, either in the real life, or in imaginative, his body moves towards a rapid process of self defense. This automated process is referred as a stress response. It is also commonly known as a fight-or-flight reaction. This reaction given by the body helps to protect an individual from the thing causing stress by giving an individual more energy to defend himself (Smith, Segal and Segal, 2013).

The reaction to this flight or fight response varies from individual to individual. Some people react to this response while some do not react to this response at all. In order to find out the differences which exist among the responses of various individuals, the concept of thought process to be involved in development of stress, was proposed. According to this concept, the cognition of an individual was an important determinant of the responses to a stress variable. A variable considered as stressor may not be entertained by the other individual in a similar fashion. For example, when a teacher announces a quiz suddenly, a student may experience feelings of extreme anxiety and a response to the stress variable; however another students may have no such feelings and also may not show any response towards the sudden announcement. This is because that he may be habitual of reviewing the notes on a regular basis and was no affected by the sudden quiz (www.indiana.edu)

Symptoms of stress

The symptoms of stressed can be classified into the following broad categories (Smith, Segal and Segal, 2013)

Cognitive Symptoms

Cognitive factors are related to the thinking process of an individual. Stress can adversely affect the way individual thinks and can be evident from memory problems, poor ability to concentrate, inability to take decisions, racing or anxious thoughts, and ongoing worrying experienced by an individual.

Emotional Symptoms

The emotional symptoms refer to the feelings of an individual. These symptoms are evident from an individual's moodiness, the degree to which he gets irritated or losses temper, ability to relax, isolation from, society or feelings of loneliness, overwhelms, or ...