How To Manage Stress If It Lasts Longer Than A Few Days

By Andrew John

Any stress that an individual deal with regularly, but does nothing to keep it in check, can be considered long-term. Such stress is capable of causing several serious mental and health problems.

Everything begins with depression and outbursts of anger. Typically, these are the first visible effects of chronic stress. People stop caring for others, even if the very ones who do their best to help them. However, this is only a beginning. Soon after, the first health problems occur, usually related to high blood pressure. The chance of a heart attack goes up, average life expectancy goes down. If you are stressed the chances of blocking of heart arteries is slightly increased, especially if you are hit by a stress without prior warning.

Unfortunately, prolonged stress is capable of doing much more damage than increasing the chance of a heart attack. It also shuts down your digestive system, making it impossible to eat anything without risking severe digestive problems, and shuts down (partially) our immunological system making us more prone to any disease that comes by.

Diet problems usually comes right away. As stress forces us to consider everything around us either as a friend or as a foe, we feel urged to either cease eating altogether (anorexia) or just the contrary - we start top eat tons of junk food. As stress develops, diabetes is a more and more probable outcome. As our ability to know the right from wrong is seriously clouded by depression and other psychological problems, we may often feel as if there was no way out to normality.

Another problem brought by chronic stress is sleeping disorders, usually insomnia. All too often we find ourselves anxious and full fo thoughts just before we go to sleep. Oftentimes we can't relax all the night and this effectively prevents us from getting even a few minutes of sleep. This makes us even more tired and weary which in turn increases the stress level and creates a perfect example of an endless loop. You have to break it before it gets too far. However, remember that sleeping pills are known to cause problems you'd never expect them to. Addictions, nervous breakdown, stomach problems and accidental overdosing are a real problem to most people suffering from prolonged stress. - 30415

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