A Consideration Of Stress

Stress is a part of every human's life, and has been quite frankly since humans first came to be. Stress serves important functions in certain situations, but chronic stress or excessive stress can be quite damaging. The problem is that in modern life, it's not at all difficult to fall into patterns of being frequently stressed. Many of us feel overburdened and underappreciated, and this perspective alone is enough to cause a stress reaction.

A frequent cause of a stress reaction is anxiety. Anxiety in a general sense is a worry or apprehension about some event, often something in the future. Anxiety isn't the only cause of stress, to be sure: stress can result from anger, sadness, loss, and various other emotional outlooks. There's also the stress that comes from eager anticipation, sometimes referred to as good stress.

Cortisol is typically released into the blood stream when a person experiences stress. Cortisol is a hormone that causes physical changes in the body's response. Specifically, cortisol increases blood pressure and blood sugar. Cortisol is so frequent in the human body's stress reaction that it's often referred to as the stress hormone. From a biological standpoint, cortisol's function is to prepare the body to physically respond to an imminent danger. The increasing of blood pressure and blood sugar provides the body an energy solution that can be used in defense or to flee. Cortisol's origins likely go back to the times when our human ancestors faced regular predatory threats.

Cortisol is a double-edged sword, both a help and a hindrance to the body. Elevated rates of blood pressure and blood sugar degenerate vital organs, especially when the elevations are chronic. When blood pressure increases, vital organs such as the kidneys, the heart, the arteries, the brain and others are put under strain. Blood sugar at high levels can and does destroy body tissue. From a health standpoint then, we want cortisol to kick in when we absolutely need it, but not otherwise: the effects are potentially too damaging to the body, especially where they occur consistently over time.

Western medicine now appreciates how damaging stress can be, and whole medical programs have been established just for stress reduction. The reality is that most modern human beings very rarely if ever face predatory threat, but the stress reaction remains in place just the same. Eliminating the stress reaction in all but exceptional cases would improve anyone's health outlook.