Letting go of stress and living in a more peaceful state of mind will help restore balance.

Stress is the feeling of being under too much mental or emotional pressure.
Many of life’s demands can cause stress, particularly work, relationships and money problems. And, when you feel stressed, it can get in the way of sorting out these demands, or can even affect everything you do.

Some stress can be positive. A certain level of pressure can help you prepare for actions and challenges. However, too much stress, especially over a long period of time, can cause physical and emotional problems.

Many of your body’s control mechanisms happen without you having to think about them. Your automatic stress response to unexpected events is known as your ‘fight or flight’ response.

When you have a shock or perceive something as a threat, your body releases hormones. These are chemicals produced by your body, such as adrenalin, that contribute to your ‘fight or flight’ response. These hormones increase your heart rate and blood pressure so that more oxygen and glucose can get to your muscles. You will also breathe faster and sweat more to cool these muscles down. All of these reactions prepare you to take action to deal with a possible threat.

Modern day stresses, such as money worries or deadlines at work, don’t cause an effective ‘fight or flight’ response like we once required for survival. However, the more often we are exposed to these types of stressors, the more overactive our fight or flight response becomes until we find ourselves operating at fever pitch level, constantly prepared for battle, perceiving potential threats everywhere. That is why people who are over stressed not only show physiological symptoms such as high blood pressure, rapid heart rate or shallow fast breath; they can seem overly sensitive or aggressive. Today many of us don’t take enough physical exercise to ‘burn off’ the effects of our response and we’re left with stress build up. We learn to control our reactions, but this does not counteract the stress response.

Long-term stress can have a negative effect on how you cope with situations and may damage your health.

 Read how acupuncture can help.