As you age, the stress level also increases due to a variety of situations you face. If you are facing such situations for the first time in life, naturally the intensity of the stress is more. When you become more experienced to handle such situations, gradually the stress level decreases.

You, as a youngster, start smoking for fun initially. Fun or no fun, nicotine is such a hard addiction, that it won’t spare anyone. Soon your habit dominates you. You can’t give up smoking. The guilty feeling haunts you because you know the disadvantages of smoking. You know its capabilities to cause serious damages to important parts of your body like heart and liver. You are warned from all sides against your smoking habit but you are helpless. You are the slave of nicotine and that causes you stress. This type of stress could be the cause of severe headache. Your personality is tossed in between these situations. For most smokers, the unpleasant game of musical chair between stress, headache and smoking continues.

The peculiarity of the stress headaches is that they begin to attack you slowly. You feel dullness with pain on both sides of the head, which is the indication of beginning of the stress headache.

Pain associated with the stress headache is difficult to cope. With the help of the descriptions that you give, your physician will be able to identify the type of headache you are suffering from. If the descriptions given by you arouse any suspicion in the mind of the physician, he may ask you to undergo tests like blood test, brain scan or x- rays.

The more you are into the smoking habit, the more room you will give for stress and headache. Since smoking is your daily exercise now, stress and headache are also your permanent companions. Here is the chance of your slipping into the addiction of taking over the counter medications for curing your hopeless position. These medications again are tricky, they are not sincere to the cause for which they are supposed to have been manufactured and thus you are entrapped into a vicious circle.

The only option that can save you in this situation is the positive lifestyle change such as eating right, doing regular exercises and drastically reducing your smoking, if not give up altogether. You have no other alternative, but to improve your habits.

Ashish Jain
http://www.articlesbase.com/advice-articles/the-unhealthy-alliance-of-stress-headache-and-smoking-69154.html

The connection between B vitamin complex and stress is well known; although why a good B vitamin complex can reduce stress is less well known. Before discussing the reason why a Vitamin B formula can reduce stress, we shall first have a look at stress and what causes it. The term means different things to different people, and a stressful situation to one person might not be such to another.

The biochemistry of stress is fairly complex, although involves the production and release of hormones into your bloodstream. When an event occurs that causes stress, the hypothalamus portion of your brain becomes involved. It releases cotocotropin releasing factor (CRF), a hormone that protects you from stress by raising your spirits. CRF sends signals to the pituitary gland causing the release of ACHT (Adrenocorticotropic hormone corticotropin) that causes cortisol to be released into the bloodstream by the adrenal glands. Cortisol speeds up the metabolism.

Coincidentally, the cells of the brain stem and spinal cord send a message that stimulates the adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine that increases the heart rate, breathing and alertness, ready for fight or flight. Both of these mechanisms then lead back to the pituitary gland and your new stress level can repeat the process or stop it, should your stress be reduced. If this cycle continues over an extended period of time it can have serious repercussions on your mental and physical health.

The B vitamins can help to regulate this biochemical function, and in doing so can reduce stress, and with it the associated anxiety and depression. In fact many of the symptoms of vitamin B deficiency are those that are also associated with stress: anxiety, nervousness, depression irritability and so on. There is no one specific form of Vitamin B that helps with stress, and there are eight in total. However, in saying that, the three members of the B vitamin complex that have most effect on stress are vitamins B 3, 6 and 12.

Every one of the B vitamins is involved in cell metabolism. Because they are soluble in water, they are quickly leached from the body so have to be replaced on a regular basis. The various B vitamins are needed by your body for specific purposes, such as Vitamin B1 (thiamin) is essential for the correct function of your nerves, brain and muscles. Although others have their own particular areas of responsibility, they are generally lumped together, not only because they are all soluble in water, but also because they each have a profound effect on the metabolism of your body.

Those mostly connected with the nervous system are Vitamins B3, B6 and B12. Vitamin B3 (Niacin) helps to maintain the proper health of your digestive system, skin and nerves, and B12 (cobalamin) is also needed for a healthy nervous system. Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) along with vitamin B12 are the two principal members of the B complex that have an effect on stress, and a deficiency of these can make you more prone to this frequently debilitating condition. In fact many people that are suffering from a general Vitamin B deficiency have various forms of mental problems.

Because Vitamin B12 is available only from animal sources, deficiencies are common in vegetarians, and even more common in vegans who are advised to take a Vitamin B12 supplement. However, in general you are best to take a Vitamin B complex as opposed to a supplement of any specific member of the B family. This is because a surplus of any one could lead to a depletion of others.

It is thought that much of today’s stress is caused by an inadequate diet, and a diet deficient in various forms of Vitamin B is believed to render the subject particularly prone to stress and anxiety. People that have been suffering undue levels of stress over a protracted period of time can be helped by a regular treatment of B vitamins. In taking such supplements, however, you should also be aware of the various possible effects on your body that the causes of your stress can have. These are frequently neither understood nor recognized when they occur.

For example, if you are under stress due to a poor diet, or conversely, are eating a poor diet due to your high stress levels, you might be building up fatty deposits in your liver. Because of this your general health could be at serious risk in addition to your mental health. It is important, therefore, that you don’t just restrict yourself to a B vitamin complex, but also take a supplement containing inositol and choline bitartrate.

These can reduce the fatty deposit that a poor diet can cause to build up in your liver with consequent risk to life. Such deposits affect the ability of your liver to destroy the environmental toxins to which become exposed as part of your daily life, and which can be directly related to your ability to counter high stress levels.

In general, however, if you are prone to stress and get nervous and worried about the slightest thing that doesn’t go to plan, a B vitamin complex can help: vitamin B can reduce stress, although if your stress is sever you would be better advised consulting a physician than a health store.

Stress is a serious condition, and not one that should be treated lightly. It is possible to treat some stress conditions by using a good B vitamin complex, although should the stress be serious then you should consult your physician. Frequently the stress is not diet related, but due to personal circumstances that cannot be cured by any form of supplement.

However, there are few doubts that a course of Vitamin B supplements can help to overcome many of the metabolic causes of stress, and make up for any deficiency in these vitamins that leave your body almost as quickly as they enter it. Vitamin B can reduce stress, but only if your stress is due to a deficiency: and this is more common that most people are aware.

Darrell Miller

Stress is a daily reality for most of us. We live with it and sometimes it is silently killing us without us realizing it. It is not a question of does stress affect a person, it is a question of how and how much does stress affect a person. Let’s look at how it can affect you.

MedSearch defines stress as, “The sum of the biological reactions to any adverse stimulus, physical, mental or emotional, internal or external, that tends to disturb a person’s normal state of well-being.”

I like this definition because it emphasizes the fact that stress is actually the effects that we experience in our bodies due to adverse stimuli.

That brings it much closer to home and makes it easier to understand how stress affects a person.

The biological reactions can include one, more than one, or all of the following:

1. Physical effects on your body.

2. Changes in your emotional state.

3. Disturbances in your mental state.

4. Deviations from your normal behavior.

Physical effects of stress can include tenseness in the muscles, an increased heart rate, more rapid breathing, increase in blood pressure, and many other adverse conditions.

When subjected to circumstances that induce stress, the body reacts in a similar way that it would react under dangerous situations. It releases chemicals that prepare the body for defense.

Under normal dangerous situations these bodily reactions lasts for a very short period of time, until the danger has passed.

Stress inducing conditions tend to prevail day after day, month after month. The body was not designed to be in a constant state of high alert.

That is why stress can be a killer.

It is basically synonymous with running a car’s engine constantly at red line revolutions. Sooner or later it is going to break because it was not designed to do that.

There is a normal level of operation that your body can easily cope with. The effects of stress take your body beyond those limits.

These additional pressures of stress on the bodily systems result in major effects on a person that can ruin your emotional state, cause depression and a general negative state of mind, and cause you to act completely out of character.

Tisha Diaz
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/how-does-stress-affect-a-person-123918.html

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“HPA axis gets practice when you attempt to flip backwards after swallowing empty fire, then again when you wonder why your back hurts. Its ABsurdity that we flirt with disease because we never were told of the cold hard certainty that stress usurps our dreams and supresses the best of our essence from encircling the quadressence; and some would say purposefully” – Paul Chek Jr

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Fibromyalgia was recognized by the American Medical Association as an illness and cause of disability in 1987, yet it has been a struggle for many since Hippocrates first described a similar set of symptoms in 400 BC. In the early 1900’s, fibromyalgia was considered “arthritis of the muscles” and classified with other rheumatological conditions involving pain in the muscles or joints.

Stress and pain are irreversibly linked in fibromyalgia. For many people, some kind of stressful event is what initially triggers the illness.  It often shows up after a serious illness, some kind of emotional or mental shock or with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).  Many believe that stress unmasks the disorder.

Today fibromyalgia is thought to be a central nervous system disorder in which either pain-sensing nerves are excessively sensitive, or the brain is extremely sensitive to pain impulses.  People with fibromyalgia are out of balance in the HPA axis – hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal – which is our body’s system for responding to stress with neurochemicals like adrenalin and serotonin. Pain sensation and abnormal stress response are related and people with fibromyalgia experience more pain when they are stressed.

Simply having fibromyalgia is stressful.  Though fibromyalgia feels different to each person, the common denominators are painful and uncomfortable sensations throughout the body, fatigue and mental cloudiness. Not being able to accomplish things is stressful, especially when it affects your employment situation, leading to financial stress. Dealing with a chronic illness and lifestyle changes is stressful. 

Adding insult to injury is the fact that you may still appear healthy to everyone else, no matter how badly you feel, so that few people understand how compounding these conditions can be on a daily basis.  Anything in addition to the everyday stress load tends to tip the scales and cause the fibromyalgia symptoms to be worse.

Stress reduction is an important part of managing fibromyalgia.  Here are a few ways that my help you alleviate some of the stress:

1.      Good self care.  Eating a nutritious diet, getting the right amount of the right kind of exercise, establishing regular sleep habits and giving yourself grace are all part of taking good care of yourself.  They are important.  You will feel worse, and be able to do less if you do not take care of yourself.

2.      Practice body awareness.  People who deal with chronic pain, as in fibromyalgia, become accustomed to ignoring their bodies; it’s one way they cope with the pain.  If you learn to recognize your body’s cues that you are becoming tense, you can use a relaxation technique or exercise early on, before stress becomes unmanageable.  At the same time, you don’t want to lose that protective lack of awareness about pain.  Take breaks every so often and just sit quietly and pay attention to how you feel.  Learn where you feel stress first.  Do you get heartburn?  Do your shoulders get tight?  Once you learn that, you can periodically scan to see if your body is showing tension.

3.      Change the way you think.  This takes practice, yet it gives you a change to respond to situations instead of reacting.

4.      Keep a stress journal.  This has two purposes.  You can journal about stressful incidents and use the journal as a tool to help you identify situations that are stressful to you.  This can help you either avoid repeating these situations or be better prepared should they be unavoidable.  Journaling about a stressful event also helps you debrief and de-stress after the event.

5.      Learn stress management techniques, such as visualization, meditation, and breathing.  These techniques decrease the level of neurochemicals circulating in your body, and help decrease both stress and pain.

6.      Chiropractic adjustments may help reduce pain and improve range of motion. Chiropractors use a wide variety of manipulative techniques and can individualize your treatment.

7.      NeuroEmotional Technique (NET) focuses on releasing emotional blocks stored in the body’s memory through simple chiropractic adjustments.  Everyone has emotional trauma, past or present, that the body has locked into its memory, often below the realm of conscious thought.  NET can isolate these events and release them from the body.

When you decrease your stress, you will probably experience less pain and fatigue from fibromyalgia.  Changing your lifestyle so that you are taking care of your self can help prevent flare-ups and give you a better quality of life.  Eat well, think well, and move well!

Michael Roth
http://www.articlesbase.com/alternative-medicine-articles/fibromyalgia-stress-and-the-brainbody-connection-492662.html

Stress causes your adrenal glans to raise your cortisol level which leads to many health issues, one of them being weight gain. There is a solution though, so don’t get stressed.

I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts lately about how people are eating all the right foods and the right proportions but are not losing weight or even still gaining weight. There is a lot of reasons this could be happening, but when I look closer into the lives of these people I can see the probable reason. It’s scientific name is STRESS.

Your body is an incredible machine. When your body feels a change from the ordinary it goes into defense mode. Your Adrenal Glans start producing the hormone cortisol. It is needed for regulating blood sugar, energy production, inflammation, the immune system and healing.

If you introduce stress, your adrenal glans will elevate your cortisol level. Any type of stress will do that. It could be stress from work, the TV you watch like the news, the environment you live in, or even the foods or lack of certain foods you eat.

A high level of cortisol will more than likely lead to weight gain among other things, I’ll get to those in a moment.

This is also why so many weight loss plans or diets fail. It’s because you are fighting against your adrenal glans that are releasing high levels of cortisol, which usually end up going strait to your abdominal area. You need to work with your body and feed it everything it needs, all the proper foods and keep it fed. Eating small meals and snacks of good healthy food all day long works well. It is the only kind of weight loss plan or diet that seems to work long term without any health risk. In other words, “Healthy Weight Loss”.

The other problems with a high level of cortisol are that it slows down your metabolism. Your immune system is also suppressed which can cause all kinds of problem and makes you prone to many illnesses. The stomach lining becomes thin which could cause stomach ulcers. It will cause your blood sugars to rise and digestion to slow.

Are you starting to get the picture? stress causes problems.

It turns into a vicious cycle, stress causes problems that cause more stress, which leads to bigger problems and so on.

The health problems that stress ultimately lead to are numerous. Weight gain is only the tip of the iceberg. Where it adds the weight is what could be the killer.

The only way to avoid costly future visits to the doctor and hospital are to figure out how to lower your stress level and get on a healthy weight loss plan, even if you are not overweight. A healthy weight loss plan will teach you a lot about nutrition.

So learn to relax more. Listen to some soothing music. Take up yoga or meditation. Take a walk or jog by yourself and brainstorm some ideas that will lead to happiness. Find you own little sanctuary where you can sit or lay alone quietly. Learn not to sweat the little things. Nothing is so major that you can’t think of a solution. Most of the things we stress over turn out to be minor and the solution most of the time leads to a better way of life.

Mike True
http://www.articlesbase.com/wellness-articles/stress-isnt-good-for-weight-loss-or-anything-690392.html

In today’s competitive world, stress is the biggest problem faced by every individual. When it comes to university students, stress becomes even more common and problematic. Stress brings disorder to your emotional equilibrium in addition to deteriorating your physical health. It reduces your ability to work and think, but can be managed if you can control your thoughts and emotions.

Below are a few different tips on how to cope with university stress:

1. Sleep – Sleep is the biggest medicine you can use to aid coping with stress. If you are missing sleep, then you are reducing your life’s length and quality. Sleeping for 6 – 8 hours is very important for every university student, and it does not only give your body rest, but also rejuvenates you. You will feel refreshed and will be able to work with more dedication and accuracy.

1. Breaks – Maintaining breaks within your schedule is necessary to cope with any stress that comes about. A break of 5 – 10 minutes after every 1 or 2 hours can act as a refresher for you, and you can recollect your concentration and work with efficiency.

1. Avoid caffeine – Caffeine, when taken in large amounts, can lead to anxiety and tension. Coffee, tea, soft drinks are the most common sources of caffeine for university students, so you should try to avoid them.

1. Manage time – Stress is mainly caused when you tend to think about meeting deadlines. Most university students have little or no time management plans, and thus find themselves, at the end of the deadline, without their complete work. It is better to plan your work and manage your time before you proceed.

1. Share Problems – Stress is caused when you tend to avoid sharing your problems with friends and mentors. I suggest to you to share your problems with others, as may be able to come up with good solutions.

1. Attitude – It is important to maintain a positive attitude towards life. If you fail to complete a task, then don’t become dishearten, look on the positive side. You can put it like this: things could have turned out worse. So, look at the positive side and don’t let the stress get you down.

1. Balanced Diet – Maintain a balanced diet, by eating a range of foods. Try to avoid junk food since it produces caffeine that in turn can cause stress. Include fresh fruit in your diet, and try to eat every 3 – 4 hours. Don’t let your body suffer by working with an empty stomach.

1. Exercise regularly – Try to include exercises in your schedule. However, exercise not only gives you a sound body, but also sound mind, and by exercise I don’t mean you should go to a gym and spend an hour or two. You can go for a walk, jog, meditate and do some aerobic exercises to avoid stress.

1. Balance your lifestyle – The most common problem faced by students is creating a balance in their lives. By balance, I mean maintaining equilibrium between your studies, sports, other activities, rest and meals. Most students tend to miss their meals and other recreational activities, and the absence of these will cause a deterioration in your health and you will gain stress. Utilize sufficient time for all of these activities and give special thought and time to recreational activities.

1. Consult a doctor – If stress increases beyond a limit that you can withstand, then you should consult a doctor. Don’t neglect it, as ignoring something small can create bigger problems.

Following these steps will mean that you will be able to reduce the amount of stress that you, as a university student, will be able to reduce and cope with stress whilst at university.

Nick Sanders
http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/10-tips-to-help-cope-with-university-stress-677188.html

If there’s one thing a divorce brings, it’s stress. With the emotional pressure that you’re dealing with as well as the pain, financial stress, child custody battles and everything else, it’s no wonder you’re so stressed out. Stress can act as a silent killer – causing a higher risk of many chronic diseases and health conditions. Just a few of the things it can cause includes diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, weight gain, depression and much more. If you do nothing else, find some way of controlling and reducing the stress you’re feeling. Here is some information on the power of meditation for handling divorce stress.

How Does Meditation Help Stress?

As we become stressed, our heart beats faster, our breathing becomes faster, adrenaline may pump through our bodies and our bodies release dangerous hormones. These hormones can cause hair loss, weight gain, depression and much more. Meditation helps to stop these hormones from being released. It’s also easy to become angrier, more frustrated and upset when we are stressed. As we use meditation to relax and bring about a state of calmness, our breathing and heart rate returns to normal, our bodies stop releasing those dangerous chemicals and we remain healthier. Meditation even slows down the aging of our minds!

What Are Some Tips for Meditation?

There are all different types of meditation, but you can easily calm yourself by using a simple meditation like this one. First, close your eyes and relax your entire body. Focus on clearing your mind. Then, imagine a scene that makes you feel calm and relaxed, such as a bubbling brook surrounded by wildflowers, a deserted and quiet park or a warm, sunny beach. Take a few minutes to see what is in the scene, from the sky to animals or insects and flowers or plants. Smell the things that are there as well, such as the wildflowers, the salty ocean or other things. Do these exercises until you feel calmer and relaxed.

Benefits of Mediation –

There are many benefits of meditation, including it’s power to relieve stress. Unlike paying for therapy or medication, you can use meditation whenever you need to and it’s free. You’re able to significantly reduce the stress you’re feeling. Meditation also allows you to have improved memory and concentration. It can be a great way to escape from the stress and hectic time a divorce brings. When you’re in an intense situation and need to remain level headed and calm, a quick meditation can help you remain alert and keep from becoming emotionally distraught. Simply allow yourself to revisit that peaceful place in your mind.

Meditation can be a savior when you’re dealing with the stress of a divorce. By using the tips and tricks above, you’re able to use meditation to your benefit. From relieving the stress you’re feeling to allowing you a chance to escape, meditation is a great thing to use during your divorce.

Dani Taylor
http://www.articlesbase.com/meditation-articles/power-of-meditation-for-handling-divorce-stress-573049.html