Getting Ahead of Your Stress
Early signs of stress: persistent worry, headache, insomnia, sleep troubles, and high blood pressure. Attention to these early symptoms can help you avoid physical damage.
Awareness of your stress symptoms can help you from becoming stressed. Now this sounds like a paradox, but the idea is that if you have sort of an early-warning system for stress, then you can start to deal with the issues that are actually causing your stress.
Persistent worry is an obvious signal of increasing stress levels. If your brain is constantly focused on problems or issues that need resolution, then you may be risking physical damage. During periods of high stress, worry may exclude all other thoughts and control your mind.
Headache, another sign of stress, is a common physical ailment. You already know that a headache can sometimes keep you from performing any functions at all. Stress headaches may actually be tension headaches, which can be caused by muscle tension around your head and neck.
Insomnia and other sleep disorders are another groups of stress symptoms. Although an ability to fall asleep may be a symptom of a wider sleep disorder problem, insomnia can be related to stress and worry. Which is unfortunate, since sleep can help manage stress.
There is some indication that stress may have a wider affect on other types of sleep disorders like sleep apnea, nightmares or even hypersomnia.
Stress can affect you physically too. Ulcers and acid reflux disease are physical signs of stress. These are serious conditions and should be treated by a professional as soon as possible.
Uncontrolled stress can affect our memory. Of course, we may need help to recognize this particular symptom.
The lights and sirens in terms of dangerous symptoms are reserved for high blood pressure. Stress causes certain physiological changes in your body. What your body is really doing is enhancing its performance, getting you ready to face whatever situation started to trigger the stress. These physiological "enhancements" are really useful when we need to run for our lives. But on a daily basis, it will eventually result in body system breakdowns.
Stress can cause very real mental and physical changes that, left undisturbed, will begin to take a toll on our minds and bodies.
To increase your health, recognize the early warning symptoms of stress and take steps to deal with your sources of stress.
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