Long-term Stress is Toxic

Studies are revealing that living with long-term stress leads to heart problems, type-2 diabetes, impaired immunity (more infections, colds, etc), worsening depression, lethargy, and gatrointesinal problems. These people tend to smoke more, exercise less, and eat more poorly. Of course, these habits are also hard on your health, and increase your stress.

Stress comes from internal and external sources. Determining which one is the true source is not as easy as it sounds, as we often respond to external stress by increasing our internal stress!

There are a number of things you can do to reduce your stress. Try several of these options:

• The Message: pay attention to what stress might be trying to tell you about yourself. It might be your own unrealistic expectations, beliefs or attitudes. Maybe you need to enlist the help of someone else to carry you through a period of difficulty?
• Verbalise:find a good friend, family member or someone else you trust. Express from your heart what you are experiencing in this stress. Share more about yourself than you do about others. Having at least one positive active friendship reduces stress and improves brain function.
• Spirituality: spend time praying or meditating. Seriously! It helps. Quieting our thoughts and breathing deeply helps to kick in our para-sympathetic system to lower our heart rate and pressure, increase helpful brain waves, connect us to a source of energy and empowerment, and more.
• Nature: spend time in nature. Trees release phytoncides that help protect them from insects and rot, but that also appear to boost our immune system, elevate our moods (lower anxiety, anger, depression and stress), and even help us fight cancer!  See a CBC series about nature's benefits to our brains. A variety of woodsy essential oils can also offer this to us, but use only pure-therapeutic grade oils! Ask us about these.
• Exercise: get enough rigorous exercise, ideally outdoors away from traffic. Most of us lack sufficient exercise, leading to physical and emotional health issues, brain decline, reduced life expectancy, weight gain and a lot more.
• Yoga and similar movements focus our minds, tone our bodies, and reduce our stress levels.
• Music, if chosen well, can help our brains to calm and relax
• Sleep is crucial. If you don't get enough quality sleep you will likely eat more sweets, function more poorly, and stress yourself even more. We can suggest natural sleep aids.
• Diet likely needs to be examined. Sugar stresses your body! Caffeine may give you a temporary lift but make your situation worse. Too much carbohydrate intake, especially white, is unhelpful. Vegetables are extremely important. See dietary suggestions here.
• Massages, even from a friend, can really help. Most of us are touch-deprived
• Love-making in a loving relationship helps us to reduce stress and increase the release of cell and health-boosting dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin and growth hormones. These make our cells function optimally, which leads to  exuberant people who glow!
• Hugs and social support improve your immune system. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that hugging people were 60% less likely to get sick from exposure to a cold virus.
• People who are happily married live longer than those who are only living common-law or single, and especially those who are unhappy.
• Many essential oils are reputed to lower stress levels. For safety-sake only purchase pure, therapeutic-grade oils. Ask us about which ones you could try.

We can professionally help you to make the changes needed to greatly reduce your stress and thus live a healthier and more satisfying life utilising a variety of methods including Emotional Freedom Technique ("Tapping") and the Raindrop Technique.

Ian Gartshore is also a Registered Clinical Counsellor with Shore Counselling Services, with over 20 years of clinical, effective and professional service.

Why suffer, injure your health and shorten your life? Now is the time to make the change. Do contact us.

One of the most common, solvable, and most common sources of stress is from our primary relationships -those with our partner/spouse and family.

Trying to "sweep issues under the carpet" is as bad as frequently fighting: they lead to long-term problems. These spill in to many other areas, such as children acting out, health issues (see the section above), sleep problems, irritability, anger, depression, anxiety, difficulty with ability to focus, forgetfulness, dementia  and more. Relationships are more important than anything else (apart from food, water, shelter and exercise).

The sooner you get help the better. Avoid damaging the relationship further, and perhaps having to pay significantly as a result of separating or divorcing. Instead, become more productive, a better parent and friend to many, and enjoy a higher quality of life. Then you can enjoy wellness in all of its facets!

Ian Gartshore is a fully trained Marriage and Family Therapist, and a supervisor of new therapists. See more information at Shore Counselling Services.