Avoid the stress over stress
Just thinking that stress is threatening your health makes you twice as much more vulnerable to the risk of a heart attack than those who do not think stress is causing them any physical harm.
According to a study published online in June 2013 in the European Heart Journal, a team of French researchers asked the participants (data collected on more than 7,000 adults taking part in a British study of London-based civil servants since 1985) if they felt that stress had affected their health.
Information was also compiled about their other parameters (smoking, drinking, diet and physical activity, blood pressure, diabetes status, weight, marital status, age, sex, ethnicity and socioeconomic status).
After 18 years, 352 participants had heart attacks or had died as result of a heart attack. After analyzing the data, the researchers found that the participants who reported they felt that stress was significantly affecting their health had double the risk of heart attacks as those who said stress had no effect on their health.
Even when the data was adjusted for other risk factors, the additional heart attack risk was still 49 percent higher compared to participants who didn’t feel that stress was affecting their health.
Stress has been linked to all the leading causes of death including cardiovascular disease, cancer, accidents and suicide.
Although we cannot eliminate the daily stressors, but what we can do is to find healthy ways to manage stress.
Avoiding the stress over stress is important. Once you recognize stress, you should everything to to minimize its impacts by having healthy diet, increasing physical activity, practicing stress management techniques such as breathing, meditation, yoga and biofeedback.
And finally, remember to just laugh the stress off.
Dr. Ajay Sati.
