Stress and Health

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What is Health?

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http://www.almadartebio.org/health-page/week-august-6-to-august-10

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What is Stress?

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Stress is the response of your body and mind to being challenged or threatened.
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• Positive stress is eustress
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  • awkward situations that help us grow, they cause stress but the result is beneficial for our overall well being
  • getting to know someone
  • telling someone that you like them and getting to know them more
  • networking and connecting with possible employers
  • competitive sports
  • public presentations
  • developing new skills
  • preparing for bigger goals

 

• Negative stress is distress
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  • can be debilitating and reinforce fear, when we are not getting our needs met
  • loss of a job or job insecurity
  • loss of home
  • loss of relationships
  • hunger
  • problems at school or work
  • bullying or drama
  • sleep problems

 

• Stressor: event or situation that causes stress 
  
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  • Any change: some changes are harder to adapt to than others and some changes are harder to adapt to for one person vs another
  • Prior experience with a stressor helps us adapt but it is best to find ways to make like less stressful.
  • Each person gets to decide what stresses them out, nobody can tell them that their experience of stress is not valid 

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Stressors

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• Major life changes
  
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  • Graduating from high school
  • Experiencing death of a parent 
  • Going through parents’ divorce
  • Experiencing remarriage of parent
  • Having a newborn sibling
  • Having a serious illness
  • Moving to a new school district
  • Failing a grade
  • Being accepted to college
  • Breaking up with boyfriend or girlfriend
  • Having parent lose their job
  • Learning you were adopted
  • Not making a team
  • Being elected to student government
  • Being recognized for an achievement
  • Leaving home for college or a job

• Catastrophes
  
• • It is and event that destroys lives and may destroy property
  • Natural disasters such as hurricane, flood, earthquake, tornadoes
  • Violent crimes and war
  • A person who experiences a catastrophe may deal with psychological effects for years after the event 

• Everyday problems
  
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  • Minor but frequent everyday events
  • Misplacing keys
  • Missing your bus
  • Too much homework
  • Disagreements with family members
  • Pressure to succeed
  • Competition  

• Environmental problems 
  
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  • Conditions in your immediate surroundings that increase your level of stress
  • Overcrowded bus
  • Traffic
  • Noise if you live near an airport
  • Poor air quality
  • Contaminated water
  • Heat wave or blizzard, unusual weather
  • Living in an overcrowded space

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How Stress Affects you

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Stages of Stress:

• Alarm Stage: during the alarm stage, your body releases adrenaline into your blood, it causes an immediate change in your body: heart rate speeds up, muscles tense up, breathing speeds up, your attention narrows and you focus on the stressor. (Life hack [as long as alarm stage is not alerting you to something that you need to react to to save your life]: look at your surroundings and notice four items, take note of sounds around you, take your mind off the stressor)

 

• Resistance Stage: you feel that it is all good because the alarm stage is gone but you still experience the stress, you try to adapt to it and go by your day.  Sometimes we react with bottled up, accumulated stress and [small things] set us off.  Your body is working hard to cope during the resistance stage and you may be inexplicably irritated, tired, and less able to handle additional stress.  Traffic is a common cause of this state or resistance.

 

• Exhaustion Stage: Your body can no longer keep up with the demands placed on it, depleted emotional and or physical state.  this happens after a long time of resistance stage, it can happen when we lose a loved one.  It is not permanent but it can last years.

Signs of stress, pg. 63:

• Stomachaches: can occur in stomach, small or large intestine.  Stress disrupts the movement of food through the digestive system.  Food might move too fast or too slow and you might feel gas, cramps, diarrhea, or constipation.  Stress increases stomach acid making an ulcer more likely to occur.

 

• ​Breathing problems: Asthma may be triggered by stress, it also increases breathing rate and heart rate which can least to feeling short of breath.

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• Headaches: Tension in muscles around scalp, face, and neck can cause aches, a migraine begins when blood vessels in the brain and scalp narrow which limits the supply of oxygen to the brain. You can keep a log to see when you experience aches.

• Lowered resistance to disease: Stress may lower your immune system, During the alarms stage some parts of the immune system function better than usual to protect you but prolonged stress can slow the immune system down.
  

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• Heart disease: Your heart can suffer from prolonged or frequent stress because your blood vessels narrow and your blood pressure rises.

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Good Responses to Stress

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Responses to stress: 
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• Optimism to overcome pessimism
• Aiming for perfection
• Resilience

Time management and coping:
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• It can help us feel less stressed out if we make a schedule and goals to work on. 

• Break bigger projects into smaller steps and schedule when to complete the parts of your project

• Mental rehearsal- visualize the work getting done, practice the event without actually doing the event

• Reduce tension- activities that help us reduce tension vary
  • exercise, walking, yoga
  • watching tv or reading
  • reflecting

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​Things get easier with Practice