YOU have a very important interview to make so you jump off from your bed early, take a hasty shower, gulp your breakfast, climb into your car and drive away.
You glance at your watch; it’s already 7:45 am. Your appointment is at 8:30. Will you make it? You hope traffic out there is not bad.
You turn a corner and you swear. Before you is a long line of vehicles moving at a snail’s pace, stopping every 20 yards or so. You’ll not make your appointment at the scheduled time.
You swear again, grit your teeth, kick the carpet under your feet and fret. Webster defines fret as: “to gnaw; to chafe; to corrode; to wear away; to eat away by rubbing.”
That’s what fretting does to you, to your nerves, to your heart and to other vital organs of your body, for fretting is stress.
Stress has emerged as one of the most serious health issues of the 21st century, as it makes people around the world vulnerable to many diseases, according to a recent report released by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
“The kind of tense and stressful working environment seems to have become accepted as natural will have to be addressed urgently if the changes through which the world is moving are not to become overwhelming,” the United Nations labor agency said.
In recent years, many companies all over the globe have felt the financial costs of stress directly through compensation claims in the courts. In Japan, for instance, there has been an increasing number of compensation claims for so-called karoshi or death from overwork.
Dr. Hans Seyle, the world’s premier stress researcher, said the term “stress” came from the Old French and Middle English word “distress.” He said that the first syllable eventually was lost through slurring as when modern kids turned “because” into “cause.”
“In the light of our investigations,” Seyle writes in his book, Stress Without Distress, “the true meaning of the two words became totally different despite their common ancestry, just as in correct usage we distinguish because (since) and cause (reason). Activity associated with stress may be pleasant or unpleasant; distress is always disagreeable.”
Seyle argued that stress is the body’s nonspecific response to any demand made upon it. “Sitting in a dentist’s chair is stressful. But so is exchanging a passionate kiss with a lover—after all, your pulse speeds up, your breathing quickens, your heartbeat soars,” he explains. “Yet, who in the world would forgo such a pleasurable pastime [kissing] simply because of stress? Our aim shouldn’t be to avoid stress completely, which would be impossible, but to recognize our typical response to stress and then to modulate our lives in accordance with it.”
Seyle said as long as human beings are capable of handling stress, it is a very good driving force. However, when stress really gets a person —which happens when he grinds his teeth and starts telling himself things that upset him—it changes into distress, which every person is trying to avoid.
Stress, when it changes to distress, can render a person vulnerable to many diseases that accelerate the rate of aging. Some health experts have claimed that distress is a factor in asthma, arthritis, ulcers and other ailments.
In most cases, distress is not the actual cause of physical illness, but rather it picks on the “little guy,” making the weakest part of a person even weaker. “We all have organs or parts of our bodies that are more vulnerable than others,” Seyle explains in his book. “And distress attacks where resistance is lowest.”
In the stomach, for instance, the excretion of gastric juices increases under stress. The higher acidity cause indigestion; stomach muscles knot; tension hampers the movement of foods out of the stomach, resulting in more irritation. Repeated distress situations will ultimately lead to an ulcer.
Men with stressful jobs have higher than usual blood pressure when they sleep, suggesting that such difficult work permanently damages their circulatory systems, according to a study presented at a meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in New York City a couple of years back.
The study was conducted by Dr. Joseph Schwartz and others from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. They surveyed 373 people who work in nine different places in New York City. The researchers found that people in highly demanding jobs with little autonomy had significantly higher blood pressures than those in less taxing situations, including people with stressful jobs who could make their own decision and those in easy going positions who had little opportunity to think for themselves.
The study discovered that people with high-stress, low-freedom jobs had blood pressures that averaged 137/85, against about 129/83 for others. The difference grows progressively greater as people get older, the study noted. Normal blood pressure is 120/80.
Generally, blood pressure fluctuates over the course of the day, depending on a person’s activity, and this may be harmless. But for those in the high-strain position, blood pressures tend to stay high. Their readings were above those of other people’s while at home in the evening and even as they slept.
“No one can say which came first —the job stress or the high blood pressure,” Schwartz says.
Stress also inhibits a healthy and happy sex life. The connection between distress and problems, such as frigidity and impotence, is known to every psychiatrist. More often than not, sex-related distress commences with a seeming failure or fear of failure, which leads to worry the next time. Relaxation, so important for enjoyable sex, is incompatible with worry. Result: repeated failure. Thus, the situation repeats itself, becoming even more serious.
According to psychiatrists, it is very difficult to convince a distressed person that no physical problem is interfering with his or her sexual fulfilment. Lack of knowledge about sex, about the human body and about proper methods to handle distress contributes to the problem, making sex not only enjoyable but frightening. In women under stress, the monthly cycle becomes irregular or stops completely. In men, the sexual urge and the sperm cell formation are diminished.
Stress can also trigger accidents, according to ILO. As one investigator puts it: “Of all the factors related to the causation of accidents, [what] only emerged as a common denominator [was] a high level of stress at the time the accident occurred. A person under stress is an accident waiting to happen.”
Medical practitioners reveal that many people develop stress because they have “tuned out” and ignored earlier signals, which indicated trouble ahead. “We can’t deal with stress unless we recognize and admit its presence. We must listen to our body. We must listen to our feelings, too. They will also tell us when we need some relief,” Seyle suggests.
One way to bust stress is to know who you are. “For many people, their job is a big part of their identity —which is fine to a point,” explains Dr. David Posen, a Canadian stress-management consultant and author of Staying Afloat When the Water Gets Rough. “But such close identification can lead to problems. Losing your job is bad enough, but if your self-image is tied up in the job you’ve just lost, you can also lose a sense of who you are. Similarly, if your self-image is bound to your professional performance, a bad day at the office can send you home feeling worthless.”
To those who over identify with their role, Posen suggests a motto taught to him by a Harvard University gastroenterologist, Dr. Matthew Budd. It goes this way, “Your job is what you do, not who you are.”
Dr. Paul Rosch, president of the American Institute of Stress at New York Medical College, suggests that you work on your attitude toward stress. “I think the single most important point you can make about stress is that in most cases it’s not what’s out there that’s the problem, it’s how you react to it,” he says. And how a person reacts is determined by how he perceives a particular stress.