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Understanding Stress: Symptoms, Signs, Causes, and Effects

Understanding Stress: Symptoms, Signs, Causes, and Effects
What is stress? The Body’s Stress Response When you perceive a threat, your nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones rouse the body for emergency action. Your heart pounds faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure rises, breath quickens, and your senses become sharper. These physical changes increase your strength and stamina, speed your reaction time, and enhance your focus—preparing you to either fight or flee from the danger at hand. Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. The stress response is the body’s way of protecting you. The stress response also helps you rise to meet challenges. But beyond a certain point, stress stops being helpful and starts causing major damage to your health, your mood, your productivity, your relationships, and your quality of life. How do you respond to stress? Stress doesn’t always look stressful Causes of stress Related:  The Psychology of Emotionsreadings

List of Emotions Causes of stress Explanations > Stress > Causes of stress General causes | Life causes | Stress at work | So what? Stress affects us all. If you can spot the symptoms, you can manage them. General causes Threat A perceived threat will lead a person to feel stressed. Generally speaking, any threat to needs is likely to lead to stress being experienced. Fear Threat can lead to fear, which again leads to stress. Uncertainty When we are not certain, we are unable to predict, and hence feel we are not in control, and hence may feel fear or feel threatened by that which is causing the uncertainty. Cognitive dissonance When there is a gap between what we do and what we think, then we experience cognitive dissonance, which is felt as stress. Dissonance also occurs when we cannot meet our commitments. Life causes There are many causes of stress in life including: Stress at work The UK's Health and Safety Executive lists six key stress factors: Other stress indicators at work include: See also

A Surprising Nutrient That Helps Kids Sleep Sleeplessness among children is common, occurring in as many as 40% of kids. Sleep deprivation can crescendo into a variety of other problems, including fatigue, declining school performance, depression, behavioral issues, weight gain and even poor general health. An Oxford University study recently published in the Journal of Sleep Research reveals findings that provide valuable insights about causes of sleeplessness in children. More importantly, the study sheds light on a nutrition-oriented approach to improving sleep. The researchers evaluated the sleep patterns of 395 children aged 7 to 9. In addition, they performed a blood analysis on these children to measure their levels of DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid. As had been reported in earlier studies, the number of children having trouble with sleep is a significant 30 to 40%. The study revealed that children who received the DHA showed not only better quality sleep, but significantly fewer and shorter night-wakings.

List of Emotions - Human Emotional Chart This list of human emotions plots the descending spiral of life from full vitality of the energy of life and high consciousness through half-vitality and half-consciousness down to death. This list of emotions chart also enables to both predict and understand human behavior in all manifestations, making possible to predict the behavior of a potential spouse, a business partner, employee or friend - before you commit to a relationship. Numbers assigned to this list of emotions chart are arbitrary to show a relative degree or intensity of perceived emotion of happiness in accordance to available creative power or life's energy to the individual. Happiness encompasses a whole range of emotions from certain energy frequency level (4.0 enthusiasm level in our chart below) and up. - What we call the Happiness Domain. Neuroscientist Richard J. Human Emotions Frequency Scale Of course, there are no "holes" in the emotional scale. The Law of Attraction Emotional Energy - Visible Light Energy

Stress Management-Causes of Stress Why do I need to register or sign in for WebMD to save? We will provide you with a dropdown of all your saved articles when you are registered and signed in. A lot of things can cause stress. You may feel stress when you go on a job interview, take a test, or run a race. Personal problems that can cause stress Your health, especially if you have a chronic illness such as heart disease, diabetes, or arthritis Emotional problems, such as anger you can't express, depression, grief, guilt, or low self-esteem Your relationships, such as having problems with your relationships or feeling a lack of friendships or support in your life Major life changes, such as dealing with the death of a parent or spouse, losing your job, getting married, or moving to a new city Stress in your family, such as having a child, teen, or other family member who is under stress, or being a caregiver to a family member who is elderly or who has health problems Conflicts with your beliefs and values.

Physical Activity in Schools is Essential to Reversing Childhood Obesity | Nate Whitman For those working to reverse the trend in childhood obesity, there is significant cause for excitement. After three decades of steady increases, obesity rates have, for the first time, remained level in nearly every state in the nation. The news, reported last month by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is indeed cause for celebration. However, the current obesity statistics, particularly those among children, remain dramatic and concerning. Over the past 40 years, rates of obesity have doubled in 2- to 5-year-olds, quadrupled in 6-to 11-year-olds, and tripled in 12- to 19-year-olds. As we look for reasons to be hopeful and signs that this battle can indeed be won, we see creativity and innovation fueling a growing grassroots movement that is focused on increasing quality physical activity for our kids. Our schools are focused primarily on academic preparation, and rightly so. Let's Move! Boosting physical activity alone will not solve the childhood obesity epidemic.

Human Emotions Chart - Free, Comprehensive Chart Of Emotions Top 10 causes of stress and how to beat them Not having enough time Frequently you can be running around all day trying to balance all your tasks at work and at home, yet still not manage to tick everything off your list. Sometimes this can be due to the demands that are placed upon you being unrealistic, but often it simply comes down to poor time management and not setting your priorities. Solution: Learn to manage your time more effectively It may sound obvious, but better time management really can reduce your stress. Unhealthy lifestyle While some people might adopt an unhealthy lifestyle due to lack of time — for example by turning to fast food because they haven’t time to eat properly — others may have an unhealthy lifestyle because they are already stressed — for example by turning to smoking as coping mechanisms. Solution: Make small changes towards a healthier lifestyle Having a healthy diet, doing regular exercise, and getting enough sleep means that your body will be able to cope with the stress that is thrown your way.

Why Kids Shouldn t Specialize in One Sport "It [specialization] is one of the worst developments imaginable at the youth sports level. Physically, emotionally, developmentally, it's a huge, huge mistake. And it absolutely is happening. It is sweeping the country." -- Bruce Svare, Ph.D., director of the National Institute for Sports Reform By Deirdre Wilson Turning 10 is a big milestone for kids. Yet, that's exactly what's happening for more and more young children, despite objections from physicians, child-development experts and even youth sports advocates. Kids as young as 9 or 10 are forgoing other sports to focus on one athletic interest, such as soccer, hockey or gymnastics. "I'm seeing kids having to choose, at age 10, whether to play baseball or lacrosse," says Richard Ginsburg, Ph.D., a sports psychologist and co-author of the new book Whose Game Is It, Anyway? But that's not all that Ginsburg and other health-care providers are seeing. But the push to specialize in one sport during childhood has become more pervasive.

Recognize these emotions The Passion and Reason 15 The book Passion and Reason provides clear definitions and descriptions of 15 separate emotions. These are: Anger — Conspecific threat, trespass, loss attributed to an agent, unjust insult, thwarted goals, plea for justice Envy — Desiring other's stature objects Jealousy — Threat to sexual access. The Rationalized 22 The book The Cognitive Structure of Emotions describes these 22 distinct emotions in an organized structure: Appraisal of an event: Joy — (contented, cheerful, delighted, ecstatic, elated, euphoric, feeling good, glad, happy, joyful, jubilant, pleasantly surprised, pleased) — Pleased by the appraisal of an event Distress — (depressed, distressed, displeased, dissatisfied, distraught, feeling bad, feeling uncomfortable, grief, homesick, lonely, lovesick, miserable, regret, sad, shock, uneasy, unhappy, upset) — displeased by the appraisal of an event Fortune of others: Appraisal of an agent's action: Appraisal of an Object: Compound Emotions: And Also:

Stress Symptoms, Causes, Signs, Types, Management and Treatment by MedicineNet Stress, Hormones, and Weight Gain Most people admit that when they're under stress, healthy eating habits can be difficult to maintain. Whether eating to fill an emotional need or grabbing fast food simply because there's no time to prepare something healthy, a stressed-out lifestyle is rarely a healthy one. Stress facts Stress is a normal part of life that can either help us learn and grow or can cause us significant problems. What is stress? Stress is simply a fact of nature -- forces from the inside or outside world affecting the individual. In general, stress is related to both external and internal factors. Stress has driven evolutionary change (the development and natural selection of species over time). Picture of some of the areas of the body that are affected by stress Man is the most adaptive creature on the planet because of the evolution of the human brain, especially the part called the neo-cortex. Medically Reviewed by a Doctor on 9/4/2013 Patient Comments

Runners and musicians have better-connected brains than the rest of us Better brain connectivity could be yet another benefit of running, because researchers have found that a good run can affect the brain in much the same way as playing a musical instrument. MRI scans have revealed improved functional connectivity in the brains of runners who took part in the new study, showing different regions of the brain were more closely connected than usual, and more in sync with each other. The team from the University of Arizona says the findings could help us understand how repetitive tasks, such as running or practicing the piano, alter brain functionality, as give us new insight into how best to fight cognitive decline later in life. "One of the things that drove this collaboration was that there has been a recent proliferation of studies, over the last 15 years, that have shown that physical activity and exercise can have a beneficial impact on the brain, but most of that work has been in older adults," says one of the team, anthropologist David Raichlen.

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