I think it WAS stress and a combination of bad nutrition/dehydration. Put those three in a vat, mix it up with being 18 points up at the half, and... you got it. To stress me more?!?!?!? I want LESS stress!
One of those rare mements when I completely agree with you, bigtexxx. Stress most definitely has a deleterious affect on one's health.
I was pretty stressed out once, to the point that I gave myself shingles(aka Chicken Pox). I had NO idea you could stress yourself to the point of reactivating the dormant virus. I always thought of Shingles being an Elderly person's health issue, when the immune systems are weak. I was 28.
recent research centered on the laboratory work of Elizabeth Blackburn's team (yes, in SF) has shown that stress influences human beings at the cellular level, mimicking accelerated aging. It's fascinating, and disturbing. They have also found the effects can be reversed if people embrace various relaxation techniques, etc. It's an incredibly real and important topic. I will post more after a slew of meetings.
I never did and used bud as a stress relief all the time but after 8+ years of smoking it just recently changed with me. I would get so paranoid and not even enjoy it. Havent touched any in about 2 months now, feeling great.
almost every single one of my migraine headache triggers eventually correlates back to stress. whether it is from lack of sleep, eating poorly(or dehydration as listed above), planning and packing for a flight out of town, or any combination of the above. I have to be able to be in control of those variables. I have trying mindful breathing exercises in the last few years, they have been helpful.
Gary Kubiak needs to take a step back and hang em up. The guy has enough money to do something else other than coach. Not worth it when it stresses you out to the point you collapse. Most people cannot just walk away from their job, but the bigger picture of happiness and good health can be over looked. I have changed my diet with amazing results and suggest others do the same.
I think the idea is that actually *coping* with stress instead of masking it is the way to go. In the study I mentioned, there was a fascinating and surprising result. They investigated the cellular damage for a group of single mothers with incredibly and chronically ill children (very stressful situation). Did *all* of these mothers show the cellular damage? No. The group of mothers who (under a psych. survey) would fit the profile of a person under stress definitely showed the damage. The mothers who had the same circumstances but were finding ways to actually cope with it, and reported that they thought they were managing the situation, showed much less damage. One of the original studies: http://www.pnas.org/content/101/49/17312.short Telomeres are the ends of your chromosomes, a lot like the caplets on a shoe lace. when these start to erode, that's basically aging. So measuring your telomere length (which could someday be as common as measuring your cholesterol), is an indication of whether you are experiencing extra wear and tear on your body at the cellular level (or not). So, by coping, I mean that in the follow-up studies to the article I posted there, scientists have found that exercise is a big contributor to negating feelings of stress (duh, science, thanks). So too meditative breathing, healthy eating, etc. Basically all that commie hippie crap is good for your cells, according to commie hippie scientists.
my chest becomes inflamed when i get too stressed, which has actually happened again over this weekend in preparation for my finance test this week.
Stress was literally killing me. My doctor was so concerned she told me to take a sabbatical leave. My last day of work was last friday. Of course my old company wants me back when I'm ready, but I already have other interviews lined up. Watching sportscenter all day was amazing but we'll see what happens next.
In the wildland fire world, we spend a lot of time thinking about stress. We operate in an environment where you have to make good, quick decisions, communicate well, and work within a team while under enormous stress, often of the death and destruction variety. All of our training assignments, classes, and mentoring as well as a good chunk of our culture (like how to talk on the radio, how to give briefings, etc.) are aimed at helping people perform under stress. We as an organization believe you have to learn to make decisions under stress and one way you learn is by failing. When you're under stress, the most common reaction is to shut down both physically and mentally. We try to get folks to understand where that point is (within a controlled situation) with the idea that once you understand that, you can feel it coming on and take steps to keep going. You then expand your envelope of stress and are able to handle more of it. You also aren't as afraid of failing because you have been there and you realize most of your colleagues have been there too. That's liberating and removes a layer of stress that probably weighs on most people. In many of our classes, we run huge simulations just to evaluate your decision-making and communications skills under stress. Lots of people drop out and only a few make it to the top level. It typically takes someone about 20-25 years of experience and training before they get to make decisions on large, complex incidents. I often get the feeling that many organizations treat stress as if you were a beginning skier who was taken to the top of the toughest black run and then told to head to the bottom. You may get there, but it won't be as easy or injury-free as it could have been had you become very good on green and blue slopes and easier blacks before tackling the big one. Organizations need to understand this and take care of their own by bringing them along at an appropriate pace. I could not do some of the things I now do 20 years ago. No way. Experience obviously helps, but you also have to be mature enough to be honest with yourself about what you're experiencing and how you need to mitigate it. We also like to identify our stresses. If you can name the stress, the thinking goes, you can figure out how to deal with it. If I know a fire is about to blow up and I don't have the people on hand to do everything that is needed, I can't dwell on that idea. Instead, I have to break down what is needed, prioritize those (first priority: are any little kids in danger? If not, it can wait or get partially done), and pick the things that the people I have can accomplish. It also helps that we absolutely take time every day to plan for the next day. Regardless of what is happening, we stop, think, and plan. It's when you are so rushed that things snowball and you lose that perspective of what is important and you can't think through your situation that stress really inhibits your ability to function. I went through possibly my most stressful assignment this year on the Yarnell Hill Fire where 19 Hot Shots died. I made it a point of sitting down with a critical incident stress debriefer before I left AZ. I wanted to leave as much of that stress there as possible and not take it home to Mrs. rimrocker and the kids. I think it helped and let me tell you there is certainly no shame in seeking help. The critical stress guy said there are three ways to deal with stress, but none exclusively: you have to cry it out, sweat it out, and talk it out. Drowning it doesn't work. So, identify your stress, prioritize, don't be afraid to fail but recognize when you are about to, and remember to cry, talk, and sweat.
