There are many ways that unrelieved stress can hurt your body.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time on them.  My purpose is just to make you aware of what is happening to you when you have unrelieved stress in your life. 

 The mind cannot tell the difference between physical danger and emotional stress and will react the same way.  If your mind perceives that you are in danger, it will immediately release stress hormones into your blood stream that instantly cause many physical changes.  It is preparing your body to run or fight.

If you are in physical danger this is a good thing because it can save your life.  When the danger is over, the stress hormones are eliminated from your system and you body gets back to normal.  The problem with emotional stress, especially unrelieved stress, is that the stress hormones are not eliminated.  What was meant to save your life in the short term, can kill you if left in your body long term!

One serious response to unrelieved stress is increased blood pressure.  The heart is a pump, whose only job is to push the blood out through the blood vessels, taking oxygen and nutrients to all the cells of the body.

With increased stress, the heart beats stronger and faster, getting the blood out to your arms and legs, so that you can run or fight (to save your life).  In a state of unrelieved stress, this extra constant pounding creates more pressure on the blood vessels.  If there is a blockage or weakness in the arterial walls, the increased blood pressure can cause heart attacks, strokes and aneurisms.

By the way, do you know when most heart attacks take place? - On Monday morning at 9:00 am.  You think they might be work-stress related?  Don’t ask me to document this because I didn’t write down where I got the information, but it is something to think about, isn’t it?

Do you know what a stroke or aneurism is?

A stroke is just a burst blood vessel in the brain.  An aneurism is basically the same thing but it can happen anywhere in the body.   A weakness in the muscle of an artery wall will cause the artery wall to pop out just like a balloon.  When it gets weak enough or it gets banged, it can pop, just like the balloon.

It is pretty sobering to think of the number of people that are having heart attacks in our culture.  It is important to monitor your blood pressure on a regular basis.  This is pretty easy to do because so many of the large grocery stores have blood pressure monitoring machines in their pharmacy department now.  

If you have elevated blood pressure, you should see your doctor and get serious about reducing your stress.  The most effective stress-reducting tool I’ve ever found is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).  I encourage you to visit my website: www.SherylStanton.com to learn more.