Dealing with stress

Stress encourages your body to release the hormone cortisol.

This all comes back to our natural evolution. When our caveman ancestors encountered a threat, it was fight or flight and our body evolved to generate the needed hormones. We are a product of that evolution but now need to deal with different threats. Our body still reacts the same way but the fight or flight response no longer applies.

This is not good for your general health and can shorten your life. It is important you develop strategies to deal with the inevitable stress you will have.

I can remember a time in life when I was trying to quit smoking and decided it would be best to wait until I did not have any stress going on. To my surprise, that day never came.

We all have stress in various forms and we all have our ways of dealing with it. Exercise is by far the best and I found walking worked for me. When I was going through exceptional stressful times I found walking would burn away the tension and the further I walked the better I felt. However, this may not be the solution for everyone. Some may join clubs or organizations that take them away from their day-to-day problems. Some may even turn to the bottle or drugs but this will do little to get rid of those bad hormones and will probably shorten your life in the long run.