Yes. Whenever we are in a state of stress, our body produces a stress hormone called Cortisol and the body goes into a defensive mode of either flight or fight or freeze. It initially prefers the first. In either mode, the Cortisol hormone produced by the body suppresses digestion and affects immunity.
Because it suppresses digestion, prolonged stress causes digestive disorders, one of which is diabetes. It also results in another disorder i.e., blood pressure.
Typically, our body should come back to normal state once the stress situation gets normalized. But in today’s world, we are constantly under stress. As a result, the cortisol level in our body always remains high. This state also affects sleep and our immune system suffers for lack of sleep.
Does it mean to say that I should not take any stress at all? In fact, stress is a part of daily life. There could be stress relating to inter-personal relationship, job related stress, financial stress, social stress, the latest being social media stress etc. As long as we are able to handle the daily stress in a reasonable way, it will not affect our health. But if the stress continues to rule our life, then the results could be disastrous.
How to we deal with the daily stress situation? It depends on the circumstances and the person concerned. One way of dealing with stress is to divert your attention to other tasks whenever a stressful thought comes to mind. If you learn to keep your mind calm in stressful situations, dealing with stress will become easy.Deep breathing and meditations are quite useful in controling stress.
In my case I was working 12-14 hours a day handling HR related issues of a large organization. The situation was so stressful, that without a proper stress buster, it would have busted me. So, I found a stress buster. After my day’s work was over, I made it a practice to play either table tennis or carroms with my colleagues whatever be the time before I headed for home and sometimes would reach home by midnight. But I made sure that my family life was not affected by the stressful situation at work place. I never discussed the office tensions at home although my wife was working in the same organization.
You have to find your own stress buster. Be it be listening to music, reading, watching a movie, watching a comedy show, talking to friends, going on an outing with family or friends and so on. The best way to destress is get connected to nature. Nature has the power to heal you. What is that which enables you to reduce your stress? Latch on to it. You will find the cortisol level in your body coming down which helps you to live a healthy life.
Let's take another situation. There is a fight between husband and wife on any issue. Whenever a fight takes place, anger sets it and anger is something which triggers production of high Cortisol in our body. With the mind racing with thoughts and the high Cortisol level in the body, it is a combination which triggers changes in the body metabolism. If this combination is not brought to normal at the earliest, it leads to a lot of negative thoughts in the mind and affects the digestive system leading to disorders. If one of the partners comes to terms and apologizes, the situation comes back to normal. Otherwise, it remains a high alert situation and a smallest action, triggers rude or sometimes even violent behavior.
The Nature Connect taught at DFF Residential Camp is another important tool to reduce stress. Talk to the five elements of nature viz., earth, sky, water, air and space. Pour out your worries and tensions to them and pray for the strength to forgive others and to ask for forgiveness from others. Expressing gratitude to the creator for every small thing available to us will go a long way in keeping us happy and peaceful.
Each one will have to find the root cause of what is causing stress and whether the situation can be remedied. Early action will lead to normalization of the body functions and prevent any health hazards.
