Stressball, V; AKA - Stress Can Apparently Be Ironic
This post was actually written on Tuesday evening … I like to do the future-post thing!
Today’s lecture in PHE 363: Chronic & Communicable Diseases was about the horrible things that stress does to your body.
Guess who left the class more stressed out than when she walked into it?
Oh, yeah, that would have been me!
This lecture is thanks to Dr. Claire Wheeler, MD, PhD. Dr. Wheeler has sparked my intense curiosity in chronic disease connections and I’m excited to see what else the class will hold for me! I am going to spread it out over a couple of days since the material was pretty dense today!
*70-80% of all illnesses are stress-related
*70-90% of all physician office visits are for stress-related problems
*54% of Americans are concerned about their stress levels in daily life
*Stress is “the state arising with the individuals perceives that the demands placed on them exceed (or threaten to exceed) their capacity to cope, and therefore threaten their wellbeing … conscious thought need not be involved” - Martin, 1997, page 118
*90% of Americans are stressed 1-2 times per week, while 25% of Americans experience stress every single day
*the health consequences of stress include heart disease, obesity & diabetes, musculo-skeletal problems, mental illness, substance abuse, infectious disease and traumatic injuries.
*with regards to stress & heart disease, there is an increased mortality from heart attacks on Mondays and during the first week of the month (I quit Mondays a long time ago.)
*with regards to stress & depression, they are directly related! Prolonged chronic stress can lead to depression as both involve feelings of loss of control & predictability, and major stressful events (divorce, anyone?) often precede depressive episodes (I fully agree with this!)
*with regards to stress & HIV/AIDS, your risk for developing AIDS (from HIV), increases between 2- & 3-fold!
*with regards to stress & wound-healing, it has been found that stressed medical students take longer to heal and on top of all that, exam stress prolongs the healing process
*with regards to stress & cancers, severe life stressors (including divorce/separation, death of a close relative & death of a husband) are associated with higher risks of breast cancers (great, just what I need, another risk!
Tomorrow I will continue the “lecture” with more information about how horrible I’m treating my own body!
mental & emotional health, stress, Claire Wheeler, Portland State University, public health education
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:24 am
Man, this is stressing me out just reading about it.
Seriously, though, I’m pretty much stressed every day. Ugh.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Crys, wait until tomorrow’s entry about what it starts doing to our bodies INSIDE, not just mentally! Eek!
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Yikes. What stress does to the outside is bad enough.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:04 am
[...] I’ll be spending some time continuing yesterday’s Stressball V post. I am both prepping for the quiz (all this stuff will be on my quiz on Thursday at 2pm, wish [...]