Living in the Age of Stress
You have probably heard many awful stories about the health conditions of the past—stories of plague, famine, and poverty.
We look back on these times with a sense of relief that these hardships are a thing of the past for most people, at least those living in the developed countries of the world. Yet, even while we have escaped many of these horrors, we seem to have invented our own kind of epidemic, and it is brought about entirely through our own choices. It is the scourge called stress.
Stress has been linked to almost every illness of modern society. The list of associated diseases is staggering: heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, asthma, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia the list goes on and on. And on top of that, there are a host of negative habits associated with the stress response—activities people do to find artificial relief, habits that throw ‘the body into further imbalance, including overeating, smoking, and excessive consumption of alcohol.