Stress

Stress that six letter word that brings to mind a variety of symptoms found in the world. How does it affect the mind, body and soul? How do we deal with it? It is my belief that stress is the blame for the onset of many diseases found in the world today.

When I was but a young boy, my mother the medicine woman of the North Country taught me many things. She would say, “Young one”, It's not enough to treat the symptoms of a disease; we must treat the whole person. We must look for the causes of the illness. We must look to see what has changed in the patient's life before the onset of the illness and then we must start at the beginning and move forward from there.

She would sit down with her patient and as I observed, she would ask them many questions; at which time, she would write down their answers on a piece of paper. Then she would work with them sometimes week's even months at a time helping them to deal with the things and events that caused the stress. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Well she taught me well and I have found that her thoughts and theories concerning the causes of many illnesses is indeed that little six letter word we call stress.

The medical journals state that the number one causes of:

• Heart Disease
• Some Types of Bowel Disease
• Mental Illness
• Herpes

Can all be related to stress? I find that to be an interesting fact and I also learned by experience that it can cause problems with those suffering from Diabetes. It will make it extremely hard for one to control their blood sugar levels. My mother developed this illness later on in her life. Diabetes causes the bodies organs to breakdown and deteriorate and eventually to quit working.

Now you might even ask, what are the signs that someone is showing stress in their life? What causes the stress? Both are very good questions and both have many different types of answers. I will try to list some of the signs that point to a person, that may be undergoing stress as well as some of the causes.

Some of the signs of being stressed are as follows:

• Restlessness
• Change of one's sleep patterns
• Negative thinking
• Loss of appetite
• Change in weight
• Difficulty in being able to focus
• Difficulty in making decisions
• Depression

Loss of interest in things you liked doing

Above are only a very few of the ongoing symptoms that point to stress and if you were to research, you would find that there are many more signs as well.

What causes Stress? Well that again has many answers and some of them may be as follows:

• Major events in life like getting married
• Changing jobs
• Minor daily incidents, such as job pressures
• Family Reunions
• Raising a family
• Birth of a new baby
• Breakdown of communication between one another
• Environment
• Mental and Physical Abuse

The list can go on and on; all the things mentioned above can cause stress in one form or another.

The Stress causes the body to use up its stores of energy and eventually your body's need for energy will become greater than its ability to provide it. At this stage, you may start to experience some of the signs of stress that were mentioned earlier in this article. This stress can cause biochemical changes in the body, affecting the immune system and leaving your body vulnerable to disease.

It is my theory that if we can eliminate unhealthy stress from the human body we can also rid the planet of many stress related diseases as well. In my next article I will write on ways that we can accomplish this.

It is my hope that some may be helped by reading this article and I strongly believe that as a growing community, we all can do this by working together and educating the masses on the causes and remedies of stress. In doing so we may also wipe out much stress related illnesses.