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Meditation At Work | |
How Much Stress Is Unhealthy? Humans are genetically programmed to react to pressure at a certain threshold of awareness of danger in what is called the fight-or-flight response. This has the very useful objective of preparing us for intense physical activity and involves a quickening of the heartbeat and breathing rhythm and the diversion of more blood
into the muscles than to other organs. The release of adrenaline and noradrenaline raises levels of glucose and free fatty acids into the blood stream to provide more energy.
But these in-built reactions are no longer entirely appropriate to the types of pressures faced by most people in industrialized societies in their working and family lives. As a consequences, unhealthy levels of stress lead to a variety of disorders and illness. These include a broad band of pathological consequences, ranging from chronic fatigue to depression, and including insomnia, anxiety, migraine, emotional distress, allergies and abuse of alcohol, tobacco or other narcotics according to the International Labor Organisation.
In the longer term, says the ILO, stress can contribute to hypertension, and as a consequence to the development of heart and cardiovascular disease, as well as to peptic ulcers, inflammatory bowel diseases and musculoskeletal problems. It may also alter immune functions, which may in turn facilitate the development of cancer. 'Taken together, these disorders are responsible for the great majority of disease, death, disability and medical care use in most industrialized countries'.