manage stress

Stress is an unavoidable part of normal life. Too much may greatly reduce our quality of life and our ability to achieve our goals, both at work and in our personal life. However, the right amount of stress can be a beneficial force, spurring us on to achieve better and better results. We do not need to try to get rid of stress altogether, but many of us can benefit from learning how to manage it more effectively.

Psychological and social stress is a relatively new invention. Our stress reactions have evolved over millions of years to help us cope with much more basic survival situations. In evolutionary terms, it is only the blink of an eye since humans lived as hunter-gathers, sprinting cross the savannah in search of prey, or to escape a hungry predator. We are extremely adept at coping with acute physical stressors of this kind - the flight or fight response outlined to the right is just what we need. We are also well-designed to cope with chronic physical stressors, such as drought, famine, parasites.

Problems arise because our body reacts to psychological and social stressors as if they were physical stressors. The result is that we often react to stress in ways that are inappropriate, unhelpful and harming. The flight or fight response, which is ideally suited to helping us escape a hungry lion, can be disastrous to our health because we switch it on for months at a time, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. We are in a state of chronic stress.

To learn how to recognise and tackle sources of stress in your life, download our free Guide to Managing Stress.


	When you find yourself in a stressful situation, your body quickly reacts by releasing the hormone adrenaline into the bloodstream. Adrenaline elevates your heart rate and blood pressure, tenses up your muscles and speeds up your breathing. In addition, energy is rapidly mobilised from storage sites. Glucose and the simplest forms of protein and fats come pouring out of fat cells, the liver and muscles. These changes happen because your body is preparing to cope with an immediate emergency. Once your body has mobilised all that glucose, it needs to deliver it to the critical muscles as quickly as possible, so the heart rate and blood pressure must increase too. Your breathing rate increases because to metabolise all that extra glucose, your muscles will need more oxygen. This is the flight or fight response.