How Stress Will Kill You

Stress was a great thing for us to feel thousands of years ago when we needed it. Back then, man needed stress to warn him of approaching doom - some large animal coming to eat him or his family, or war coming from the next tribe over. Stress was a survival mechanism that told the man, "fight or run". Once the danger had passed, the physical sensations that came along with "fight or run" went away - increased heart rate and blood flow, rush of adrenaline, slowed digestion, focused vision (sometimes tunnel vision), and overall physical excitation diminished. The man was allowed to return to his resting state and he did what men a thousand years ago did - not much - eat, sleep, procreate. It was a pretty limited, but easy-going existence.

Fast forward a few thousand years, and have we messed things up. Today, our bodies have a greater tendency to be in fight or flight mode due to some perceived danger - no longer do we fear the pending doom of being eaten by a large animal with big teeth. Instead we fear the doom of not making enough money, making too much money, not having the right job or car or mate or home or television. We fear being too thin or too fat, too tall or too short, too old or too young. We fear not making it to the couch to watch our favorite tv shows; or we have recorded so many "favorite" shows, that we fear never having enough time to watch all of them!

We have a lot of things to fear that our ancient relatives did not. Or at least we think we do.

All that fear is killing us slowly. Prolonged stress does terrible things to the human body and mind.

There is plenty of science out there to tell us the same.
I'll give you an example. Let me tell you a little story about a person I know. We'll call him...Dan.

Dan worked a 40+ hour per week job as a manager at a local facility. He was dedicated to his job, but also dedicated to "the big idea" of moving up and moving on. Therefore, Dan pushed himself hard to make everyone happy at work. Sometimes this meant working over, or coming in early. He traveled quite a bit. It was a stressful job, but it was the path to the "next big thing".

Dan was a dedicated father and husband, but found it difficult to make everyone at work happy, and everyone happy at home. Home life was stressful. Work life was stressful. But Dan was in pursuit of "the big idea", so the stress was "OK". The more stress the better, because that meant "the next big thing" was getting closer - so he added a few more jobs, more work and more stress to the mix.

With all the fighting or fleeing the perceived dangers at work and at home - trying to fight the beast of climbing the corporate ladder and being the traditional family - Dan had little time for eating right or exercising. He put something in his mouth that came out of a window from a building several times each day. He was too busy fleeing from place to place to worry about nutrition. When he was tired, he drank plenty of caffeine - sleep would have to wait.

Eventually, the stress and stressful living became too much. A day came when Dan "didn't feel so well". His stomach hurt, so he found a quick fix and took a pill - he didn't have time to figure out what the problem was, he was pushing himself to fight or flee.

The next morning, Dan's appendix exploded - apparently it had been sick for quite some time. He spent nine days in the hospital and lost 30 pounds. There were plenty of tubes and needles. He was forced to take three weeks bed rest to recover after the hospital. Dan didn't take the time to stop the stress, so his body made the decision for him.

It could have been worse. Most over-stressed people succumb to a heart-attack or stroke later in life. The compounding factors stress heaps upon the body will produce death - it's usually a matter of time.

That guy, Dan, was pretty lucky.

There are two ways to deal with stress:

Remove / reduce / get rid of the stressor

Cope with the stressor


We tend to force ourselves into more and more stress out of some perceived fear. Many times, a choice can be made to remove the stress, or alter the stress.

When that choice cannot be made, there are very effective coping skills for us to use.

Either way, you must choose. If not, circumstance, or your body, will choose for you.