10 Ways to Use Stress to Your Advantage by Craig Robin

Win the race - When you're competing and determined to win, stress triggers the release of adrenalin which boosts your performance. Only get worked up about important races, the ones you really need to win.

Work deadlines - Providing you've agreed them, deadlines create positive stress as they approach, spurring you into action. You'll often produce better work when up against a deadline. Try setting your own!

Love - We need strong relationships and, naturally, love can sometimes be stressful. Use your stress together to work through the issues that are blocking the way.

Fight/flight - Without those inbuilt biochemical responses to danger, we would not be so well prepared to recognise and escape real perils. You don't need to use stress if you're being threatened, it happens automatically.

Traffic jams - Of course you could accept the delay and listen to some music. Use the time to do something relaxing and positive, and benefit from what otherwise would be a stressful experience.

Overwork - If your workload is stressing you and you recognize that fact, you can do something about it. Workloads can grow almost unnoticed, but stress flags this up when it reaches a critical level. Use stress as a warning sign that you're doing too much.

Be a hero - You're walking down the road and a child runs out into the road. Your stress response gives you the strength to catch the child before it reaches the traffic.

Good stress is healthy - Researchers have shown that your body benefits from some exposure to.stress. In other words, you can be too laid back for your own good. Learn to manage positive stress.

Remember more - Stressful events are easier to remember. The scene somehow burns itself into your memory. A benefit of this stress response is that you learn from mistakes faster.

Revisit the goal - If you keep pushing and not succeeding, use stress as a trigger to stop and think again. Don't let the stress wind you up; take it as a signal to review, not as a threat to your success.

Psychophysiology of Stress You Should Know by Peter David

Stress is a feature of our everyday lives. Though observed very commonly, it has numerous psycho physiological aspects. Though it sounds scary, what we need to understand is that the brain is the true origin of stress. In order to have a reaction on the emotional or physical level, the brain must process the happening sin the surroundings and must initiate a perception and appraisal system. The senses of our body provide the necessary inputs for this perception system.

The stressors could be biological, psychological, sociological or philosophical in context and thus require a cognitive process to be recorded by the brain. The scary part of the scenario is that the brain need not be provided with ' real' stressors; either of the sensory organs can even perceive stress and communicate as such to the brain. Thus, stress cannot have a definite form since the brain of each person works uniquely and differently. It may not even be possible to uniquely attach stress to a particular event, since what may be perceived as a stressor by any one individual may not be a potential stressor for someone else.

To demonstrate this, researchers chose a class of students as a test group and asked all the students to close their eyes and sit in peace. After a calm settled on the surroundings, one of the researchers slammed a big, book and screamed. Although the initial reaction of most students was to be jerked back to reality, what amazed the conductors was the difference in the reactions showed by each student. The act of slamming a book and screaming was provided as an input by the ears to the brain and the brain processed it at lightening speed.

An immediate outcome of this processing was that the heartbeats fastened and the muscles tightened; a body's typical way of reacting to fear. Some of the students reacted by screaming while others were simply startled. Thus, the brain reacted to a source of stress, which was conspicuous by being absent. After the initial ho-hum humdrum was over, the researchers asked the students to maintain peace in the room and again close the eyes. Although the students obliged, most of them showed some signs of apprehension and fear at being disturbed again!

Thus, they could actually create conditions of stress by the sheer power of thinking and imagination. What struck the scientists was that the manner in which each student reacted was different; some screamed loud, some were simply rudely shocked out of a sense of peace. Thus, stress cannot be uniformly defined; it is a unique to each person. Further, the time of recovery of each student was different. Some students showed an increased anticipation of something unexpected, while the others recovered back to their original state. The researchers concluded that stress is affected by a person's psychological as well as physiological make up.

Five Physical Effects of Stress That Cause Your Body to Have the Stress Response by Shafir Ahmad

When you are stressed, you can get into a zone of physical stress also. This physical stress can often be caused when you have a sudden jolt where your body and nervous system has a shock or some other powerful news. This is also known as the Fight Or Flight response. What are the effects of such stress on your body?

Well first of all, you will start breathing at a quickened pace. This is even before you start running or fighting. This increased breathing rate will bring lots more oxygen to your lungs, which then gets transferred to your bloodstream.

Your heart rate also goes up, increasing rapidly and increasing your blood pressure. This is so that your blood with the extra oxygen can be pumped faster to your muscles and brain, giving you a jolt of energy.

Your body also activates your sweat glands, in anticipation of the increased heat that you will produce as a result of both your increased blood flow, as well as from the exertion you will have when either running or fighting. You'll start sweating even if it is a cool day.

Your stomach and the rest of the digestive system pauses their digestive functions, so that the blood supply can be diverted to your muscles and brain instead. After all, you will need to move and think fast.

Your muscles also tense up rapidly. This reaction makes you ready to fight or take flight in an instant. Tense muscles are also able to withstand any beatings or physical force, including punches or wounds made by a sharp instrument.

Those are just five of the physical effects that stress can have on your body. It does not matter to your body if the stress response is caused by a robber jumping out at you from behind a dark alley, or when you have a deadline you have to meet and it seems hopeless. And these physical effects can happen even when you are not in direct physical harm, such as the stressful situations you get into in your daily life.

Using Herbs For Stress Relief by Paul A. Phillips

It seems like just about everyone is leading busy, hectic lives. Now, more than ever, people are looking for ways to deal with stress. And, for many, herbal stress relief is the answer they have been looking for.

Using herbal remedies and treatments to deal with illnesses and ailments has become very popular in the last few years. People have come to value natural solutions over chemical or artificial ones. And herbal remedies are the ultimate, natural solution for whatever is ailing you.

There are two herbs that are known, and have been proven, to be effective against stress. They are ginseng and kava kava.

The Stress Relieving Power of Ginseng
When it comes to stress, it's not so much the stressful situation you have to deal with that are the problem, but how you react to them.

When you are faced with a stressful situation, and you react to it with fear, anxiety, or tension, your adrenal gland starts to pump out stress hormones. These hormones are fine in small doses. But, if these hormones are pumping through your system for a prolonged period of time, they can actually weaken your immune system, raise your blood pressure, put strain on your heart, and cause you to feel extreme fatigue.

Ginseng helps make your reaction to stressful situations less intense, so you to stay more calm and in control. The result is a reduction in the amount of stress hormones that are released into your system.

If you are already experiencing the effects of stress, like fatigue or poor concentration, ginseng can help with that, too. This herb can help boost your energy, as well as improving your mental alertness. Ginseng can also help improve your overall mood and sense of well being.

Fight Stress with Kava Kava
If you are feeling really stressed, nervous, or anxious, taking some kava kava could have you feeling calmer and more relaxed in as little as half an hour.

Like ginseng, kava kava can help to reduce your reaction to a stressful situation. So, if you are nervous about giving a speech, taking this herb can help to calm you down, and stay calm and in control through your presentation.

Kava kava can also help soothe frazzled nerves and relax tense muscles. It is the perfect herb to have on hand after a busy day at work. Not only will kava kava help you relax, it will also improve your mood.

There are many good techniques you can use to manage stress. But, if you are looking for herbal stress relief, ginseng and kava kava are the perfect places to start.

How to Eliminate Stress Forever, and Eliminate Disease by Ronald Nzimora

There is growing evidence that suggest that most diseases are, in fact, caused by stress on a deep, fundamental level. This is not yet widely accepted by the scientific community, but the amount of evidence pointing to that conclusion is growing every day.

So, how do you deal with this?

First, realize that there are different kinds of stress. There's the positive kind, like the feeling of getting up to hold a speech in front of hundreds of people. That's nothing to worry about.

Then, there's negative stress. Negative stress is not the same thing as having a lot of things to do. It is the mental and physical feeling of being completely unable to cope with everything that's happening.

It's the feeling of being buried underneath thousands of things that you have no way of managing. It's the extremely uncomfortable irrational feeling that time is running out and your entire world will collapse on you if you are not able to get every single thing under control, right now.

So, what can you do?

First of all, take a chill pill. Relax, and simply let it all go. Realize that it's not a catastrophe if you don't get everything done right now. The world will not end.

Second, prioritize, and ignore the things that are not truly important. Don't concern yourself with stuff that doesn't really matter.

If you want to be free and happy, you need to value your time. You need to value yourself, so you're free to enjoy life - rather than being buried under a million things to do.

If you want your body and immune system to function at optimal efficiency, you should make it a priority to completely eliminate negative stress from your life.

Start by identifying the things in life that cause you stress. Once you've identified these stress factors and understand how they affect your life, you can easily figure out how to change your environment and manage them.

Do it now, starting today, and notice the positive effect it has on your health.