Women often act as stress support systems for everyone they know – partner, friends, family, kids, aging parents, boss and this means that the stress they’re under can be very intense.  Yet women often find it very difficult to relax and de-stress.  They may even think it selfish!  However, stress can have serious detrimental effects [...]

If you know anything about me, you’ll probably know that I’m in ebook writing mode – which I’m doing from scratch!  It will be all my own thoughts and words.  Short blog posts and articles I can do easily, but this is very different.  I’m about as far out my comfort zone as I would [...]

ext/javascript”> I think that there is a stigma against stress.  Maybe I’m wrong but when I talk to people about it, it seems to me that women will admit to being stressed, but dismiss it as just being the way life is; and men either don’t admit to feeling it at all, or see it [...]

Stress has far reaching effects on your body.  One of those things is that it encourages the release of certain hormones into your bloodstream.  Of these, norepinephrine (adrenaline) seems to have the particularly nasty habit of stimulating tumor cells to do a couple things – break down the tissue surrounding them so they can move [...]

What does your weight have to do with stress?  Much more than you think!  Aside from the fact that many of us are overweight due to eating during a stressful situation, stress hormones in our bodies actually tell our bodies to store fat during stressful times.  It’s like adding insult to injury!  It’s safe to [...]

When I was a kid, the news was reported in daily newspapers, and at specific times on the TV and radio.  Now, it’s 24/7 multimedia experience.  You can get it by text to your cell phone, over the internet, on 24 hours news channels etc.  At any point in the day, no matter where you [...]

I am not a great one for resorting to pills at the drop of a hat – but nor do I shirk it.  With the very highest respect to those women who do “natural childbirth” (whatever that is in this day and age), when I went in to deliver my twins, I wanted the very [...]

Stress is universal.  Everyone suffers from it in some form or other.  And there are as many different types of stress reduction techniques and methods it seems!  You can distress using medications or herbs; incorporate diet and exercise changes into your life; meditate; do calming deep breathing exercises that have a soothing effect on your [...]

Today’s world is a stressful place – and for kids as well as adults.  We all have a lot of pressure in our adult lives, what with workplace challenges and family problems.  It’s so easy to forget that kids get stressed too! Whilst it’s true that parents have to deal with the stresses and strains [...]

How is it that we can face the stress of phones ringing nonstop, car horns blaring, rude clerks, fussy children, irritating neighbours, loud noise pollution and so on without going totally over the edge? In truth these stresses should send us over the edge but they don’t because at the end of the day our [...]

Stress isn’t always a bad thing.  You’re probably aware of the tense rising exciting stress you feel when you’ve been given a challenge that’s just out of your reach, but which you’re sure you can do.  This positive stress, called eustress, is what every honed athlete feels just before their “big race”.  Our bodies are [...]

It’s a sad fact that when you are overweight, the urge to eat is harder to ignore under stressful conditions. But it is not widely known that stress is so intimately linked to weight that you can actually achieve long-term weight loss simply by learning how to reduce stress in your life – and following [...]