Jangan Anggap Remeh Stres

TERNYATA tidak hanya penyakit fisik saja yang menjadi pemicu timbulnya penyakit jantung, namun penyakit yang berhubungan dengan psikis menjadi satu faktor penyebabnya, yaitu depresi. Diketahui bahwa stres akan membuat pembuluh darah menyempit, tekanan darah meningkat, dan kadar kolesterol meningkat.

Banyak penelitian yang sudah menunjukkan bahwa bila menghadapi situasi yang tegang, dapat terjadi arithmias jantung yang membahayakan jiwa. Orang yang mudah stres dua kali lipat lebih mudah terkena penyakit jantung. Dikatakan oleh ahli kejiwaan dari Rumah Sakit Internasional Omni Alam Sutera Tangerang, dr Andri SpKJ, pasien dengan riwayat depresi yang sering muncul mempunyai peningkatan rata-rata risiko kematian 4 sampai 5 kali setelah infark miokardium daripada yang tidak depresi. Depresi setelah infark miokard berhubungan dengan timbulnya infark kembali dan kematian.

Ketika semua faktor pemicu penyakit jantung bisa terkontrol, ternyata masih ada faktor lain yang bisa membuat jantung meradang. Faktor itu adalah depresi. Depresi ini pun merupakan faktor risiko yang tersendiri (independen) yang memicu munculnya penyakit jantung koroner pada pria dan wanita. ”Depresi dapat menyebabkan kematian tiba-tiba lewat kerja pada saraf vagus, yang berhubungan dengan detak jantung,” tuturnya.

Andri menjelaskan, depresi menyebabkan penurunan suatu zat dalam tubuh yang dinamakan serotonin. Penurunan kadar serotonin ini berhubungan dengan perubahan perlengketan platelet. Hal ini membuat orang yang depresi mempunyai kecenderungan plateletnya lengket di pembuluh darah (jantung).

Melihat hubungan yang sangat erat antara faktor psikologis dan penyakit jantung, maka jangan segan-segan untuk berkonsultasi dengan psikiater bidang psikosomatik yang banyak berhubungan dengan kasus-kasus demikian. ”Dengan penanganan stres dan depresi pada pasien jantung yang tepat, maka penanganan penyakit jantung pun akan semakin baik dan kualitas hidup pasien akan semakin meningkat,” sarannya.

Hubungan antara stres dan jantung juga pernah diungkap oleh ahli epidemiologi dari University College London, Tarani Chandola. Dalam penelitian yang melibatkan 10.000 responden itu terungkap bahwa stres memiliki peran lebih banyak terkait dengan perubahan biologis dibandingkan yang diperkirakan sebelumnya.

”Ini kali pertama penelitian yang melibatkan responden dalam jumlah besar tentang pengukuran efek stres terkait pekerjaan sehari-hari yang mengakibatkan penyakit jantung. Salah satu masalahnya adalah orang yang hidup skeptis dalam tekanan pekerjaan memengaruhi orang itu secara biologis,” ujar Tarani.

Stres bisa membuat kekacauan sistem internal tubuh yang berujung terganggunya kinerja jantung. Terganggunya kinerja jantung akan menyebabkan penumpukan dan menutup darah di saluran arteri, tekanan darah tinggi, dan menghancurkan sistem darah.
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Workplace Eustress Mangagement

Is it possible to manage work place stress? Yes. And practice is necessary. And what could a counselor teach about workplace stress anyway?

Based on my experience with my anger management and domestic violence folks, everyone can give lip service to the idea that stress is experienced internally, but within seconds of saying that I need to change my thoughts to change my feelings, etc, almost all of my clients begin to tell me all over again about the external world, as if once that is in order, then there will be no more stress. Incidentally, that is a very important aspect of power and control belief systems, that controlling the external world.

In order to interrupt the thinking pattern which involves controlling the uncontrollable, I will ask my clients where they see me.

Most of them are quite surprised, and will answer that they see me across the room, somewhere outside of themselves.

I tell them matter of factly that they are wrong. And they are, they see me only in the visual cortex of their brain, inside their head.

While it looks like I am outside you, the experience of vision happens only in the brain, inside you, and the processing of photons is actually separate from the interpretation placed on the experience by your brain, but that interpretation is yours and yours alone, and if that interpretation changes the inside of your body in a way that brings adrenalin and cortisol, it is your words-in-your-brain interpretation that does that, not the external world.

I then ask my clients where they hear me, and repeat the same sequence of questions.

The same for the senses of smell, and its relationship to the limbic brain, taste, and pressure and the sensory motor cortex.

We end up with a everyone acknowledging that their entire sensory experience and reality is created in their brain, and the human next to them may have an entirely different reality.

That usually stops the story telling and external focus for awhile, and I have actually laid down the groundwork for future reminders that about trying to control the external which is impossible.

So now folks have an object lesson about where stress exists, which is inside, and what causes the stress chemistry, which is their thoughts about the sensory experience.

Now we can begin to teach some tools about changing thoughts or breathing or both to change feelings, and then the next thing that we usually run into is the short lived length of stress management tools.

Those comments run along the lines of, 'Well, I did that deep breathing stuff, and it worked while I was doing it but it went away as soon as the phone rang....' as if to say that stress management should produce a high because adrenalin and cortisol can produce a high.

There are number of approaches that I use at this moment to teach about stress management as a heart beat by heart beat process or a thought by thought process.

I like to indicate to my clients, using some data from the book FLOW by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi,Ph.D. that the sensory nervous system processes data in packages of seven bits and that the shortest time between packages is 1/18th second, which is about twice as fast as you can blink your eyes, so this workplace stress management is going to need to become as habitual as the stress producing thinking, then choices can be made. (Stress vs. unstress, if you will).

And then I use a metaphor of driving. If I can learn to pay attention to the inside of my body like I pay attention to changing road conditions and variables literally turn of the wheel by turn of the wheel, and make many small changes to the position and speed of the vehicle, I will get to my destination safely.

By extension, workplace stress management becomes a process of attending to my thinking and breathing and making small frequent adjustments to keep the stress chemistry in a place of eustress rather than distress.

If fact there is some excellent evidence from EEG research done by Barry Sterman, Ph.D., with Top Gun pilots that effective relaxation can be done by switching brain wave patterns from beta to alpha, work to rest, and back in cycles per second, so folks get it that stress management does not mean that they are going to achieve nirvana and never have adrenalin or cortisol again.

Now my clients need a tool that will help them get my metaphor physically and here is where I introduce a heart rate variability biofeedback program, which is a computerized program that gives clients an almost real time (very close) picture of how their thinking and breathing impact their body.

Most of my clients are pretty amazed at the changes the computer shows them about their heart rate variability coherence, which is impacted by thoughts, while the client is sitting quietly, looking at a computer screen, and that change happens heart beat by heart beat.

I have yet to have a session in over ten years of use that did not provide information to my client about the validity of changing focus from external to internal for workplace stress management.

There is lots of very interesting science that the heart rate variability biofeedback folks have made available to buttress their product, and I will weave that into my teaching, but what really gets the attention of folks actively engaged in work/career is the impact that relaxation has on the growth of new neurons, and the opening of higher perceptual centers when relaxed for better decision making.

We did not know that we grow new neurons daily, which makes the brain bigger, which is better, in my my mind, until 10-15 years ago, and the research is saying that we can minimize that newly discovered capacity of the human brain by exposing those new neurons to excess adrenalin and cortisol.

The key to workplace stress management then is attention and choice heart beat by heart beat. After all, if your heart stops, do you have to worry about stress management?
by: Michael Logan
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Mengenali Gajala Stress

STRES telah menjadi bagian kehidupan sehari-hari. Dapat menyerang siapa, kapan dan di mana saja. Pemicunya beragam, mulai dari kemacetan lalu lintas, pekerjaan menumpuk, masalah dalam keluarga, dan keuangan.

Selama ini, stres identik dengan kondisi negatif. Namun, tak selamanya stigma tersebut melekat. Stres sendiri sebenarnya bukanlah penyakit, tetapi merupakan respons tubuh dan pikiran terhadap tekanan (stressor). Stres adalah suatu kondisi ketika keadaan tubuh terganggu karena tekanan psikologis.

Namun, stres tingkat ringan malah bermanfaat bagi tubuh. Jangan langsung mengernyitkan dahi. Sebab dalam batas tertentu stres dapat meningkatkan fungsi fisik dan mental.

"Stres ringan dapat meningkatkan vitalitas dan membantu memfokuskan perhatian dalam beraktivitas," jelas Donald R Rhodes Jr MD, Medical Director Departement of Community Health National Naval Medical Center.

Gejala seseorang mengalami stres pada dasarnya dapat dibagi dalam tiga kategori yakni berdasarkan fisik, psikologis, dan perilaku.

Ciri yang berhubungan dengan fisik misalnya sakit di bagian kepala, perut dan belakang badan, gangguan pencernaan, tangan berkeringat, bahu atau leher tegang, serta jantung berdegup kencang. Sedangkan ciri yang berhubungan dengan perilaku ditandai dengan insomnia, cepat lelah, nafsu makan berubah, cepat marah, cepat resah, ataupun sedih tanpa sebab yang jelas.

Untuk gejala stres yang berhubungan dengan psikologis. Terlihat pada gangguan konsentrasi Anda, sering lupa, kurang kreatif, kurang percaya diri atau sulit menyesuaikan diri dengan kondisi sekitar.

Apabila seseorang mengalami stres terus menerus, hal ini dapat berpengaruh pada kondisi serta kesehatan tubuh. Stres berkepanjangan dipercaya dapat menyebabkan tekanan darah naik, fatigue, penurunan gairah seksual, sakit seluruh badan, depresi, kenaikan, ataupun penurunan berat badan secara drastis.

Bahkan yang lebih buruk, dapat meningkatkan risiko terkena serangan jantung, serta beragam penyakit ganas lainnya.(nov) (uky)
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Physical And Environmental Causes Of Stress

Stress, which is the main trigger for anxiety attack comes in two categories: (i) physical causes and (ii) environmental causes.

Physical Causes of Anxiety

1. Age - Physical causes for anxiety are those which are triggered by tangible changes in your body. One of the most often quoted factors under this category is middle age. Though more commonly identified with women and menopause, men too experience anxiety symptoms in their mid-to-late 40s. This is because of sudden changes in hormone production which affect the functions of all the systems in the body. Doctors normally prescribe HRT or hormone replacement therapy for women who experience extreme anxiety levels during menopause. For men, the only way out is counseling and symptomatic treatment...

2. Andropause as in the male-menopause - Did you know that men go through a similar phase (though not directly connected to fertility) in their late 40s to mid 50s? It is called andropause and exhibits almost all the symptoms of menopause including anxiety and panic attacks. These are usually treated on the merit of each case, though imbalance of hormones plays a major role here as well.

3. Drug effects and side effects - Other physical causes of anxiety are related to drugs and their absorption in the body. Say, you were a regular smoker and decide to quit; or you realize that coffee and caffeinated products are making you edgy and you eliminate from your diet. The result in both these cases would be anxiety attacks due to withdrawal symptoms caused by suddenly stopping the intake of such substances. You would also experience anxiety attacks if certain drugs are stopped suddenly, such as anti-depressants, abuse of OTC (over-the-counter) drugs, and so on.

4. Thyroid problems - Anxiety can also be triggered by a malfunctioning thyroid gland, which once again causes chemical imbalances in the brain. Unfortunately, this is one of the most difficult conditions to diagnose because tests usually come negative when the thyroid is tested for abnormal function.

Environmental Causes of Anxiety

Internal factors that cause imbalance of hormones and other chemicals account for one side of the story. The other one pertains to external factors or stressors, such as:

1. Job loss or the threat of loosing your job
2. Death of someone loved
3. Prolonged illness
4. Sudden change in lifestyles - marriage, life after death of a spouse, having a baby, new job, moving to a new town/ country, and so on
5. Relationship problems
6. Knowledge that you are suffering from a fatal disease
7. Extreme conditions at workplace
8. Inability to generate adequate finances to support self and family
9. Physical and/or mental abuse
10. Physical challenges to cope with situations or life styles

Before we go any further you need to know one less known fact - stress can be positive, too. The Oxford dictionary defines stress as, “a state of affairs involving demand on physical or mental energy", which leaves out any allusion to the negative connotation we are so used to hear about. Medically, stress is “perturbation of the body"s homeostasis" or simply put a state where both body and mind need to work constantly to cope with the demands from environment. Therefore, it is easy to infer from here that stress does not become a negative factor unless it cannot be managed. As long as you are able to manage stress, you are likely to benefit rather than suffer because of it. How?

Consider a scenario where you have a tight deadline. In order to meet it, you draw upon all your inner potential and strength and push yourself to overachieve. The result is that you do make the deadline and you feel good about your success. Inventions, people juggling successfully careers and homes, athletic feats, and so on are only a few example of how stress can be a positive vehicle to fulfill your potential. It becomes negative and harmful when sustained over a prolonged period, long enough to cause gross malfunction of the major systems within your body.
by: Ian Spencer


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Anxiety And Stress - Eliminate Environment Factor With Diet

Anxiety attacks are often you are leading a very stressful life. It is as if your body and mind say, "Enough! I cannot take it anymore." The tension you feel because you are worried whether you would be able to make your deadline, whether you would be able to attend your children's special days at school, whether your finances would be enough to cover the raising monthly expenses and so on, eventually would result in anxiety attacks. If these stressors are...

not checked in time and adequate measures are not taken to reverse the symptoms, depression would follow.

Anxiety is a combined result of external stressor and internal chemical hormonal imbalance. This is why we can understand when people who have gone through a traumatic period or women who are entering menopause experience anxiety attacks. However, you will observe that there are plenty of cases when anxiety strikes seemingly unexpectedly. What happens actually?

There are two other factors that cause anxiety that we have not yet discussed: (i) heredity and (ii) diet. We have seen that anxiety attacks, whether mild or serious need triggers, just like asthma or allergy. For it to happen there should be something that presses the 'start' button. Sometimes it is the stress that overwhelms your life; other times it is the biological clock of your body and sometimes it is a shock caused by a traumatic incident. Each trigger is a conduit to anxiety attacks, due to the alteration of the chemical balance inside the body.

Heredity And Anxiety

It is obvious from the above that anxiety is an external manifestation of chemical imbalances in the body. Like diabetes, heart problems and cancer among others, anxiety is also a hereditary condition. In other words, sometimes the trigger would be just some faulty genes that you have inherited from your parents. Therefore, if you feel those butterflies in the stomach and exhibit anxiety symptoms, and you see no real indicators of what could have caused it, it would be a good idea to check your family's medical history.

Find out whether either of your parents suffered from anxiety attacks. Do not stop here. Look a little deeper and check with your maternal and paternal aunts, uncles, and grandparents on both sides. If you find that any one of these people were victims of this affliction, then you could investigate heredity as the source of your problem.

Once you have identified the source of the problem you would be able to take adequate measures to address the chemical imbalance of the body without worrying about identifying any other stressor or trigger. With the right medication and adequate diet, you would be able to put the anxiety attack out of your system for good in a very short time.
by: Ian Spencer

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