Brochure Shows Women How To De-Stress
By: Baylor College of Medicine
Modern women need more than Calgon™ to ‘take them away’ from their stressful days.
“Women and Stress: Successfully juggling your busy life,” a brochure produced by the Office of Health Promotion at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, gives women strategies on dealing with stress and preventing it from interfering with their lives.
“Women are particularly vulnerable to stress because we juggle multiple roles,” said Dr. Jennifer Hays, director of the Center for Women’s Health at Baylor and an associate professor in the department of medicine. “We often try to balance traditional roles at home along with full-time jobs.”
Some stress can help women perform at their peak. But too much is destructive to their physical and emotional well being. Stress can even come from good events, such as planning a wedding or receiving a promotion. Unfortunately, your body doesn’t know the difference between “good stress,” and “bad stress.”
Stress makes a person more susceptible to disease, which then aggravates any existing illness or chronic condition such as heart disease, depression, ulcers, irritable bowel disease, diabetes, the common cold, urinary tract infections, arthritis and asthma. Some people seek comfort from stress by engaging in behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, or overeating, which have negative physical and emotional health consequences of their own.
Some common physical and emotional symptoms of stress are:
• Fatigue
• Head, back, neck, and shoulder aches
• Stomach problems
• Eating too much or too little
• Sleeping too much or not enough, or interrupted sleep
• Colds
• Changes in menstrual cycles
• Crying easily
• Forgetfulness
• Feeling anxious
• Feeling isolated
• Frustration
• Irritability
• Difficulty concentrating