Understanding and Managing Stress: Tips for a Healthier Life (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: We all experience stress from time to time. It's a normal and natural response that helps us survive when faced with a threat. A short term stress response called allostasis can improve our performance both physically and mentally. When this happens, your body releases the hormones adrenaline and cortisol, preparing your body to face a threat, that is to fight, flight or freeze until the danger goes away. Once upon a time, those dangers were predatory animals or natural disasters. But today, stresses can be things like poor diet, heavy workloads or even lack of sleep and relaxation time. Prolonged stress is a major health hazard affecting us both physically and mentally. When we're stressed, we get anxious and irritable. Our eating habits change and we're much more likely to misuse substances and engage in risky behaviour. Symptoms to look out for include things like grinding your teeth, tummy troubles, poor attention, headache, muscle tension, sleep disturbance, distractibility and forgetfulness. Stress can be slight or it may feel insurmountable. But either way, unhealthy amounts of stress can threaten our physical and mental wellbeing. So don't wait until it's too late. If you recognise the warning signs, there are steps you can take to manage your stress so that you can feel calm, rested, peaceful and restored. Click through the tips and strategies that follow and start making small changes to your daily routines to improve how you manage stress.