If you take the time to look around you will see that one of ten people you see at work, at the store, and wherever you go in your daily life is over stressed at any given moment. Scientists agree that stress causes actual chemical changes in the brain, and these changes can influence the state of your health.

What is Stress?

Stress is any change in your normal routine or health. Stress occurs when bad things happen, as well happy things. Getting a raise or promotion is stress, just as getting fired from your job is stress. So, we need to first recognize that "stress" is not always a bad thing. We can have good stress too, but stress is stress weather good or bad.

What Causes Stress?

Both males and females experience stress. Women are particularly susceptible to stress caused by hormonal changes. During puberty, your menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause your hormone levels fluctuate consistently and cause stress. Men also experience stress during puberty and it is believed that chemically men also experience some form of hormonal changes at the age women experience menopause.

Emotional and physical changes that happen in your life, illnesses, and environmental components such as extreme heat, cold, or altitude, and toxins cause stress. Pushing your body too hard at work or at play will soon deplete your body of the energy it needs to restore itself and result in your becoming over stressed.

Stress Related Illness

Science is constantly learning about the impact that stress has on your overall health. Stress is or may be a contributing factor in everything from backaches and insomnia to cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome (many people believe that CFS and fibromyalgia are the same illness).

Stress is often a key factor when women experience either absence of menstruation or abnormal bleeding. Hormonal imbalances caused by stress may proliferate the symptoms of fibroid tumors and endometriosis, as well as make pregnancy difficult to achieve for couples with fertility problems.

In Women heart disease is the number one killer. High blood pressure, heart attacks, heart palpitations, and stroke may be stress related cardiovascular conditions. Some men and women experience changes in their sexuality and encounter various sexual dysfunctions as a result of stress.

Often people feel the effects of stress as fatigue, various aches and pains, headaches, and sleep disturbances. Stress affects others by causing gastrointestinal disorders such as ulcers, lower abdominal cramps, colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome.

Frequently people under the effects of over stress will have more colds and infections due to lowered immune system responses. Stress can initiate dermatological conditions such as itchy skin and rashes.

So in review these physical symptoms are frequently suffered by people who are experiencing stress: