When you are trying to stay healthy one thing that can impact you is stress. By managing your stress and focusing on keeping your life simple you can begin to make improvement on your health and your daily life.
If you’ve been wondering what degree of stress you live under, here is a quick way to get a fair estimate. Thomas H. Holmes and Richard H. Rahe, in 1967 published a study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research that provided a table of events and the amount of stress they cause in our life. The most interesting feature of this table is that the people they interviewed told them, how they could rate specific events for the stress they cause, so this is human rather than a medical appraisal of the degree of stress those events caused. The participants ranked life events based on if they thought the event was more intense and required more adjustment than a new marriage would require. They then took all these numbers and created a final number from the median of each number and dividing by 10.
The combined total of both positive and negative stresses in the past few months will give you an idea of your current stress level. Keep in mind that people have varying stress-handling capacities and this table does not take into account such regular stresses as recreational drug use, alcoholism, chronic illness, allergy, battering and random stresses such as car accidents, contest winning to the dreaded tax audit. In addition, some stressors you may adapt to faster than others. You will also notice that some of these events are positive, unfortunately sometimes even positive things take time to adjust to and can cause stress at first. For example, getting married is a happy love filled occasion, however it is stressful to learn how to relate to another in a new relationship and to learn to live with someone.
Below is the scale that the researchers created. This is presented as information only and should not be used for diagnostic or treatment purposes; if you feel you need more help with stress please see a professional.
LIFE EVENT
- Death of spouse 100
- Divorce 73
- Marital separation 65
- Jail stay 63
- Death of a close family member 63
- Personal Injury or illness 53
- Marriage 50
- Laid off 47
- Marital reconciliation 45
- Retirement 45
- Change In health of family member 44
- Pregnancy 40
- Sexual problems 39
- Addition of new family member 39
- Business of adjustment 39
- Change in finances 38
- Death of a close friend 37
- Change profession 36
- Change in number of arguments with spouse 35
- Mortgage over $10,000 31
- Foreclosure of mortgage or loan 30
- Change in job responsibilities 29
- Son or daughter leaving home 29
- Trouble with in-laws 29
- Outstanding personal accomplishment 28
- Spouse begins or stops work 26
- Beginning or end of school 26
- Change in living situation 25
- Changing of personal habits 24
- Problems with boss 23
- Change in work hours or circumstances 20
- Change in living location 20
- Change in school 20
- Change in recreational activities 19
- Change in church activities 19
- Mortgage or loan under $10,000 17
- Change in sleep 16
- Change in number of family get-togethers 15
- Change in eating habits 15
- Vacation 13
- Christmas 12
- Minor violations of the law 11
Now that you know where you are with stress you can begin to work on reducing its impact on your life and health. Stress relief is a very personal thing, everyone is relaxed and happy in a different way. Yet many are the same, so below is a list to get you started with some new ideas.
1. Exercise – one of the best ways to manage stress.
2. Decrease Debt – As you saw on the list, debt increases the amount of stress in your life. So decreasing debt will help you reduce stress and as a great side benefit you get a healthier money life!
3. Breathe deeply – simple and easy, stop for 2 minutes take some deep breaths and you will be amazed at how you feel afterwards.
Less stress means you get to take pleasure in your life more. Begin to reduce your stress today. Less stress helps you to prevent your chance of heart disease. It is a win-win situation you get less stress, more enjoyment and a reduced risk of disease.
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