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Stress Management: Techniques for preventing and easing stress

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*Note: This report is currently being updated. Orders for the printed version will ship on September 24, 2008. Customers purchasing the electronic version can immediately download the current report (dated 2006) and will be able to download the updated report, at no extra charge, when it becomes available on September 10, 2008. You will be notified of the update via the email address you enter at checkout.

Stress Management Health Report
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Stress Control

Stress is not all bad. It’s what keeps life interesting. But too much stress for too long creates what is known as “chronic stress” which has been linked to heart disease, stroke, and may also influence cancer and chronic respiratory diseases. And illness is just the tip of the iceberg. Stress affects you emotionally, as well, marring the joy you gain from life and loved ones. This stress management special report can help you identify triggers for stress in your own life and understand the obvious and hidden ways in which stress affects your body. Applying the practical stress control techniques in these pages can help you neutralize its damaging effects. The stress management report also includes tools to help you get started, including a checklist of the warning signs of stress, a portable guide to reduce stress, a meditation wallet card, and a stress-relief planning chart.

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Table of Contents:

  • Introduction
  • Understanding the stress response
    • What is stress?
    • The positive side of stress
    • Stress and its toll on your body
  • Stress in your life
    • The major life event stress scale
    • Recognizing the warning signs
    • Unhealthy responses to stress
  • How to prevent and manage stress
    • Learning the relaxation response
    • Breath focus
    • Progressive muscle relaxation
    • Guided imagery
    • Proper nutrition
    • Exercise
    • Social support
    • Nurturing yourself
    • Journals: Easing stress the write way
    • Cognitive restructuring
    • The role of positive psychology
  • Your portable guide to stress relief
    • 1. Mini-relaxations
    • 2. Taking the sting out of 10 common stressors
    • 3. Deflating cognitive distortions
    • 4. Meditation on the go
    • 5. Learning mindfulness meditation
  • The different faces of stress
    • Sex and stress
    • Age and stress
    • Caregiving and stress
    • Work and stress
  • How stress affects the body
    • Stress and cardiovascular disease
    • Stress and cancer
    • Stress and the immune system
    • Stress and high blood pressure
    • Stress and asthma
    • Stress and gastrointestinal disorders
  • Developing your personal plan for stress relief
  • Glossary
  • Organizations
  • Books

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Here's an Excerpt from this Stress Management Special Health Report

Glance at the 10 leading causes of death in America, and you won’t find the word “stress” anywhere. Yet many well-respected studies link stress to heart disease and stroke—two of the top 10 killers. Heart disease alone was responsible for more than one in three deaths in 2002. Stress may also influence cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases, which rank as numbers two and four, respectively, in the top 10.

Stress has implications for many other ailments as well. Depression and anxiety, which afflict millions of Americans, can be caused or exacerbated by stress. Stress also triggers flare-ups of asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and gastrointestinal problems, such as irritable bowel syndrome. And illness is just the tip of the iceberg. Stress affects you emotionally as well, marring the joy you draw from life and loved ones.

What is stress? For one thing, it’s not all bad. Your perception of a real or imagined threat can spark the stress response, a physiological cascade that prepares the body to fight or flee. That swift reflex was encoded in you for survival and can save you from injury or worse. It’s a rush of hormones that spurs you to jump out of the path of a speeding car, flee from a menacing wild animal, or quickly douse a small fire. Stress has another positive side as well. Researchers have found that as stress or anxiety increases, so do performance and efficiency—at least initially. At a certain point, though, rising stress becomes detrimental, and performance and efficiency tumble.

Trouble usually brews when the stress response is evoked repeatedly, causing unnecessary wear and tear on the body for less than momentous reasons. In a world bursting with situations that can elicit the stress response—traffic jams, layoffs, illness, and money woes—it’s not surprising that many people experience stress frequently. Certainly, no one can completely avoid stressful situations. Yet it’s entirely possible for each of us to influence how these situations affect us.

This special report draws on expertise from the renowned Mind/Body Medical Institute and its Harvard Medical School staff. Reading it will help you identify triggers for stress in your own life and understand ways in which the stress response affects your body. Applying the techniques in these pages can help you neutralize its damaging effects. This report provides a variety of tools you can use to accomplish that task. Your job is to decide which tools fit you best and to start wielding them. (Of course, before you use any of the techniques described in this report to treat a health condition, you should consult with your doctor first.)

As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. It took much longer to raise the scaffolding that supports the negative cycles of stress in your life, too. Learning to dismantle it will also take time. Yet your efforts can reward you richly with better health, greater peace of mind, and a smoother, more joyful course through life.

ADD TO CART Printed Version: $16.00
ADD TO CART Electronic Download (PDF): $16.00
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