Sud­den death, which is the lead­ing cause of death in the world, is very fre­quently as­so­ci­ated with an outpour­ing of stress re­lated hor­mones that cause seri­ous dis­tur­bances in heart rhythm that can be fa­tal, even in young, healthy peo­ple.

Such "fight or flight" re­sponses to stress have been ex­qui­sitely honed over the lengthy course of man's evo­lu­tion as life sav­ing meas­ures. Under se­vere stress, heart rate and blood pres­sure soar, blood sugar rises to fur­nish fuel for en­ergy, blood is shunted away from the gut where it is not im­me­di­ately needed for pur­poses of di­ges­tion to the large mus­cles of the arms and legs, to pro­vide more strength in com­bat, or greater speed in get­ting away from a scene of po­ten­tial peril.

The blood clots more quickly to pre­vent loss from hem­or­rhage, our pu­pils di­late to im­prove the range of vi­sion, and a mul­ti­tude of other re­ac­tions over which we have no con­trol are im­me­di­ately and auto­mati­cally evoked.

All of these would have been use­ful, if not life sav­ing, in help­ing primi­tive man to deal with sud­den threats that de­manded im­me­di­ate fight or flight. How­ever, the na­ture of stress for mod­ern man is not an oc­ca­sional physi­cal con­fron­ta­tion with a saber-toothed tiger or a hos­tile war­rior, but rather a host of emo­tional threats, like get­ting stuck in traf­fic, fights with cus­tom­ers, co-work­ers, or fam­ily, that can occur sev­eral times a day. Unfor­tu­nately, our bod­ies still react with these same, ar­chaic, stereo­typed re­sponses, that are now not only not use­ful, but dam­ag­ing and deadly.

Re­peatedly in­voked it is not hard to see how they could cause heart at­tacks, hy­per­ten­sion, strokes, ul­cers, mus­cle spasms, and other “Dis­eases of Civi­li­za­tion”.


It is im­por­tant to rec­og­nize that stress
is not al­ways nec­es­sar­ily bad.

Win­ning a race or elec­tion can just be as stress­ful as los­ing, or more so.
A pas­sionate kiss and an­tici­pat­ing what might fol­low is stress­ful, but hardly likely to be ac­com­panied by the same psychophysi­ol­ogic re­sponses as hav­ing root canal sur­gery. In­creased stress also in­creases pro­duc­tiv­ity – up to a point, af­ter which things de­te­rio­rate.

It’s equally im­por­tant to em­pha­size that this level dif­fers for each of us. It’s very much like the ten­sion or stress on a vio­lin string. Not enough re­sults in a raspy, grat­ing noise, but too much pro­duces a shrill note that is ir­ri­tat­ing, or breaks the string. How­ever, just the right amount of stress cre­ates me­lodic and har­mo­ni­ous tones. Simi­larly, we all have to find the op­ti­mal amount of stress that al­lows us to make pleas­ing mu­sic in our daily li­ves, rather caus­ing us to snap.

Just as stress is dif­fer­ent for all of us, no stress re­duc­tion strat­egy works for eve­ryone. Jog­ging, medi­ta­tion, yoga, deep breath­ing or pro­gres­sive mus­cu­lar re­laxa­tion ex­er­cises are great for some in­di­vid­uals. How­ever, when ar­bi­trar­ily im­posed on oth­ers, they can be bor­ing and stress­ful.