Stress is the psychological and physical reaction to the demands of life, and it affects different people in different ways. Although everyone experiences stress to some degree, some handle it very well while others not so well.

Stress can be physically and mentally harmful to your body.

Without getting too technical, stress activates the body’s autonomic nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. If too much of one system is activated, the damaging effects can be mental and physical.

A healthy body exists where there is balance between the autonomic nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. Many parts of the brain and body are involved in response to stress. Various neurochemicals are released in response to stress, which regulate both beneficial and harmful effects of stress on your body.

Stress also affects the immune system, specifically white blood cells, which can reduce your immunity and causes susceptibility to disease and infection.

Understanding the signs or symptoms of stress could help you alleviate them in order to live a happier, healthier, more productive life.

Because the symptoms of stress may be subtle, and the person experiencing the stress is sometimes the last to know, it is vital to have good communication with friends, family, co-workers and your medical provider to help you recognize and diagnose your stress in order to work to minimize any negative effects that may result.

Common reasons why people experience stress are in relation to their jobs, relationships, family, finances or healthcare issues. Forty percent of U.S. workers admit to office stress, according to Webmd.com, and 25 percent cite work as the biggest stressor in their lives.

Work-related stress includes a heavy workload, working more than one job, too much responsibility, working long hours, poor management, unclear expectations, less-than-desirable working conditions, no opportunities for education or advancement, and discrimination or harassment.

Life-related stress includes marriage or divorce, job gain or loss, financial- and health-related issues, an addition or loss to the family, moving, serving as caregiver, and trauma such as assault, car accident, robbery or natural disasters.

Work- and life-related issues are external stressors. How they are dealt with are internal stressors, which can lead to extremely unproductive, unhealthy, and sometimes dangerous ways of dealing with stress.

Internal stressors can often be influenced by culture, environment, and genetics. They include your attitudes and perceptions, fears and uncertainties, and unrealistic expectations placed upon you by yourself or others. Your own personality and genetic constitution is extremely important in the way you deal with stress.

Why is this important to know? Because stress is harmful to your body so you need to learn how to handle it in a healthy way.

Some healthy ways to deal with stress include getting regular exercise and adequate sleep, as well as eating a balanced diet. Relaxation techniques, such as yoga and meditation can help also.

Other ways people deal with stress include counting to 10 before speaking or responding to potentially negative or harmful situation, deep breathing or walking away from a stressful situation and deferring it until later. You can also try going for a walk, prayer, hugging someone, and smiling.

If these self-help interventions do not work or if you are experiencing depression, panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, or other disabling symptoms, you should seek help from a counselor or other mental health professional.

In order to grow old healthy, you need to have a use it or lose it mentality.

Growing old healthy involves three basic elements and can be thought of like a three-legged stool.

Leg 1 – Physical exercise: You have to exercise your body.

Leg 2 – Mental exercise: Reading helps you exercise your mind.

Leg 3 – Social exercise: You have to be active socially. Interacting with people through work, socially, family members or through volunteering helps you be a well-rounded individual.

If any one of these items is missing, your life may be unbalanced. This unequal footing could lead to a greater chance of you being unhealthy to some degree.

Life stresses cannot be avoided, but with careful thought and intervention, you can minimize their negative and maximize their positive impact.

To learn more, visit http://painchannel.tv/misc/Longevity, where Blain discusses exercise, endorphins, stress, and longevity.

Alcohol is a part of the American culture — civilian and military. Many of us drink with others to socialize and celebrate important events. Or we sometimes drink alone to relax and unwind from a hard day at work. But along with the good times and good feelings associated with alcohol, there are well-known health risks from drinking too much over a short or a long period of time. The challenge for anyone who drinks alcohol is to manage intake on any given day and over time in order to be a responsible drinker for life.

Everyone responds differently to alcohol, and it’s not possible to say exactly what effect a certain number of drinks will have. However, it’s helpful to know what a standard drink is and how many it takes to exceed guidelines for low-risk drinking. A standard drink is:

Twelve fluid ounces of beer (about 5 percent alcohol)

Eight to nine fluid ounces of malt liquor (about 7 percent alcohol)

Five fluid ounces of table wine (about 12 percent alcohol)

One and one-half fluid ounces of hard liquor (about 40 percent alcohol)

If you want to make sure your drinking is low-risk, stay within these amounts recommended by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism:

No more than four standard drinks on a given day and no more than 14 per week for men.

No more than three standard drinks on a single day and no more than seven per week for women and anyone over the age of 65.

No drinking at all for women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant and anyone who is taking medication that interacts with alcohol, who has a condition exacerbated by alcohol or who is about to drive or operate machinery.

Many factors influence the effects a certain number of drinks can have on different people, such as the amount of food in their stomach and their age, weight and body chemistry. That’s why blood alcohol content (BAC) is the only precise measure of the risk of too much alcohol. Keep in mind that BAC peaks about 30-40 minutes after one standard drink is consumed. Drinking multiple drinks in a short amount of time results in a much higher BAC because the average body can only break down about one standard drink per hour. Alcohol starts to affect the brain within five minutes of being consumed, and as BAC increases, so does impairment from intoxication, a health risk, even for people who do not have a pattern of abusing alcohol.

Intoxicated individuals are at greater risk for injury and loss of life from vehicle accidents, fires, falls, drowning, victimization by another person and suicide. In addition, they put others at increased risk from child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual assaults and other aggressive behaviors. Intoxication can also cause problems the next day if a person’s hangover interferes with work performance.

Drinking excessively over a period of years increases a person’s risk for any number of serious health conditions like reducing the size of brain cells, which may affect motor coordination, temperature regulation, sleep, mood and various cognitive functions, including learning and memory. There is also an increased risk of liver or heart disease, which can result in high blood pressure, stroke and cardiac arrhythmia, an abnormality of the heart rate or a weakening of the heart muscle which often results in heart failure.

In addition to damaging these major organs it has been estimated that 2 to 4 percent of all cancers are related to alcohol. It is most closely associated with cancers of the liver, the upper digestive tract and, in women, the breast. Excessive drinking is also known to depress the immune system and contribute to sexual impotence in men and reduced fertility in women.

For more detailed information on the effects of excessive drinking on the body, see the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s publication, Beyond Hangovers: Alcohol’s Impact on Your Health.

Types of drinking problems include risky drinking, and alcohol abuse or dependence. If you think you or a friend or family member might have one of these drinking problems, help is available. A Military OneSource consultant (800-342-9647) can work with you to assess the problem, review options for getting help, provide appropriate referrals or simply get more information.