Never-ending stress of life slowly crushing our health

Given the lives we lead it's impossible to avoid stress altogether, but up to a point stress can improve our performance. When stress is unremitting, it's another story.

- DR MIRIAM STOPPARD

"On short timescales, the stress response restores the body's balance. Over longer periods of time, stress leads to imbalance," says Jeffrey Birk of Columbia University, New York.

Research shows that chronic stress is linked to health issues such as digestive problems, headaches, weight gain or loss, trouble sleeping, heart disease, susceptibility to cancer, high blood pressure and stroke.

When stress disrupts the body's normal balance we feel that change acutely. We "feel" stressed when the demands of a situation seem to be greater than our ability to cope.

The more these demands exceed our coping capacity, the more severe stress becomes.

When stressed, the body releases cortisol and other stress hormones.