Stress GPS

Stress GPS

With careful navigation, you can get ahead and maintain health. (No one-way ticket to the Bahamas required…

Although we wouldn't blame you.)

Hands up who's stressed. It's a trick question, obviously .

Whether you're trying to get through to your ISP after opening a thousand buck bill, facing a barely realistic deadline or making sure the babysitter knows where to find the Stingose, chances are it comes with a sense of prospective catastrophe. For some reason, even everyday practical tasks have become mired in tension (you can feel it in your shoulder blades). The thing is, while blowing a data cap and having to tell the boss you can't submit your report until tomorrow feel life-threatening, they're actually proxies for real threats to survival we envloves to meet but no longer face. You know, saber-toothed tigers. As a result, our bodies enact the same melodramatic adrenalin-inducing response in preparation to fight or flee a power bill as a woolly mammoth.

This involves redirecting blood flow to the muscles. Pushing glucose into the blood, increased sweating. A drop in immune function and digestion (as these are no longer the prioritiv). Increased heart rate and breathing and enlarged pupils. None of which actually help you find that car-free space you desperately need if you're going to make the meeting you're already late for.

But perversely we seem to like being stressed.

"Although the medical community has established that a little stress is actually good for you – waking up your creativity.

Fuelling your vitality, and keeping your immune system vigilant – the qualifying and key word here is 'little', "says stress management expert and autor of Addicted to Stress Debbie Mandel. "When you find yourself rushing from activity to activity, doing chore after chore, with no personal time for yourself, the problem isn't the external world that's landing on your doorstep; rather, it's your own need to constantly open that door and welcome stress into your life".

How you cope with stress – and how long you can withstand it before kowtowing to burnout – is personal, says Jennifer Ackerman, autor of Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream – a day in the life of your body.

"How your body responds to stressful events may be determined in part by your genes." She says. Whether you fret like a chihuahua at a Great Dane show or cruise through unruffled depends on genes known as serotonin transporter genes, which come in two sizes, short and long. The short ones favour moodiness low selfesteem and neurotic behaviour and are found in about 20 percent of the population. While long ones favour resilience and belong to qbout 30 per cent of people. The rest of us have one of each, meaning we are quite literally swinging votes.

Whatever your stress genes, self-management can mitigate the deleterious impact of prolonged periods under pressure.