Excerpts

Contents

PART ONE
Unfulfilling vocations: The background to work-related stress and its effects

1. HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?
2. BODIES, BRAINS AND STRESS
3. WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS?


PART TWO
What do I do now?

4. TAKING ACTION
5. SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
6. COPING STRATAGIES
7. THE FEEL GOOD FACTOR
8. STRENGTHENING THE BODY
9. CONCLUSION: A SLIP AND NOT A FALL
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4a
Appendix 4b
Selected Bibliography
Useful Contacts

NOTES
INDEX

According to Dr Olga Gregson from Manchester Metropolitan University, looking at a beautiful painting can actually reduce stress levels and even raise your mood. That is why in 2004 the Manchester City Art Gallery introduced the ‘tranquillity tour’ aimed at city-centre office workers, allowing people to spend their lunch hour ‘chilling out’ by looking at hand-picked paintings. The tour takes you through several centuries of painting from the early Victorians and pre-Raphaelites to modern abstract art. The paintings on the tour - which include J.M.W. Turner’s Thomson’s Aeolian Harp (1809) and James Durden’s elegantly restful, blue and yellow 1920s interior, Summer in Cumberland (1925) - were chosen, according to Andrew Loukes, the gallery’s curator, because they suggest restfulness. Although art appreciation is personal, some pieces of art appeal to everyone and evoke, through colour and association, particular responses in the viewer.
      Visual stimulation has long been known to have beneficial effects on health. Researchers from the University of Delaware studied 46 patients who had undergone gall bladder surgery. Half of them were put in rooms that overlooked trees whilst the others had a view of a brick wall. The patients who looked out onto the trees spent a shorter time recovering in hospital, expressed fewer negative moods and took fewer painkillers than the patients who looked on to the brick wall. So why not visit an art gallery, or take up gardening and grow beautiful plants or flowers - and experience an unexpected stress-buster.

Negative ions: Or why not take a walk? We have already seen in this chapter how exercise can benefit your health and in the process flood your body with endorphins that make you feel happier. And if you can take a walk near a waterfall, up a mountain or on a beach, so much the better! Did you know that the air in these areas is rich in negative ions that been shown to increase serotonin, the mood enhancing hormone, in the brain? That’s why you really do feel better in these environments and not just because the poets and painters tell us we should.

Having a laugh: Researchers have estimated that laughing 100 times gives the body a full workout that is equal to 10 minutes on a rowing machine or 15 minutes on an exercise bike. While rocking with mirth, you are exercising your diaphragm, as well as your abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg and back muscles, which can’t be bad. Laughter can also bring balance to all the components in the immune system. It reduces levels of the hormones that swing into action when we experience stress, anger or hostility. Stress hormones, as we already know, suppress the immune system, increase the number of blood platelets (which cause obstructions in arteries) and raise blood pressure. Laughing, on the other hand, actually increases the killer cells that destroy tumours and viruses. Gamma-interferon (a disease-fighting protein) also increases, as do T-cells (a major part of the immune response) and B-cells that make the antibodies that destroy disease!
      Not only that, have you noticed how laughing often makes you hiccup or cough? In doing so, you are clearing the respiratory tract of mucous build-up. In addition, laughing also increases salivary immunoglobulin A, which fights infections and any organisms entering through the respiratory tract. In other words, laughing is proven to be good for you, so even if you don’t feel like it, force yourself to go out of your way and find things that make you laugh: rent a video, visit a comedy club, or simply have a laugh with friends.

Become a pet owner: Fido and Flossie can also relieve your stress and keep it down. Researchers at the Department of Medicine at the State University of New York found that the blood pressure of pet owners was less likely to increase in response to mental stress that that of non-pet owners. Another study looked at patients who were hospitalised with a heart attack or chest pains. The results showed that after one year only 6% of pet owners died compared to 28% of non-pet owners.
      Why does study after study show that pet owners live longer than non-pet owners? Perhaps it is because pets give unconditional, non-judgmental love and, importantly, do not give advice. As stress can be caused or exacerbated by our own actions, a non-judgemental stance is comforting. Academics call this ‘non-evaluative social support’. Furthermore, in return for their ‘non-evaluative support’ pets must be fed and watered and, depending on the pet, exercised. This is one more way of moving the focus away from your own problems.

There are so many ways to retrieve your ‘joie de vivre’. Take up singing or bell ringing, learn to cook exotic meals and have dinner parties. Start a repetitive hobby such as knitting, crochet or pottery, or just sit outside and gaze at the stars. As Herodotus said: ‘If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it’. Whatever you decide to do, a hobby or interest will help take the focus away from yourself and your problems. Enjoy life, as the saying goes, because there’s plenty of time to be dead. Follow this advice and try to get your stress in perspective - see it as a temporary setback, but nothing that can’t be rectified, without the help of, among other things, a good laugh or a full-body massage.