Stress is Good Antioxidant

Stress is Good Antioxidant

While flipping through an issue of a popular men’s magazine recently, I came across an interesting entry in the Health Bulletin section. It concerned stress, calling it an illness and suggesting that if you can manage the symptoms of stress, you can better handle the accumulation of it.

One tip was to take a supplement that would stimulate serotonin and dopamine production (recovery hormones that regulate mood and sleep) to battle the effects of cortisol (a hormone produced in response to stressors).

This idea brings to mind a humorous comment my doctor once made to me, “A headache is not the symptom of a Tylenol deficiency.” So when I read this advice, I wondered if other people would think the same thing that I did; why not just reduce or eliminate the stress or rather, the excess of it. Because… Stress is good. (Or perhaps more accurately, stress in balance is good.)

Without the stress of gravity, your bones wouldn’t develop proper density and your muscles wouldn’t acquire the tonicity to keep you upright, moving or breathing. Without the electromagnetic stress of sunlight it’s a good bet you wouldn’t be alive at all!

There are also chemical, mental, nutritional and thermal stressors to consider. The key to understanding stress is knowing how to identify it, that it’s healthy in the proper amount and that more often than not, any imbalance of stress in your life is usually self-inflicted.

Calling stress an illness and making the solution as simple as taking a pill underestimates the reader’s intelligence as well as being a disservice. I don’t dispute the possible need for a supplement to stimulate a hormone that is lacking, but I would suggest removing the obstacle to its production first.
 
Otherwise, it’s like telling someone to simply stomp on the gas pedal to make their car go faster when all that might be needed is to simply take the parking brake off! Share and Enjoy.