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2011-07-26 11:02:41
By Tom de Castella and Caroline McClatchey BBC News Magazine
It's summer and many people are planning a stress-relieving trip, while for
many parents the school holidays are themselves a stressful time. But are we
close to having a way for people to measure their own stress levels, and is
this a good idea?
Everyone knows someone who is stressed out, whether it's over job worries,
money concerns or personal problems.
Stress is notoriously difficult to define but measuring it could soon become
official practice. The Office for National Statistics has been asked by Prime
Minister David Cameron to assess the well-being of the population and has
published details of a survey into what people think wellbeing embraces. It
includes relationships with friends and family, job satisfaction, health and
the state of the environment.
But aside from public policy, people can already measure their own stress
without going to the doctor. Entrepreneurs are making money out of people's
desire to test their stress levels. Devices are on sale that measure hormones,
blood pressure or pulse rates.
How stressed are you?
Stress test website
The Stress Test, by BBC Lab UK, aims to find out if it is triggered by genes or
lifestyle
This online test takes about 20 minutes
It measures your mood, explores what makes you feel stressed - such as work or
social life - and what helps you cope
Mitesh Soma, founder of Chemist Direct, is selling an executive stress kit
containing monitors for blood pressure, body fat and cholesterol, and a
pedometer, costing 100.
Soma's firm sells about a hundred a week. The former City worker came up with
the idea after talking to ex-colleagues about health worries over long hours.
Plenty of other companies are trying to tap a lucrative market. US firm
Affectiva plans to sell wristbands that measure the wearer's stress levels.
But even the term "stress" is divisive. For some it is the scourge of the
modern 24/7 lifestyle, for others an ailment invented by therapists to
medicalise normal human reactions. The accepted definition of being stressed -
"experiencing physiological, emotional, or psychological stress" - did not
appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1993.
But regardless of how people define stress, it has a huge economic impact
through absence from work.
Helen McGill, who focuses on work-related stress for the Health and Safety
Executive, says just under 10 million work days were lost to stress in
2009-2010 in the UK, across the public and private sectors.
Testing emotions
No-one has yet figured out how to measure happiness. But Rosalind Picard, a
professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes she is close.
Picard says feelings are a combination of two different spectrums - positive to
negative and calm to excited.
If you've backed into your neighbour's car you are probably excited-negative.
If you just left a yoga retreat, you're likely to be positive-calm.
She has developed and is beginning to commercialise sensors that measure these
two dimensions. One, using a computer camera, scans facial features for
emotions, from giggles to frowns.
The other relies on wristbands that measure the electrical conductivity of
skin, an indicator of emotional arousal. An interesting conversation will
generate a spike, as will encountering an obnoxious colleague. Most lectures
with PowerPoint slides will lead people to flatline.
Prices for the sensors are still high, but a company Picard co-founded,
Affectiva, hopes to make them available to consumers in the next year or two.
Picard says the wrist bands, which she wears constantly, have helped her. She
used to get stressed by Boston's terrible drivers - until she saw how high she
was spiking when behind the wheel.
by Karen Weintraub
"Stress is one of the biggest factors in absenteeism. We distinguish between
pressure which can be a positive, motivational factor to you doing your job
well, and stress which is the adverse reaction that people have to excessive
pressure."
Stress may be big news but often patients aren't aware of its effect on their
health, says the One Show's Dr Mark Porter. "The vast majority come in and look
nonplussed when you suggest they're suffering from stress. But then as they
talk about what's going on in their life, the penny drops."
The difficulty for doctors is there is no consistency in how people respond to
stressful life events. Something one person might find extremely difficult,
another would take in their stride, he says.
But is measuring stress a good idea? The firms selling stress kits say they can
help people see what impact their lifestyle is having on their health and make
appropriate adjustments.
Lynda Spain, a stress management consultant in Manchester, agrees that it's
important to identify someone's stress level. Once she knows how stressed a
client is she can take the next step and address it with cognitive behaviour
therapy or other techniques.
But she doesn't use kits. "I like to ask people to visualise a stress
thermometer. And ask them if the mercury is at bursting point at the top or if
they're halfway up and things are starting to get too much."
Dr Porter says that trying to determine stress using quantitative measures is
flawed.
A man measuring blood pressure High blood pressure might be related to stress
"I'm not a firm believer in a stress scale," says Porter. "The way I look at it
is whether someone has a range of symptoms suggestive of stress: they can't
sleep, they're underperforming, they're irritable or they're having anxiety
attacks."
Saliva can be used to measure stress hormone levels, in clinical trials at
least. And if you're stressed your pulse is likely to rise, as is your blood
pressure. But it could be for lots of other reasons, too. Doctors do not take
these results particularly seriously in regard to stress, preferring to look at
someone's wider circumstances, Dr Porter says.
"Stress is a clinical diagnosis. It's similar to the way you don't have a blood
test for depression. These kits may tell you something in isolation but they
need to be interpreted properly."
Angela Patmore, author of The Truth About Stress, goes further. Self-testing is
not just unreliable, it is harmful.
Signs of stress
Loneliness
Loss of confidence
Poor memory
Increased smoking or drinking
Twitchy behaviour
Changes in sleep pattern
Source: HSE
"The whole thrust of stress management is to medicalise what is a normal human
emotion. It makes people become hyper-vigilant and anxious, and display all the
symptoms of fear. They begin to examine themselves and start thinking they have
a mental illness."
A prejudice has taken hold that people should be calm at all times. When people
need a range of emotion over the course of a day in order to be "purposeful and
creative", she argues. We should accept that our heart rates and pulse will
rise, and we may start to sweat. Don't worry, it's a normal part of being
alive, she counsels.
The people selling kits are taking advantage of people's vulnerabilities,
Patmore believes. "It's trying to convince people they have a health problem
and then selling them a solution."
Tips to manage stress
We all feel stressed at various times in our lives. It's a normal response to
challenging circumstances, and can be caused by happy as well as sad events. A
new partner or a holiday can trigger stress just as much as the death of a
loved one or a job loss.
This article was last reviewed in September 2006.
First published in June 2000.
A little bit of stress isn't a bad thing: it mobilises our bodies and energises
us during the coping process. But being overstressed can result in a range of
health problems, including headaches, upset stomach, high blood pressure and
even strokes or heart disease.
Coping with stress
One of the first steps to cope with stress is learning to recognise your
personal signs and symptoms. The way you function on a daily basis may change,
or you may notice a difference in your body (such as tense shoulders),
thinking, or general sense of wellbeing. Is the cause for your stress a real
threat? Or is something causing needless worry in your life?
Stress is part of life but we don't need to compound our problems by putting
ourselves down and thinking irrational thoughts such as "nobody gets stressed
out like I do". We're not weak or neurotic because we're stressed - we're
stressed because we're human. Blaming ourselves or doling out negative thoughts
as self-imposed punishment is a waste of energy.
Approaching stress constructively
It can be tempting to hide from the people, places and tasks which make life
difficult. By removing yourself from the situation, it's possible to find
immediate relief - but the sources of stress will never go away unless we
confront them.
If avoiding stress triggers isn't a good technique for dealing with stress,
what is? Life experience teaches us that whenever we need to master a new skill
- learning to swim, giving a public presentation, taking risks in front of
others - it pays to take a deep breath, perhaps grit our teeth and get on with
things. Most of the time, it all works out.
Positive confrontation is a good coping skill when faced with stress. Instead
of avoiding a difficult boss, why not take every opportunity to work in his or
her presence? Throwing ourselves in at the deep end until we master it is one
way to desensitise ourselves to the people, places and work we find stressful.
Taking action is good for our basic wellbeing too.
Another approach to tackling stress head-on is to keep tabs on our stress while
we're working. Logging the time of day, situation, how strong feelings of
stress were, how you coped and how stressed you felt afterwards can be a useful
tool for some people. This can give us an accurate idea of when and where we
get anxious, and what coping skills work for us in certain situations.
Another way to take action on stress is to control the body and mind.
Self-relaxation leading up to stressful times (as well as afterwards) and
positive self-talk ("I have the skills to do this job well", "I've done this a
dozen times before") are excellent skills to have. Sometimes our perceptions of
a situation may be inaccurate - interpretations of an event or situation may be
more negative when we're down or dissatisfied.
It's possible to test our perceptions. Keeping a record (as recommended above)
can be one way to get a fresh view of a situation. Also, we can label the
strong, stressful emotions we're feeling as either positive or negative. So,
before the next bout of stage fright, try calling it "excitement" and see what
happens.
Enduring, mastering (and surviving) what life throws at us, and converting
stress into a positive force, is a lifelong challenge. Everyone needs a certain
amount of stress - it's what gets us out of bed in the morning - but remember
to be gentle with yourself.
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