Ground-down Britons reveal the strain of modern living CRAIG BROWN BRITISH people are buckling under the strain of modern life with one in ten people constantly at boiling point and a fifth feeling stressed before breakfast, a new survey has revealed.
The poll also found British people spend a total of five and a half years of their adult life feeling strung out and tense. The results paint a picture of a nation blighted with stress-related illnesses: half of those questioned, 52 per cent, said they struggled to sleep at night while one in two admitted suffering headaches or migraines. A further 23 per cent complained of digestive problems and 17 per cent confessed to having suffered panic attacks. Neil Shah, the director of the Stress Management Society, said yesterday that modern life was outstripping the human body's ability to cope with stress. And he warned constant pressure could affect long-term health, increasing the risk of cancer and heart disease. "The results of this survey do not surprise me at all," he said. "Our bodies are designed to be stressed only two to three times a month. In evolutionary terms, we have a stress reaction so that we would run away if we were attacked by a bear or if the neighbouring village attacked us. "Unfortunately, nowadays our lifestyles are just lived in a perpetual state of stress and it is just not good for our bodies. "It is really too soon to know what the long-term effects of our modern lifestyle are, but stress has been connected with heart disease and some forms of cancer, increasing some people's susceptibility to it," he said. When it came to listing the biggest factors in causing stress, almost two-thirds of those questioned by Coleman Parks last month on behalf of the Relaxation for Living Institute (RfLI) listed money worries as their biggest concern. This was followed by 54 per cent listing work pressures, while 49 per cent said relationships were their biggest concern. Beyond the day-to-day stresses of modern life, the pressure to look good rated high in people's concerns, with 45 per of women and 24 per cent of men citing it as a cause of anxiety. But Dr Ewan Macdonald, head of the Healthy Working Lives Research Unit at Glasgow University, disagreed with the survey's findings, claiming many people were self-diagnosing stress. He said: "It's true that over recent years there has been a relative increase in conditions which could be classed as mild to moderate mental health problems relating to stress. "But I would say that the epidemic of stress that we seem to have is a fashion. It's an ill-defined term and people are self-diagnosing themselves with it, and so it's become an accepted term and parlance." Dr Macdonald said that there were people genuinely ill with clinical anxiety or depression, but that stress had become a popular description that most people would use as it made them appear "in demand". But Richard Hilliard, the director of the RfLI, said: "Stress can manifest itself in so many different ways and the physical symptoms usually depend on how a person deals with it. "In one person, it might make them short-tempered and feel constantly tense, while in another it can cause them all sorts of digestive problems, making them seriously depressed, and be totally crippling to their lifestyle." . People who feel chronically stressed on the job may face an increased risk of depression, a study suggested yesterday. Researchers found that among more than 24,000 working Canadian adults, nearly 5 per cent had suffered from major depression in the past year. Those under heavy stress at work appeared to be at particular risk, according to findings in the American Journal of Public Health. MOTHERS' LITTLE HELPERS KHUTSO Dunbar set up her Glasgow-based business, Nurturer, to help new mothers cope with looking after a child. "A lot of the women who come here have been professionals and so they find it difficult to maintain the lives that they've had in the past," she said. "Many put themselves under a lot of stress because they feel they have to be seen to be good mothers while just coping with the day-to-day requirements of looking after a child. "So they get up in the morning, have to get their child up and ready and, if they're working mothers, get themselves presentable for their jobs, then get their child to nursery before getting to work themselves. "It is very much a modern issue because there is more emphasis on being a great mum, getting their figure back as soon as possible and being able to juggle all the demands without being seen to struggle." "There is still a stigma attached to not being able to cope. We do things like holding exercise sessions that mothers can bring their children along to because there aren't gyms that offer childcare facilities. "We're trying to help women to make that transition from their old lives to their new ones." This article: http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1583242007 Last updated: 04-Oct-07 01:13 BST The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Moderator Abuja Nigeria. P.S. FOr conference, Press Release and other Event coverage Call. AbujaNig on +2348075671223 or email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Snail Post: Box 8551, Wuse Abuja NIGERIA. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/abujaNig/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/abujaNig/join (Yahoo! 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