Any change in your normal routine or health is called stress. If you look around, one of ten people that you see at work get stressed at some time or the other. Scientists are of the opinion that stress causes certain chemical changes in the brain which adversely affects your health. Women are very vulnerable to stress due to hormonal changes. There are certain negative effects on your health. Have a look at the different effects that stress has on your health.

1. Behavioral effects: When you are under pressure, your behavior changes to worst. You incorporate bad and harmful habits like smoking and drinking as a way of getting immediate relief from stress. Others who are too much busy with work, may not exercise daily or eat regularly. They may also cut down on sleep to cope up with their work pressure. All these are likely to harm your health.

2. Leads to heart disease: There is a strong link between stress and heart disease. If the stress is intense and if the stress hormones are not used up by physical exercise, our heart rate raises. This puts tension in the arteries and causes damage to them. As the body cures this damage, the artery walls thicken which can lead to less amount of blood flow to the heart.

3. Loss of immunity: Too much of stress leads to loss of immunity. It damages the immune system to a considerable extent which is why you catch cold more when you are stressed. It also leads to headaches and irritable bowel symptoms. Doctors are of the opinion that stress may also lead to cancer.

Regular exercise can reduce the amount of stress and the harm that it causes to your health. This strengthens your heart and increases the blood flow to the heart. This helps you to become immune to diseases and lead a healthy life.

The hitherto mild symptoms associated with H1N1 may have been replaced by what appears to be a mutated virus that actually seems to be killing many people. The virus is still under examination here in the UK and I’m hopeful that the results will be made public later this week.

The sad thing is that none of the treatments currently being purchased by governments at a cost of billions of dollars are either appropriate or effective. TamiFlu and other post infection treatments are seemingly ineffective and because this may be mutated virus it is highly likely that the vaccine that has been purchased will be completely ineffective.

There are however some very simple things that we can do to improve the performance of our immune system:

• increase vitamin D. intake to something in the regional 5000
• increase the amount of biologically active sugars we are consuming
• Add foods that are named to support the immune system i.e. garlic, only leaf extract, echinacea,

Prevention must be our first port of call but when this virus hits we need to have a well regulated immune system.

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Eating fresh fruit and vegetables may be good but is it enough? Do you really know what your food contains? What are the risks with using supplements – we want your views?

Do you really understand the relationship between your defence system, immune system and hormonal system?