| Posted February 14, 2014 | By Arthur Williams, D.O. | Categorized under Families, Men's Health, Women's Health |

You know how you are. You think you can do it all. You think you can handle an insane work schedule packed full of travel and meetings and balance your home life and all the chaos that comes with that. As working humans, we tend to push ourselves to unattainable limits. This, my friends, creates stress.

And here's what that stress does to your body: It shows up in the form of elevated blood pressure, irritability, inability to sleep, abdominal pain, headaches, chest pain and an inability to focus. None of which is going to help you get your work done.

So cut it out.

Easier said than done, I know. But I have been counseling patients for decades on dealing with and eliminating stress and the conditions that go with it. We have a tendency to have goals that outweigh our abilities. We ask too much of ourselves, which is the No. 1 cause of stress. Other popular stress causes are your spouse/family/kids, finances — and you guessed it: work.

Caveman Stress

In a nutshell, here's what happens in your body when faced with stress: We have a life saving reflex called "fight or flight." Let's look at a caveman, who is out looking for dinner and a saber-toothed tiger jumps out in front of him. He has two choices: fight or flight. In that scenario, your adrenal gland floods your body with adrenaline. Your pupils dilate, your breathing speeds up, blood rushes to your muscles, you get nauseous and you start to shake. It is a life-saving mechanism designed to give you what you need to either fight or run for your life.

In a modern day setting, your body doesn't need a rush of adrenaline when you are 10 minutes late for a meeting. That's not what it was designed for, so we end up triggering that life-saving response in our bodies for nothing.

Take a Walk

The best way to combat stress is with a change of environment. In a particularly stressful situation, the best thing you can do is walk away if that's an option. It takes 20 minutes to process the adrenaline your body has produced, so if you and your boss, spouse, or friend are having an argument, walk away and come back in 20 minutes. Find ways to adjust your environment to meet your ability. If an environment change isn't an option, exercise is always a great idea.

Midday Stress Relief

I recommend exercise because it releases endorphins that stimulate the adrenaline receptor in your brain. Most executives are either still working when they get home or focusing on doing family stuff, so exercise at the end of the day typically doesn't happen.

I tell people who have work stress to bring workout clothes to the office. Leave them in the car and exercise before you go home because you won't do it once you get home. Find something you enjoy doing and stick with it. Whether it's tennis, golf or cycling, it's as important to your work success as the actual work.

Make time for exercise

A lot of dealing with stress comes down to your lifestyle. If you find yourself saying you just don't have time to exercise, what could you eliminate from your daily routine to make the time? Are you watching three TV shows at night? Maybe you can cut back to one. After all, what's more important? NCIS or your health?

If you read the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey, you will learn a very helpful trick that I recommend to a lot of my patients. Divide a piece of paper into two columns and in one column, write down what is important to you. In the second column, list what you spend your time doing. The two typically don't match. When you see it written down, a lot of people tend to change how they spend their time and as a result, find themselves dealing with a lot less stress.