How stressed are you?

The list shown in table below is adapted from the work of mental health experts Thomas H. Holmes and Richard H. Rahe. It's very useful for obtaining a snapshot of your overall stress level.

Note that each stress-inducing event has been assigned a life-change unit (LCU). To quantity your stress level, first circle all the life events that you have experienced within the last twelve months. Next, add up the corresponding LCUs. Once you have your LCU total, find your stress-level category. Finally, read how your stress level is linked with hormone imbalance.

Stress-Inducing Events table

Here is what your LCU total score reveals:

• If your total is 0-150: at the moment, your stress level is low. The chance of your stress triggering a hormone imbalance is also low. Good for you.
• If your total is 150-300: you have borderline high stress. Your risk for a stress-related hormone imbalance is moderate.
• If your total is more than 300: warning! You have a high stress level. Your chance of having a stress-related hormone imbalance is significant.

Because the average person's life is full of responsibilities and complications, it is just not reasonable to think that you can completely eliminate stress as a factor. There are, however, tools and strategies that can help you to better cope with day-to-day stress. Proactive stress management has been shown to decrease the body's susceptibility to the fight-or-flight surge of adrenal hormones.

Hormone-healthy habit: beat stress

Although de-stressing is part of the prescription for restoring and maintaining hormone balance, setting aside time for yourself will be one of your greatest challenges. Experiment with different approaches to determine which ones will work best for you.

A common response to our hurried and fragmented lives is physical tension in the body and shallow breathing through the chest. Simply making a conscious effort to breathe more deeply and slowly can elicit a relaxation response to counteract your automatic stress response.

Try to set aside five minutes three times a day to close your door, turn off the phone, and just focus on inhalation and exhalation. Some people accomplish this best when they are naturally sequestered; for instance, in the car or on the toilet. Try the following technique:

• Put your hand under belly button and focus on moving your breath down through your belly rather than up through your chest.
• Breath in through your nose for a count of four.
• Hold for a count of three.
• Exhale through your mouth for a count of four.

Take any routine interruption that you find annoying in life and " reprogram" it as a cue to pause and breathe more consciously. Red lights, e-mail message alerts, e-mail message alerts, and being put on hold during a telephone call can serve this function.

Mediate

For most of us, our minds are busy even when our bodies are still. When you use meditation to elicit the relaxation response, you turn your attention inward, concentrating on a receptive positive thought, prayer, or image to reduce the reactivity of your thoughts.

Some patients have told me that they meditate by repeating a manta of love or peace with each exhalation; others say that they recite a memorized prayer; or personally, I picture myself on the shores of a beach listening to the ebb and flow of the waves. I encourage you to develop your own personal meditation to help your body and begin to quiet down so that a state of physiological and mental rest can ensue.

Begin by setting aside ten minutes each day to meditate. Do you best to find a quiet space where you won't be disturbed. You can meditate in any position, but the best way is to sit up with a straight back or in a comfortable chair. To help you fully relax and eliminate the need to look at your watch, set a timer or gentle alarm.

A psychologist I know well has a fun technique to reduce your reaction to stressful people. He suggest that whenever you are around someone who is causing you tense up or feel anxious, you should visualize that person's face on a tiny mouse's body with really big ears. Then, he suggests, imagine yourself taking a big broom to firmly and efficiently swish that mouse away.

Another visualization technique is to imagine that your stress has a shape and form and has attached itself like gum to the bottom of your shoe. Visualize yourself taking off your shoe, peeling off that nasty stress, and throwing it in the garbage. The goal is to create an image of stress as something you can get rid of.

Finally, simply close your eyes and take yourself on a trip to the most peaceful place you have ever been or read about. Imagine how the air fells against your skin and how restful your mind is while you are there. When you reenter your true surroundings, you will most likely feel refreshed from your brief mental vacation.

Sleep disturbances and your hormones

Stress can cause you to toss and turn at night. Stress-induced insomnia can impact two hormones that function to stimulate and control your appetite: ghrelin, the hormone that pumps through your body when you feel hungry, and leptin, the hormone that tells you that you are full and to stop eating.

In the long-term Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, men and women who routinely slept eight hours nightly were compared to those who sleep five hours or less. The findings indicated that those sleeping five hours or less had a 15persent higher level of ghrelin, the hormone signaling hunger and a 16 percent lower level of leptin, the hormone signally fullness.

According to Peter Kilpton, health journalist and author of Less Sleep Can Equal More Weight, when you are deprived of sleep, the production of gherlin and leptin are affected, and not in a positive way. Researchers have concluded that a sleep deficit leads to elevated levels of ghrelin in your system. If you are not getting enough sleep, your body responds by telling you are hungrier. Furthermore, when you do eat, it will take you long to fell and satisfied. This is because the amount of leptin in your system has decreased. The combination of elevated ghrelin (making you feel constantly hungry) and decreased leptin (telling you that you still aren't full) will wreak havoc on your waistline.