Job Stress, Health, And Unexpected Consequences: How Stress-Caused Health Problems Can Kill Your Career
Author: Elisabeth Kuhn

In Japan they have a word for what happens when you work too
much, so much until you fall over dead: Karoshi, which means
death by overwork. But even in Japan, most people don't usually
die from working too much - they just get sick and suffer. And
suffering, year after year, can be a prescription for career
disaster...

Job stress results when we work too much or under bad
circumstances, and it's not news to anyone that such stress can
make us sick. But there's a wrinkle that flies under the radar
in the stress and health discussion: Not only can an
excessively stressful career make us sick, but once we get sick,
our lower energy levels affect the quality and quantity of the
work we can do, and sooner or later, our impaired performance
can in turn ruin our careers.

Unfortunately, excess stress on a daily basis is something all
too familiar to lots of people. And for all too many, it has
already resulted in an assortment of health problems, ranging
from the merely annoying, embarrassing, and slightly painful,
such as cold sores, acne, neck pain, headaches, and hair loss,
all the way to obesity, heart attacks, and even death.

Sometimes things can get so bad, that karoshi may seem like a
merciful way out. But let's focus on the kinds of health
consequences that result from stress that doesn't quite kill you
and on the impact they can have on your career in turn. If the
stress is ongoing, and it usually is, you may well end up
suffering for years, alive but not so well.

We know that when the body experiences stress, it releases
adrenalin and cortisol as part of our primitive fight-or-flight
response. These important hormones help increase the oxygen
level in the blood and boost the sugar in the blood - preparing
us to either flee or fight.

That reaction may have been useful in an era where fighting or
fleeing would have been considered reasonable options. But if
your boss is yelling at you, neither bonking him on the kisser
nor running away screaming qualifies as appropriate behavior.
Instead, there you are, a sitting duck, flooded with stress
hormones that have no place to go and serve no purpose except
wreak havoc on your well-being.

What havoc? For example, the immune system is suppressed or
damaged, which compromises your body's ability to resist
infection. So you're the first to catch the office cold and the
last to recover from it. And then there are a number of chronic
health conditions are either caused or made worse by stress,
including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, migraine
headaches, and heart disease. Some research suggests that
stress can even cause cancer - or push the body over that
critical hurdle where our immune system is just no longer strong
enough to fight it off.

There are also slightly less obvious conditions, less obvious
at least to the outside observer: depression, fibromyalgia,
insomnia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and adrenal burnout.

They all have in common that they'll sap your energy and make
it very difficult to get much work done. Come performance
review, you'll have some explaining to do. And if anything,
that'll make your stress-levels even worse.

Can you see where this is heading? Stress may hurt your body,
but it will also hurt your career if you don't manage to get on
top of it. Ratcheting down your stress levels has got to be a
top priority, because it may not only cost you your health but
your job as well. And then, what will you do for health
insurance?


About The Author: Ready to reclaim YOUR inner calm? Get
Elisabeth Kuhn's FREE stress-busting special report along with
your free e-course on how to live a more joyful and successful
life at
http://www.myfavoriteselfhelpstuff.com/freebie/FBQFreebie1.html