Friday, March 21, 2008

The Number One Killer

There is one disease that kills more than cancer. It kills more than tobacco. It kills more than HIV, war, and bad diet combined.

Do you know what it is?

The number one killer of people is stress.

Stress drives tobacco smoking, as well as alcoholism, addiction, and drug abuse in general.

Stress causes depression, anxiety, rage, war, and suicide.

Stress weakens both the human mind and the human body, thus allowing other genetic or infectious diseases to gain a foothold and further deteriorate the body.

Stress can lead to overeating, and bad habits like eating fast food regularly.

Stress can weaken marriages, families, and economies. Stress can break apart churches, communities, and political bodies.

Stress is our number one killer.

But what is it?

Is it all just in our heads, or does stress have its roots in the cultural environment?

How might we change our world so thats stress is minimized and controlled?

Is this even possible?



I don't know about you, but I'm going to find some answers here.

I hope you join me.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

For years people have been asking me what is the condition I see most frequently in my patients. Stress has always been my reply. Most of the patients I have seen would not have the physical problems that they have if they did not have stress. Stress causes your tissues to break down, stress slows or stops physical injuries from healing, stress causes you to gain weight, and lastly stress effects your mental capacities.

-JH

8:03 AM  
Blogger sourmonkey said...

thanks for that comment.

I believe it.

I also believe that stress is the result of conflict between the "cognitive" environment and the external environment. So, stress is more than just "in our heads", it is ultimately rooted in the capacity of the individual to process information streaming in from the outside world.

Our modern world bombards the mind with data, more so than our hunter-gatherer brains are equipped to process. I tend to blame media-conditioning for the downturn in cognitive intelligence and the upturn in anxiety and stress levels in American society.

that, and those damn pharmaceutical companies that push pills to treat cognitive anxiety, when the root of the problem is the environment.

Oh, and all that coffee drinking that people do just to "catch up" doesn't help.

9:58 PM  

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