Is Stress The New Cancer?
50 years ago it was acceptable to smoke; now it’s acceptable to be stressed.
Walking through King’s Cross station, Monday morning at 7am, Karen Higgins 28 year old City Lawyer, suddenly fell to the ground.
She was rushed to hospital, and following numerous tests, she was diagnosed as severely stressed and fatigued.
Is stress the new cancer? Is there an epidemic of stress-filled lives beneath the surface of every face we see?
Today, in the City of London 44% of workers admitted they are stressed according to a survey by Robert Half Financial Services. This number reached 54% in the London Docklands area – the heart of major banking institutions.
American scientists have carried out tests on rats that indicate that when stressed they lose their mental flexibility and their ability to make decisions.
Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller University, New York, said: “Stress hormones act on the brain to change it. The brain of a stressed human being has different capacities and it may be more anxious and have less ability to pay attention or learn or remember.”
The business environment many executives find themselves in today is often too stressful and demanding; this can have adverse affects on clear thinking and therefore impact decision making. Executive coaching has repeatedly been used to assist executives in managing the stressful elements in their lives in order to lay the foundations for more rational and considered judgements.
When we are stressed we are highly emotional and out of balance and are less able to make logical decisions. Being unaware of the levels of stress we experience, we become ignorant of the dangers to decision making and potentially our personal health.
Although a level of stress can be a motivator to get things done, however, when stress gets beyond a certain level it can have detrimental effects; just as a glass of red wine has been proven to have beneficial qualities, yet too much of a good thing can also be a killer.
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