Dealing With Stress Naturally

Before seeking medical attention…
It is a fact of modern life that each and every one of us has less time
available than we would have had a few decades ago and that with less
time available, it is natural that all of us look for ‘quick fixes’ or
shortcuts to get things done as quickly as possible.
This is probably the main reason why most of us will immediately rush
off to the doctor at the first sign of any kind of medical problem. As
soon as we suspect that we have some kind of malady or ailment, we
understandably want to know what it is as soon as possible but perhaps
even more importantly, we want to ‘cure’ whatever is ailing us as
quickly as possible as well.
After all, most people who are still fortunate enough to have a job
cannot afford to take a week or two off – there are plenty of other
people who will be more than happy to step into their shoes at a
moments notice. Moreover, if you take too much time off work, it
almost inevitably means that there is a huge backlog to be made up
when you eventually return, which is a recipe for a great deal more
stress in any event!
Nevertheless, despite the fact that it is human nature to think that you
are the only one who suffers the problems that you do, everyone else
that you deal with on a daily basis is busy as well and that includes your
doctor. Hence, it is natural for your doctor to seek the quickest and
easiest ‘cure’ for any problem that you take to him (or her).
This almost inevitably involves the prescription of chemical-based
pharmaceutical drugs and this is no less true when you ask your doctor
to ‘do something about’ your stress problem than it is with any other
kind of ailment which might see you visiting the doctor's office.
If by compiling your own stress trigger list you have convinced yourself
that you are a person who is prone to stress attacks, it might be
tempting to seek immediate medical advice. Before you do so however,
you should take a moment to consider whether this is the most
appropriate action.
If you visit your doctor because you suspect that you suffer from stress,
the chances are that he or she will prescribe medication, most
commonly anti-anxiety or antidepressant drugs.
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Whilst we will examine the kind of drugs that doctors most commonly
prescribe for stress in more detail later, the important point to note
here is that these drugs are only capable of calming the symptoms of
your stress problem. They do not attack it at the root by helping you to
analyze what it is that is causing stress in your life, nor do drugs help
you to understand what you need to do if you want to minimize or
eradicate the stress you suffer on a daily basis.
Instead, the drugs that you will be prescribed are most likely to calm
you down when you are in a situation which might otherwise cause you
stress. Hence, the beneficial effect of these drugs is only going to be
temporary after which your propensity to suffer stress attacks will
return unabated.
But the most scary thing is that doctors in the West are aware that antianxiety
and antidepressant drugs are the prescription drugs that are
most commonly abused and misused. Whilst these drugs can provide
temporary relief from the worst effects of stress, anxiety and
depression, they are open to harmful abuse and can be highly addictive
as well.
For all of these reasons, it makes far more sense to study the list of
stress triggers that you compiled earlier in an effort to firstly identify
exactly what it is that is causing your problems. Doing so means that
you can come up with a long-term lifestyle change plan that will
minimize or banish whatever it is that causes stress from your life. In
this way, you reduce the need to resort to pharmaceutical drugs to
‘treat’ stress, thereby limiting the possibility that these drugs will
eventually become as big a problem as stress itself.
And all this is before even beginning to consider the potential side-effect
risks that many common anti-anxiety and antidepressant
pharmaceutical drugs problems pose. We will consider some of the most
commonly prescribed drugs and their potential side-effects in the next
chapter.
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Medical stress solutions analyzed
As you can see from this screenshot from Drugs.com, most of the
leading drugs that are prescribed for anxiety and stress are SSRI Antidepressants
amongst which you will note are some of the best-known
antidepressant drugs such as Prozac and Effexor:
Using Prozac as an example of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors
(SSRIs), the first point to make is that antidepressants of this nature
were originally adopted because they apparently...