What's in the future for stress?

Stress is part of life and will always be around. The keys to dealing with stress are appropriate control of stressors and management of our physical (physiological) and mental (psychological) responses. In this regard, some exciting work is being done on early treatment (intervention) during extremely stressful events (such as 9-11). This intervention, called critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), involves discussing the traumatic event as soon as possible after the event. In fact, CISD can lessen extreme (pathological) reactions to stress and often prevent PTSD in its worst forms. Hopefully, the concepts of CISD can be translated into helpful strategies for managing the more common (normal) types of stress.

We all have slightly different stress responses because of our genetic makeup. In the future, perhaps we will be able to alter our genes (for example, if we are genetically determined to be over- or underreactors to stress). In fact, the field of pharmacogenetics (medicines that enter the cells' DNA and turn on or off certain genes) is very promising for the area of stress and health.

Stress At A Glance

• Stress is a normal part of life that can either help us learn and grow or can cause us significant problems.
• Stress releases powerful neurochemicals and hormones that prepare us for action (to fight or flee).
• If we don't take action, the stress response can create or worsen health problems.
• Prolonged, uninterrupted, unexpected, and unmanageable stresses are the most damaging types of stress.
• Stress can be managed by regular exercise, meditation or other relaxation techniques, structured timeouts, and learning new coping strategies to create predictability in our lives.
• Many behaviors that increase in times of stress and maladaptive ways of coping with stress -- drugs, pain medicines, alcohol, smoking, and eating -- actually worsen the stress and can make us more reactive (sensitive) to further stress.
• While there are promising treatments for stress, the management of stress is mostly dependent on the willingness of a person to make the changes necessary for a healthy lifestyle.