Women Risk Stress Overload

July 08th, 2008 | Category: Fitness

Medford, OR March 14, 2004–It may be difficult to imagine that stress can be a factor in making you fat, initiating depression, and causing hormonal upheaval — but believe it! That’s the advice of Nisha Jackson, Ph.D., a nurse practitioner specializing in hormonal balance.

Stress has become such a common health problem for women that Dr. Jackson has devoted an entire chapter to the subject in her upcoming book, “The Hormone Survival Guide for Perimenopause: Balance Your Hormones Naturally.”

“I have seen it time and again,” says Jackson, “and stress-related illness is well documented. It is estimated that 43 percent of adults suffer stress-related problems and that 75 to 90 percent of visits to doctors’ offices are for stress-related illness.”

“During the past decade of treating women,” she says, “I have noted a pattern in the thirty-five- to fifty-year-old age group. Changes are occurring in these women’s physical, emotional, and mental health, and they report significant complaints, including fatigue, depression, PMS, weight gain, repeated flu-like symptoms, cravings, anger, and just not feeling well.”

By the time they arrive at Dr. Jackson’s Oregon clinic, most of these women have been advised to seek counseling or psychiatric evaluation, after having been informed that there were no medical problems to treat.

Jackson continues, “These women ask me, ‘Am I in menopause?’ ‘Could my problems be hormonal?’ ‘Is it stress?’ I have to hand it to women: They usually know what’s going on with their own bodies. In fact, I have learned to ask women what they think is causing their misery, and many times they are right.”

Her book explains the causes of stress, includes a checklist of syptoms, and provides practical solutions for dealing with it. Along with advice on changes in lifestyle and diet, she offers a “Quick Fix Plan for Stress” that can be implemented simply and immediately, with dramatic effects.

Sources of stress are not going to disappear, so how you choose to handle stress or alleviate it is the key. “If you take steps today to reduce the effects of stress in your life,” concludes Jackson, “you can expect more energy, fewer cravings, a reduction in body fat, less irritability and depression, and just to feel better overall about yourself and your life.”

For more information on perimenopause, natural hormones, and Nisha Jackson’s new book, visit www.HormoneSurvival.com