By Dr. Ben Lerner

In 1994 when I taught my first class in anatomy and physiology at a local college, I was shocked to find that the largest chapter in the four-inch thick textbook was on stress. The fact is, stress is not just a term or a state of mind, it is incredibly damaging to your body. Stress is something you must drastically minimize in order to not just stay sane, but to stay healthy.

Damaging stress is created when forces or circumstances outside the body overwhelm the mind, the physiology, and the senses in the body causing them to go through a negative change.

Unlike the obviously harmful events such as a fresh cut that bleeds, the damaging and even deadly effects of stress can often be a silent killer.

There is a direct link between stress and the dysfunction of various parts and systems within the body. Stress reactions alter the digestive system, over-stimulate certain glands while under stimulating others, affect heart function and change breathing. As a result, stress has an actual, measurable negative impact on:

• Blood pressure
• Cholesterol
• Electrolytes
• Brain chemistry
• Blood sugar levels
• Joint function
• Hormonal balance

All of the physiological problems associated with stress will speed up the aging process and cause or contribute to literally every type of symptom or disease known to man. Stress even makes you gain weight.

People all face much of the same outside factors that cause stress. Work, relationships, school, personal and family health problems, money issues, and even positive events like weddings and parties can all be stress-producing circumstances. However, none of these things are necessarily bad.

Both happy events and tragedies alike cause a stress response in the body. Some stress is unavoidable. The only way to have zero stress is to not get up in the morning!

On the other hand, stress only becomes negative when your response to it is negative. The condition we call stress is entirely self-induced. It is how each individual responds to stress, and not the stress itself, that causes a negative reaction in the body.

Stress is not a person, a condition or an event. Stress is a reaction to a person, a condition or an event. Just how negative this reaction is will determine the amount of emotional turmoil and damage done to the body. Effectively, any injury induced by stress is a self-inflicted wound. For example:

Public speaking can cause an amazing amount of negative stress for most people. It scares a lot of people half to death--literally. Then again, public speaking cannot be considered bad stress in and of itself, because while some people are afraid of public speaking and will suffer miserably throughout the entire experience, myself and many others thoroughly enjoy speaking in public and see it as an opportunity to entertain, teach and motivate.

The right Dr. Mercola nutrition plan blueprinted for your body type and a solid cardiovascular and resistance exercise program will help reduce or even eliminate the damaging effects of stress. However, to get to the root of stress you must reprogram the way you look at it. One way to do this is to make sure to separate anxiety issues from authority issues.

"Anxiety issues" are the every day troubles such as world events, news, professional sports team performance, other people’s troubles, and pending personal crisis. Anxiety issues are problems in which you have no direct control over their outcome, yet you nonetheless allow them to create chaos, worry, stress, and a lot of lost time in your own life.

I have a friend who always says, "Worrying works, 99 percent of the things I worry about never actually happen."

The truth is, however, that worrying is the most useless activity on the planet. Worrying or fearing the outcome of the trials and events of the world, other people’s lives, or even in your life does nothing to affect the eventual results. Worrying does nothing except cause pain in what are the precious few minutes of your life. Worrying really doesn’t work.

On the other hand, authority issues are the challenges you can do something about. These are the problems concerning the need for more discipline, more learning, more practicing, better scheduling, improved preparation, etc. While in some cases there are people and situations you have some direct control over, typically authority issues only concern yourself. Your actions and reactions are usually the only ones that you can truly totally influence.

If you recognize something as an "authority issue," then you can create a strategy and start actively creating a solution. However, if you recognize something as an "anxiety issue," worrying is useless and can create nothing but damaging stress and diminished time.

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."
~ Matthew 6:24

Dr. Ben Lerner is the New York Times Best-Selling author of Body by God: The Owner’s Manual For Maximized Living. He was a 1996 and 2000 Olympic Team Chiropractor, nutritionist, and strength and conditioning trainer. To learn more about his breakthrough strategies for making exercise safe, easy and effective or to find a qualified Chiropractor near you go to thebodybygod.com.