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Stress And Health : Stress

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Stress and Health
J Dugger

Stress and Health. How does it effect you? Have you ever felt as if your life was reeling out of control or that your health was failing only to realize there were core stressors at work causing your peril? This author can certainly relate. Much of this paper will relate to and deal with the stresses suffered by a professional Firefighter/Paramedic in the United States and how this stress can effect mental and physical health.
Merriam-Websters dictionary defines stress as "a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc." (1). It can also be described as "something that causes strong feelings of worry or anxiety" (1). There are many sources of stress in one 's personal and professional life. The things that cause us stress are known as stressors (2 pg112). Some stress comes in the form of rational, instinctual fear. These stressors keep us safe through instinct or learned behavior. An example of this stress would be one 's reaction to a loud, sudden noise which stresses our system triggering a body alarm response designed to protect us from danger. Some examples of negative stressors are traffic, interpersonal issues, and long lines at the grocery store. As it pertains to emergency work there are the obvious stressors of death and high pressure situations. There are also less well known and more chronic stressors such as sleep deprivation and the simple activation of a loud alarm. All of

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