STRESS - we all have it, we all feel, but just how important is it?
How much does stress influence our daily lives? How much does stress influence our lives long-term? Can stress Kill us? Is it all bad?
I. BACKGROUND
In 1925 a second year medical student named Hans Selye observed that people suffering from a wide variety of somatic (physical) disorders all seemed to have the same or similar symptoms. For example, many of these people reported: decreased appetite, decreased muscular strength and endurance, and lowered levels of ambition or drive.
Selye, unable to find a common disease or disorder to explain these behaviors, called this group of symptoms, the SYNDROME OF JUST BEING SICK.
In addition, he found that these symptoms occurred whenever: the human organism needed to adapt to a changing internal or external environment.
This was the first observation and identification that eventually led to the term STRESSAt first, Selye defined STRESS as, a nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it. Even this initial definition implies that not all stress is a result of "bad" things happening to us.
Later, his JUST BEING SICK syndrome evolved into the GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME which he defined as, the physiological processes and results of stress.
From this, we get a modern, more comprehensive definition of STRESS: a psychological and physical response of the body that occurs whenever we must adapt to changing conditions, whether those conditions be real or perceived.

III. STRESS AND ILLNESS
Stress has powerful effects on mental functioning, mental and physical performance, interpersonal encounters, and physical well-being.
In the Principles of Internal Medicine (Harrison) it was reported that 50-80% of all physical disorders have psychosomatic or stress related origins. A. Psychosomatic Illness
Many people assume erroneously that a