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Ground-down Britons reveal the strain of modern living

05.10.07

BRITISH people are buckling under
the strain of modern life with one in ten people constantly at boiling point
and a fifth feeling stressed before breakfast, a new survey has revealed.

The poll also found British people
spend a total of five and a half years of their adult life feeling strung out
and tense.

The results paint a picture of a
nation blighted with stress-related illnesses: half of those questioned, 52 per
cent, said they struggled to sleep at night while one in two admitted suffering
headaches or migraines.

A further 23 per cent complained of
digestive problems and 17 per cent confessed to having suffered panic attacks.

Neil Shah, the director of the
Stress Management Society, said yesterday that modern life was outstripping the
human body's ability to cope with stress.

And he warned constant pressure
could affect long-term health, increasing the risk of cancer and heart disease.

"The results of this survey do
not surprise me at all," he said. "Our bodies are designed to be
stressed only two to three times a month. In evolutionary terms, we have a
stress reaction so that we would run away if we were attacked by a bear or if
the neighbouring village attacked us.

"Unfortunately, nowadays our
lifestyles are just lived in a perpetual state of stress and it is just not
good for our bodies.

"It is really too soon to know
what the long-term effects of our modern lifestyle are, but stress has been
connected with heart disease and some forms of cancer, increasing some people's
susceptibility to it," he said.

When it came to listing the biggest
factors in causing stress, almost two-thirds of those questioned by Coleman
Parks last month on behalf of the Relaxation for Living Institute (RfLI) listed
money worries as their biggest concern.

This was followed by 54 per cent
listing work pressures, while 49 per cent said relationships were their biggest
concern.

Beyond the day-to-day stresses of
modern life, the pressure to look good rated high in people's concerns, with 45
per of women and 24 per cent of men citing it as a cause of anxiety.

But Dr Ewan Macdonald, head of the
Healthy Working Lives Research Unit at Glasgow University, disagreed with the
survey's findings, claiming many people were self-diagnosing stress.

He said: "It's true that over
recent years there has been a relative increase in conditions which could be
classed as mild to moderate mental health problems relating to stress.

"But I would say that the
epidemic of stress that we seem to have is a fashion. It's an ill-defined term
and people are self-diagnosing themselves with it, and so it's become an
accepted term and parlance."

Dr Macdonald said that there were
people genuinely ill with clinical anxiety or depression, but that stress had
become a popular description that most people would use as it made them appear
"in demand".

But Richard Hilliard, the director
of the RfLI, said: "Stress can manifest itself in so many different ways
and the physical symptoms usually depend on how a person deals with it.

"In one person, it might make
them short-tempered and feel constantly tense, while in another it can cause
them all sorts of digestive problems, making them seriously depressed, and be
totally crippling to their lifestyle."

People who feel chronically
stressed on the job may face an increased risk of depression, a study suggested
yesterday.

Researchers found that among more
than 24,000 working Canadian adults, nearly 5 per cent had suffered from major
depression in the past year. Those under heavy stress at work appeared to be at
particular risk, according to findings in the American Journal of Public
Health.

MOTHERS' LITTLE HELPERS

KHUTSO Dunbar set up her Glasgow-based business, Nurturer, to help new mothers
cope with looking after a child.

"A lot of the women who come
here have been professionals and so they find it difficult to maintain the
lives that they've had in the past," she said.

"Many put themselves under a
lot of stress because they feel they have to be seen to be good mothers while
just coping with the day-to-day requirements of looking after a child.

"So they get up in the morning,
have to get their child up and ready and, if they're working mothers, get
themselves presentable for their jobs, then get their child to nursery before
getting to work themselves.

"It is very much a modern issue
because there is more emphasis on being a great mum, getting their figure back
as soon as possible and being able to juggle all the demands without being seen
to struggle."

"There is still a stigma
attached to not being able to cope. We do things like holding exercise sessions
that mothers can bring their children along to because there aren't gyms that
offer childcare facilities.

"We're trying to help women to make that
transition from their old lives to their new ones

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