Stress, as a factor impacting health, has been around for long in our lexicon. But it was till recently seen only as a minor player among an array of more ominous physiological factors that caused major illnesses. That perception has changed, and quite radically, with new scientific studies showing that stress could be the mother of all ailments. It is now seen as a fundamental disorder of our mental and physical metabolism that has a debilitating and potentially lethal effect—as a causative factor for heart attacks, hypertension, cancer, brain stroke, diabetes, liver cirrhosis, obesity, osteoporosis, infertility, depression and even suicide. Indeed, the World Health Organization has responded to this by declaring stress to be the “health epidemic of the 21st century”.
In the US and other advanced nations, stress has…
