Stress is a natural reaction that affects everyone. It is an evolutionary response that has evolved in order to protect us from danger.

When you find yourself in a dangerous situation, Adrenocorticotrophic Hormone or ACTH is released into your bloodstream. This gives you a boost of energy and triggers the flight or fight mechanism.

If you can imagine back in the caveman days, you would be out happily collecting nuts and berries and a saber tooth tiger jumps out on you. As it does, your body instantly releases the ACTH hormone into your blood stream.

This provides you with additional energy so you can either fight or run away (flight). Typically, you would do one or the other and the ACTH is worked out of your system.

In our modern society, we still encounter stressful situations, but we do not have the opportunity (typically) to fight or flight. Instead, we have to grit our teeth and endure it.

This results in the long term build up of ACTH in your system as it doesn't get worked out of your body by the triggering of your fight or flight mechanism.

Stress is not something that you can sadly eliminate from your life. As it is a natural physiological reaction, it cannot be removed totally. You can reduce your sources of stress and change how you react to the stress, but no matter how hard you try you can never truly eliminate it.

Even if you were to live in a cave on a mountain top, then you would eliminate a lot of your stresses, but I am sure you will find other things to cause you stress. It is the body's reaction to a situation that is emotionally, mentally or physically stressful.
You can reduce your stress levels by learning to identify what it is that causes you stress.

Is it your work? Your family life? Your finances? Something else?

Once you have identified your causes of stress you can then start to deal with them.

Could you change your job? Maybe change something about your family life? How can you reduce these sources of stress in your life?

There will be things you can do to reduce your stress levels. Sometimes you may have to make some big decisions in order to reduce these stress levels. These could be as big as making big changes in your working or family life.

Often you will hear people say, "But I can't make those changes".

Usually it is not a case of can't, but a case of won't. Even when you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you still have a decision, it's just it may not be an easy one to make. However, it can be made.
The decision you have to make is whether you want to make these changes now and to reduce your stress levels, or whether you would prefer to be lying on the operating table in the hospital after a heart attack brought on by your stress levels.

I cannot emphasize to you strongly enough how serious stress is and the negative effects it can have on you. Take action today and reduce your stress, and reap the benefits.