Stressed? Could it be you have too little to do?

I often ponder on how the word "stressed" must be one of the most over-used words in the English language and becoming more so as each year passes.

Did our forefathers, even our grandparents, use the word very much? I would imagine my Gran, who was newlywed and newly pregnant when my Grandad went off and fought in North Africa for 3 years, had reason to be stressed. However, I don't recall her ever saying she was "stressed" when I used to ask her about that period in her life.

Did people during World War II just get on with things? Does having a real and genuine stress in your life actually make you pull together, get on with things and therefore have less time to think about how "stressed" you are?

I found this excellent article on Science Daily which suggests, that along with primates, human beings get stressed precisely because they have enough spare time, live long enough and the emotional complexity to do so.

The article is fascinating - here's a short quote:

"We've found that baboons have diseases that other social mammals generally don't have," Sapolsky said. "If you're a gazelle, you don't have a very complex emotional life, despite being a social species. But primates are just smart enough that they can think their bodies into working differently. It's not until you get to primates that you get things that look like depression."

"The reason baboons are such good models is, like us, they don't have real stressors," he said. "If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don't mess with you much. What that means is you've got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They're just like us: They're not getting done in by predators and famines, they're getting done in by each other."

To read the whole article click here: Why Do Humans and Primates Get More Stress Related Diseases Than Other Animals