Stress

Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal body to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined.

The term “stress” was first used by the endocrinologist Hans Selye in the 1930s to identify physiological responses in laboratory animals. He later broadened and popularized the concept to include the perceptions and responses of humans trying to adapt to the challenges of everyday life.

It covers a huge range of phenomena from mild irritation to the kind of severe problems that might result in a real breakdown of health.

Where does it come from?

Both negative and positive experiences can lead to stress. Some common culprits are food, housing, freedom, health, or mobility.

Social issues can also cause stress, such as social acceptance, or relationship conflict, deception, or break ups, and major events such as birth and deaths, and divorce.

Life experiences such as poverty, unemployment, depression, heavy drinking , or insufficient sleep can also cause stress. Students and workers may face stress from examinations, group projects and project deadlines.

Effects of chronic stress

Long-term exposure to stress can lead to serious health problems such as:

  • Pain of any kind
  • Heart disease
  • Digestive problems
  • Sleep problems
  • Depression
  • Obesity
  • Autoimmune diseases

Techniques of stress management

There are several ways to tackle stress. Effective stress management involves learning to set limits and to say “No” to some demands that others make. The following techniques are known to have a good effect in the fight against stress:

  • Conflict resolution
  • Exercise
  • Getting a hobby
  • Meditation
  • Deep breathing
  • Relaxation techniques
  • Artistic Expression
  • Progressive relaxation
  • Stress balls
  • Natural medicine
  • Time management

Making it happen

There are many ways to cope with stress and its symptoms which should be used, since the condition is undeniably damaging.

Learning how to relax increases your ability to stay calm and collected under pressure.

Investing in your emotional life allows you to remain focused, flexible, and positive in bad times as well as good.

Managing stress is all about taking charge: taking charge of your thoughts, your emotions, your schedule, your environment, and the way you deal with problems.

Its up to you 😉

Cooking recipes website (2004)

While brainstorming about life and what everyone wanted from it, a summer some 5-6 years ago (2004 ish :P) by the seaside with a host of mates and lasses, it came to my attention that everyone would praise as a list topping priority: Food 🙂

In Greece, at that time we had about 2-3 websites with recipes and none of them, after some quick skimming, had variety nor the features I would like to see in a website about cooking recipes.

So I went ahead and registered the domain: sidages.gr ( greek-lish for recipes) and everyone was happy that we soon should have our very own recipe website.

Thus it came to life. Well sort of ..:D.

At first, there was light, that is a bunch of custom made PHP scripts.

Then came Joomla and another custom made module that is fully functional and quite nice as well!

But my personal Holy Grail has always been the endless questing for new knowledge. So the latest iteration of sidages.gr is actually based on the Drupal CMS. My newly acquainted colleagues (2006 :P) praised so much Drupal as a content management system, that I had to give it a try!

Needless to say, I was hooked on the architecture immediately (Drupal 5.x at the time). All in all, it is a very interesting experience and of course, you can never know enough on any subject.

It is still in the building process, need ideas, a spanking template and of course recipes for it, loads of them. The good thing is I am an eager cooker myself and cooking at a minimum couple of times per week both proper food and deserts.

I hope it grows quickly and thanks to everyone for their suggestions and the heads up. Keep that coming please 😀

Check it out here: https://www.sidages.gr