No matter what it is, there are bits of stress and pressure that happen continuously. That’s okay. That’s normal. Your body is set up to handle that. What it doesn’t do well with is chronic, ongoing stress that just never abates. There needs to come a time when you get a break.

Without a break your body just builds stress up and holds it in, and ultimately, it will take a toll on you. Stress can increase the hormonal levels in your body. It can depress your immune system. It can cause muscular tension or headaches. It can generate many adverse reactions.

So a little pressure’s good; it gets us moving. Yet too much will have a negative effect on us. If we had no stress, life would be very blah. Next, let’s talk about the types of stressors that you can encounter.

Various Types of Stressors

Environmental Stressors

The first type of stress is “environmental” stressors. Environmental stressors and pressures are things like the quality of the air you breathe. If you’re living in an environment where you’re regularly inhaling massive amounts of chemical fumes, smoke and pesticides, it can have a very detrimental effect. Or if the air quality is bad because you work in a factory and the air scrubbers don’t do a good job, you will be affected. Air quality may have a major impact on your physiology, energy, mental clarity, and your ability to be resilient.

“Noise” stress is another environmental pollutant. Noise in our day and age is huge because of traffic, airplanes and machinery just to name a few. There was a research study done in New York City approximately 15 years ago. They analyzed children who lived right in the middle of the city, on a main street, on a lower or street level in the building, where there’s lots of street noise.

What they found was that the noise which came in, because it never really abated, most children didn’t notice it. But if they were to change their living situation to a quieter environment, that on average the children had a grade point jump of .4. So if they were a 2.5 student on average, they would jump to 2.9, just by getting away from the noise pollution which was affecting them.