stress

Read an article today discussing the cure of stress by science.
It starts with a story about a professor in Stanford to inspect the stress of baboon in Africa. The professor found that the ranking of baboon in their highly hierarchical society can great affect the level of stress. The result is also confirmed by other studies of rat, civil servants in England. Some interesting findings say that high demanding work like high level executive may not be stressful, as they have more control over their job. However, low level job like security and typist are more stressful as their can't get any satisfaction from their jobs. The punch line is the higher your position is, the longer you live. :-)  SO, it's a perfect reason why everyone want to get promotion!

It also unravels the chemical factor of stress. Some chemical, (can't recall the name) generated by the amygdala in brain may increase when people are in stress. When people are in stressful state, other functionality of the body may be suppressed as all the energy may be used to handle the stress, as the natural consequence of evolution.

When people are in chronic stressful state, their body tend to be venerable as the immune system, neuron system may not be functioning in good status. Stress can result in heart stroke, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases.

The professor in Stanford is actually trying to develop a vaccine like drug to "cure" stress.  I highly doubt the usefulness of the drug.  Even it is useful, I thought it may not be a good thing as stress can also be good to people. People may improve himself and learn to handle stress, which may benefit them eventually. Stress can be a two blades sword.

Anyway, it also presents some methods to handle stress, like make friends, little of drink, face the fear, meditation, exercise when you like to, ...

Read another article about the death of phone call.  It said the people are now making less phone call, instead using text message, or twitter, or IM more.  The author usually won't take unscheduled call except from his mom. LOL. The punch line is, we are making less phone call but talk more.

After written this post, I realized that it is very true the ancient Chinese adage, "opening a book will always benefit you". Yes, I learned a lot from reading.