Tension
What is Tension?
Look at you and around you, there is no one who says I don’t have tension in my life. Certainly, the lifestyle we all are having these days includes lot of work, lot of deadlines, lot of problems, hectic routine chores, and deep planning to secure our future. They all combines and give tension to a person.
So, how does one understands the meaning of tension?
It means feeling restlessness, inner striving, a kind of insecurity, imbalance in life. Basically, it is related to physiological and emotional part of everyone’s life. But, whether it is physical or emotional our body will react to it and these reactions causes biological and emotional complications in our life.
You will tense when you get threatened for something happening or something causing imbalance to your life. Body reacts to these effects through ‘fight-to-flight’ reaction or tension response.
Stress can make you frustrated or anxious towards various approaches of life On the other hand tension response helps you in protecting against accidents and difficulties coming in your life. With that, it also strengthens you and helps you to become focused, energetic and alert towards difficulties in life.
Tension can be acute or chronic depending on the situation you are facing. One faces acute tension because of some sudden problem or some arguments. Tension is eroded as and when the problem gets solved. Chronic tension is like part of day to day life including problem in job or difficult job or unhappy married life.
However, strong reaction towards tension can lead to certain psychological problems like infection, heart disease, or depression. Sometimes high tension can make a person addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs, which is not at all good for health.
Symptoms of Tension
1. Tension to a limit is useful but if it crosses its limit it can create problem to a person. So, it is important to know the sign and symptoms of conditions when tension crosses its limit. Like:
2. Increase in adrenaline limit, heart beat, high blood pressure, increased cholesterol and blood components, and tension in muscles.
3. The metabolism rate and digestion capability of a human being may get reduced.
4. Formation of free radicals that destroy or damage the cell membranes is possible.
5. Due to low digestion rate, a person might feel anxious, irritated, and faces change in appetite.
6. Tension causes headache or tension in brain muscles that can further take to memory loss, depression, and fatigue.
7. If a person has some tension he would not feel good about things happening around him and he might get some gastric problems, have cold hands due to nervousness, and heart burn.
8. Due to indigestion, he might have stomach problem.
9. The danger of heart attack increases due to tension. Problems like shallow breathing, high blood pressure and anxiety happen at time when a person gets tense about something.
Further the symptoms can be divided under four categories like:
1. Cognitive symptoms of Tension: It includes memory loss, poor concentration, anxiousness, pessimistic approach towards life, and inability to judge anything.
2. Emotional symptoms of Tension: It includes symptoms depending on the surrounding environment like irritation and showing short temper on small things, feeling of isolation and loneliness, depression and restlessness.
3. Physical symptoms of Tension: It includes variation in physical balance like diarrhea, constipation, dizziness, low sex drive, and body and head ache.
4. Behavioral symptoms of Tension: It includes psychological variations in a person like overeating, low appetite, nervousness and addiction of drugs and alcohol.
Causes of Tension
Basically, any negative change in life, whether it’s big or small, causes tension in life. And the conditions which lead to tension in life are called 
stressors. Now days we can see recession in economy causing big jobs layoff all over the world. This job layoff is becoming main source of tension in life of people who are being fired off from their workplaces. Day to day instances of life like missing any valuable things, misplacing things on wrong time, getting late in reaching office and school on time and many other small things causes tension. Then, doing things above your abilities also increases tension in life.
Now, there are also some internal reasons behind tension like inability to take risks, negative approach towards life, too-high expectation, and low confidence or inferiority complex.
Effects of Tension
Whenever you feel tensed life become uneasy and you want to run away from these situations. Whether, you feeling tensed by some physical or psychological reasons, your body will react to it. And, when the tension level crosses its limit certain problem occur in your body, making you falling ill. Tension initiates changes in the biochemical components in the body like increase in epinephrine and other adrenal steroids such as hydrocortisone in the bloodstream. And, when tension increases blood pressure and heart beat these increased chemical start improper functioning leading to physical and mental illness.
If you have lots of responsibilities and worries in your routine life, your body will ‘on’ the automatic switch of tension response. And a feeling of insecurity and low confidence will cover all your emotions and happiness of life. If you have chronic tension, it might get over after the problem affecting you get solved. But, if it is an acute tension, resulting long-term stress, then you might face some medical complications like:
1. Pain in body
2. High risks of heart attacks
3. High blood pressure
4. Infertility
5. Low immunity
6. Aging before time: Tension increases neural and hormonal imbalance causing chronic disturbances in body homeostasis. Now, this disturbed homeostasis affect tissue, cell membranes, collagen in our skin and, this, further boost up neural aging and skin aging before time.
7. Obesity due to overeating
8. Weakness due to low appetite
9. Depression
10. Skin disease like eczema
11. Sleeping disorders
12.Sudden changes in life cause traumatic tension leading to improper working of brain causing memory loss. It can further lead to emotional numbness and nightmares.
13. Sometimes heart problems caused due to Tension lead to cardiac death of a person.
14. Tension increases sugar level and risks of diabetes.
15. Special cases including pregnant women, who are advised to take high protein diet, are more prone to get chronic tension. This can harm the growth and development of fetus inside the womb.
Treatment of Tension
Time management and managing responsibilities of your life is the best treatment of tension initiators. Stress management, relaxation responses, and stress or tension responses are some of the techniques which help you and your body in fighting against day to day situation that causes tension in life. These techniques are in-built in the body and strengthen your brain in responding towards sudden changes in life. Tension or stress relaxation techniques help in maintaining balance in body homeostasis. Hormones released in the tension relaxation and response techniques help in accumulating carbohydrates, fats, and energy lost in fighting against tension.
Other than this, certain dietary supplements are given to control Tension from life: Like:
1. GABA: A relaxant given to smoothen up the functioning of brain.
2. SAMe: A supplement given to reduce depression level in the body.
3. L-Taurine: The supplement helps protect your brain and heart.
4. Vitamins like Vitamin B complex and Vitamin C with bioflavonoids help in maintaining good health, proper functioning of nervous system, and produces anti-stress hormones.
5. Depletion of minerals like Ca, Mg, and Zn reduces anxiety and fear from the person.
6. Herbal components like Kava Kava, Siberian Ginseng, Valerian and Ashwagandha act as relaxants in body.
Prevention of Tension
Recognize stressor and tension initiators of your life. Once you recognize, you can try to control and reduce it by planning solution for them. Like if it is an external cause you can deal with it by doing some compromises and hard work. And if it is an internal cause, you can adopt various approaches in life to bring positive energy.
Avoid taking food high in spices and protein level. These food items generally increases the blood pressure and heart beats. Avoid intake of lot of coffee, tea, and alcohol in your routine life. One should always try and sleep for at least 7-8 hours. Do lot of exercises and yoga to get rid of extra pressure from life. In case of tension, listen to slow music, take a walk in park, play with your child and try to help somebody. These habits will increase positive energy in your body and will help you in maintaining emotional and physical balance in life. And, if tension still remains in your life, then take professional help to control it.
