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A New Free Report - What Is Lupus?
This fascinating new report from UK-based publishing house Health Research Today answers some of the most-asked questions about this baffling disease :
- What is the medical definition of lupus?
- What are the symptoms of lupus?
- What tests are there for lupus? How do you get a diagnosis?
Fill in this form and we will send you the report immediately, which you are welcome to send on to friends or family!
Lupus Triggers
This article is an extract from the ebook Freedom From Lupus!
Stress
Stress is dangerous for even the healthiest person. It puts strain on every organ of the body. In lupus patients it is a common cause of many flares. Often stress in lupus patients causes the same reactions as in non-lupus sufferers. Common effects of stress include poor sleep, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, headaches, lack of concentration, aches, inflammation in skin or joints, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, diarrhea, hypertension, stomach ulcers, asthma attacks, decreased sex drive, and even cancer.
As the above list shows, stress can take its toll on the body. Thus a person would be hard pressed to find a rheumatologist that would say stress is not a potential lupus trigger. At the 2001 Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology, researchers reported that stress reduction helped in decreasing lupus activity. They also put forth that exercise helped decrease the fatigue and other effects of stress.
Stress can cause typical symptoms of lupus to worsen. They can make the fatigue, aching, stiffness, fevers, and blood abnormalities even worse, and potentially dangerous. Also, stress on the body in menstruating women can have a worsening of symptoms prior to menstruation as hormones and stress work together to cause a flare.
Stress may also trigger the onset of lupus in patients who have had no symptoms to date. Stress alone cannot cause lupus. Instead, it is likely that stress pushes the body over the edge so the “ripe” disease decides to show itself. Without stress, onset may have been put off for a longer period of time. There is still a great amount of study needed to demonstrate the link between stress and the onset of lupus in patients.
Knowing that stress can have such a significant impact on lupus, it is important that patients do what they can to minimize stress in their lives. Exercise, meditation, therapy, and other tools can be used to decrease stress to avoid flares or worsening of symptoms. Sometimes patients need to make some major changes to decrease stress in their lives, but overall it will make them feel better.
Read the rest of this article in Freedom From Lupus!
© Health Research Today
