Title: Your Health and Grief
Headings: Your Health and Grief
Your Health and Grief
How we Physically React to Stress
Taking Preventative Measures to Ward Off Health Concerns

Content: It can also open the way for physical illness if we have been previously healthy. Grief makes us susceptible to diseases such as the common cold sore throats and other infections. Other diseases shown to be connected to the stress of grief are ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis asthma heart disease and cancer. The connection between the mind and body is not always recognized, but there is real scientific evidence that what we think and feel has a direct effect on our biological systems. This is an especially important issue for bereaved parents because the loss of a child is the ultimate in stress and a stress that lasts so very long. How we Physically React to Stress
Bodies of all human beings (and animals alike) react to stress in basically the same manner. In 1944 Hans Selye a neurophysiologist formulated the three phases of stress reactions but it is only recently that scientists can identify with considerable accuracy what actually takes place. According to Selye the reaction to stress happens in three phases but for our purpose we will only discuss phase one. The first phase or the “alarm reaction” occurs immediately on contact with the stressor (grief at the death of our child). At the death the brain “translates” the stress of grief into a chemical reaction in the body.