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says it all. Wild animals do not suffer from stress related conditions. Hunter/gatherer and agrarian humans do not either. In non industrialized nations, you may find a variety of other types of illness, but you probably won't see people suffering from panic attacks, ulcers, coronary disease, obesity or other manifestations of stress related illness, even though they experience many of the same stressful events as those of us in the "civilized" world. To understand why, you need to have a basic understanding of the physiological chain reaction caused by stress, which I shall attempt to explain in the most simple and concise terms for this article (the chemistry and function of neurotransmitters and hormones such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, substance P, cortisol, etc. have already been covered in great detail in many other publications, so for the sake of brevity, and to keep you from getting bored, I will simply use the blanket term "chemicals" for the remainder of this article). Furthermore, I will also address how one can alleviate and eliminate the long-term effects of this chain reaction by simple changes in lifestyle and nutrition.

Understanding Stress

Stress, just like pain and fear, is a gift when it occurs at the appropriate time. Fear tells us not to do dumb things that will hurt us. Pain tells us that we're doing something dumb that is hurting us. If we had no pain receptors, we wouldn't know if we were being cut, bitten or on fire, and as a result our bodies would sustain significant and potentially irreversible or terminal injury. Likewise, stress also has a very important physiological function. It's not simply an annoyance. Even though abstracts such as fear, pain and stress are thought of negatively because of how they manifest themselves, it is important to think of them as necessary tools for survival. They are not something that one should strive to eliminate, but our modern society has made it necessary to think of them in a different context than our predecessors had to.

The body is governed by the nervous system, which is divided into two parts: The sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the "fight-or-flight" reflex, while the parasympathetic nervous system controls rest and relaxation. Stress, as one might guess, is dictated by the sympathetic nervous system. When stress occurs, your "fight-or-flight" reflex becomes dominant. In nature,

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