A simple yet pervasive truth has been gaining new ground in the minds of health care professionals in recent years: Stress can kill. More accurately, stress leads to a cascading series of harmful occurrences in the body that can turn deadly. To avoid potentially dire consequences, we need to create a shift in the way we respond to stressful events in our lives, including addressing long-buried stress triggers that continue to play out in our current experiences.
The latest research from Harvard Medical School reveals that a small, almond-shaped area deep inside the brain called the amygdala might be the first domino in the body’s stress-reaction chain. The amygdala is involved in processing intense emotions like anxiety, fear, and stress. When triggered, it can set off a series of events in the body that increase the risk for heart attack.

While this is without a doubt a crucial observation about the inner workings of the human body, brain, and emotional-response system, we must ask the larger questions: How can we avoid life-threatening stress triggers? What can we do to lower existing stress and respond differently to new stressors?