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Helping teenagers deal with stress can be an emotional roller coaster. Just like adults, stress affects the health of a teen. Some sources of stress that can cause stress is: a change of schools, school demands are too much to handle, problems at home, or problems with other teenagers within the school. Teen health can be affected by all of these aspects and can lead to depression, negative thoughts, insomnia, high blood pressure, ulcers, nausea, loss of appetite, muscle tension, severe headaches or migraines, teeth grinding which leads to TMJ, or excessive nervousness.
Stress can affect teen health by other means as well, like an increase of prescription medications or sleeping pills. High levels of stress could lead your teen to drinking, smoking or even drugs. Teen health is something that needs to be taken care of all the way until adulthood. Anything like drugs, excessive alcohol use or smoking can cause health problems later on down the road He or she may tend to be more accident prone than usual if they are under a high amount of stress.
The physical signs of stress that a teen may show are lip biting, nail biting, tooth grinding, and palm sweating. These are just a few. They may tend to be more angry and restless than usual and easily frustrated. They may become withdrawn and stay by themselves a lot which is also a sign that your teen may be suffering from depression as well and should be seen my the family physician as soon as possible.
Some positive ways of dealing with stress is to exercise. Exercising releases tension and helps you to relax. Avoid caffeine, it can increase the anxiety of a teen or anyone for that matter and cause more problems. Try to keep everything in perspective. If you are nervous about taking a test in school, ask yourself, "what is the worst that could happen if I don't do well on the test?" Stressing over something so trivial is not worth compromising your health. If you are feeling overwhelmed by a big project, try breaking it down into smaller pieces. Don't look at it as a whole, look at it as sections and complete a section before moving on to the next section. This way you will feel as if you are accomplishing something even if it is in very small portions. Think about taking yoga and learning the breathing and relaxation techniques. These could come in handy in your teen years as well as later on in life.
Think of nutrition as well. Nutrition is also very important to teen health, and what you eat now could affect how your health is in the future. Teen health is a very vital part of growing up and stress is a very vital part of being a grown up. As long as you know some techniques of how to control your stress level, learn how to relax and avoid feeling overwhelmed, your health should be very well stable throughout your teen years.
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