More than ten years ago, BBC news was giving us this shocking news:
“Every day 270,000 people take time off work for stress-related illness and absenteeism cost the UK £10.2bn last year.”
The article reveals a disturbing negative cycle of behaviours can occur, with stress leading to smoking and drinking, which in turn cause more stress. Depression, strokes and heart attacks are linked with stress, and stress can even diminish a woman’s ability to conceive. See here for more info.
By 2012, the Office of National Statistics revealed (see for more info):
“Stress has become the most common cause of long-term sickness absence for both manual and non-manual employees… British businesses lose an estimated £26 billion each year in sickness absence and lost productivity.”
Many doctors, when faced with this virtual epidemic, have little resort but to prescribe various pills, most of which treat the surface symptoms but not necessarily the underlying cause – stress.
Clearly, we have a problem, but what’s the best solution?
Many of us tend to work very hard, (or to worry about not working) and then go for a three-week holiday, when we aim to “de-stress”. The problem, of course, is that no holiday can really compensate for the deleterious effects of accumulated stress occurring through the rest of the year. By the time we feel so exhausted we need a holiday, it could well be too late to do anything about it.
A quality hot tub provides an easy solution to alleviating stress on a daily, even twice daily, basis. A fifteen-minute soak in the morning unknots muscles, enlivens the mind and prepares the heart for the day ahead. Tranquillity for body, mind and heart can evaporate stress – just nature intended. In the evening, another fifteen minutes will cleanse the heart of the day’s thorny problems, give joy to the body immersed by soft, beautifully lit water, and seamlessly prepare the mind for deep, peaceful sleep.
In today’s world, why resort to pill after pill when stress can be melted away bubble by beautiful bubble?
