THE PRICE OF STRESS

Stress is what is behind the health care crisis, costing millions of lives and billions of dollars. As a leading cause of death, stress accounts for 60%-90% of physician visits. But stress is an invisible crisis, obscured by the belief that it's normal and no big deal. The World Health Organization labelled stress the "the 21st-century health epidemic" and Sarah Speck, cardiologist at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, called stress "the new tobacco."

Stress kills more people that nicotine and traffic accidents combined, so why is it that there is still no public focus on it? Instead, we treat the effects of stress: heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, stroke and fail to ignore the cause behind all of it. It's time to stop burning lives and money and take efforts towards prevention.