Much has been said and written about stress in the last few decades as researchers have gained greater understanding about its causes and the increasing threat it poses to human health. Yet despite the increasing body of knowledge and growing public awareness of what is called the silent killer, there is ample evidence that stress levels are rising at epidemic rates in many countries, its victims millions of often unsuspecting people trying to cope in today’s face-paced societies.

So what exactly is stress and how can you know whether it is affecting you. The definition of stress, as it applies to humans, essentially is the same as for any physical body – a piece of metal, a tree, etc.: a strain or straining force exerted upon a body that tends to alter or deform its shape.

The shape of a piece of metal subjected to sufficient heat can be altered or a tree standing firm against a relentless wind, will bend, even break. Less tangible than wind and fire is the straining force that causes human beings to experience irritability, anxiousness, depression or other serious conditions, including potentially life-threatening cardiac conditions.

Besides relying on indicators such as those mentioned above, scientists now are able to identify the presence of stress through an individual’s heart-rhythm patterns. The Institute of HeartMath, a recognized world leader in stress research since its founding in 1991, has conducted extensive studies on human heart-rhythm patterns and shown that they reflect the emotions we feel.

Here, according to Transforming Stress, HeartMath’s most widely distributed work on the subject, is what happens when you experience some common emotions: "If you are feeling frustration or anxiety, your heart pulses out an incoherent rhythmic pattern. If you’re feeling appreciation or care, your heart pulses a more coherent rhythmic pattern."

Thus the force exerted by the negative and positive emotions we feel is very real and measurable. There is ample evidence that this force, or stress, in the case of negative emotions, has greater consequences than merely altering the heart’s rhythmic pattern, and care should be taken to address its causes and determine solutions for managing it.

For many years now, stress researchers have concluded that it’s our "perceptions" and our emotional response to those perceptions of events, not the actual events themselves, that cause most of our stress. For example: Thousands of people can be stuck in the same traffic jam but they all have their own individual perceptions of it and some of those perceptions create more stress than others.

HeartMath has studied the nature and causes of the stress problem with studies and observations over 17 years and determined that our emotional response is critical in managing stress levels. Stress is created by our negative emotions and our inability to address or control our emotions. As we learn to manage our emotions, we can experience the new perceptions needed to transform our stress.