Your heart is racing, blood is boiling, head is throbbing.

An overwhelming feeling sinks over you ... There are twice as many things to do as there is time to do them.

According to the American Psychological Association’s CEO Norman Anderson, nearly 75 percent of Americans suffer from stress on a daily basis.

It’s a statistic that comes as no surprise to many, including Edith Jardieu.

Jardieu owns the Serenity Center in Centerville, a business that specializes in holistic approaches to stress management.

“It has to be at least that. Stress is inevitable,” Jardieu said.

While experts agree that certain aspects of stress can play a beneficial role on occasion, too much can not only have a negative impact on health, but also negatively impact others.

Stress triggers

Everyone experiences stress, but the cause differs from person to person.

Stress triggers can range from work and family-related issues to financial and health-related worries.

Knowing individual stress triggers are key to developing methods to deal with stress appropriately — an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, according to Dr. Brenda Roman, a professor of psychiatry at Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine.

“People need to develop a resiliency to stress. The more they overcome challenges, the better equipped they are to face challenges later in life,” Roman said.

Roman cites muscle tension, nausea, headaches and social withdrawal as just a few signs of which to become aware.

Effect on family

A national report on stress in the United States released in 2010 by the American Psychological Association (APA) shows that many parents are unaware of the effects their stress has on their children. In the study, 69 percent of parents said their stress had only a slight or no impact at all on their children, but 91 percent of children reported that they know when their parent is stressed, and a third of those children said their parent’s stress upsets them.

“If a parent is chronically stressed, the child is going to feel those effects too,” Roman said.

Parents under stress give less warmth, attention, support, and discipline to their children. This in turn can lead to behavioral problems and poor performance at school, according to Peggy Thoits, a sociology professor at Indiana University.

Stress levels on the rise

Instead of learning to address and manage stress, many in the medical community are concerned by statistics showing it’s increasingly getting worse.

There was a 17 percent increase in economic-related stress and a 11 percent increase in work-related stress from 2006 to 2010, according to data from the American Psychological Association.

A rise in multi-tasking is one of many trends contributing to the increase, according to Donald Scott, a Dayton-area psychologist.

“One of the factors in the high level of stress that people have is that there are many expectations on us to multi-task, which actually reduces efficiency and reduces the ability to really concentrate on things like developing and maintaining supportive relationships,” Scott said.

Dealing with stress

In her research, Thoits stated that the impact of stress was lessened when a person possessed high self-esteem, an adequate support system and a high sense of mastery — the belief that circumstances in one’s life are under one’s personal control.

Both Jardieu and Roman stated that techniques for dealing with stress vary from person to person.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach,” Jardieu said. She explained that different personalities require different stress-management approaches.

Through her business, Jardieu teaches holistic approaches to stress management, including hydrotherapy, aromatherapy, reflexology, massage therapy, feng shui and breathing exercises.

Living a healthy lifestyle that includes exercise, an appropriate diet, a regular sleep cycle, meditation and yoga to help reduce stress are all activities Roman recommends.

Tips for handling stress

Sister Jenna, director of the Meditation Museum in the Washington D.C. area, provides the following tips for dealing with stress:

• Find your intuition and listen to it. Always trust your gut instinct.

• Determine a daily slogan to support your beliefs.

• Try remembering that every problem has a solution. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

• Find 30 minutes for yourself in the morning and set the tone for the day.

• Pause every hour, take deep breaths, and take control of the “traffic” in your life.

• Give yourself and others a margin to mess up. Everyone makes mistakes; no one is perfect.

The Four A’s

The Mayo Clinic advises those under stress to follow the four A’s: Avoid, Alter, Accept and Adapt.

• The first step, avoid, calls for people to rid themselves of the needless stress in their lives by taking control of their surroundings and learning to say no.

• Alter is for situations that cannot be avoided, but can still be changed, such as managing time better to become more efficient.

• When there is no way to change a situation, you must accept that, the third step. Simply talking to someone about what might be causing frustration can relieve some of the stress felt about the situation.

• The final step, adapt, is key to preventing future stress. Adjusting standards in areas of life that don’t need to be perfect all of the time will decrease the amount of stress felt on a daily basis.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2201 or kcundiff@DaytonDaily News.com.