A sure way to have more stress is to become a control freak – or more of one. If an employee wants more stress, all he has to do is work for a control-freak boss who puts unnecessary pressure on stretched-too-thin employees.

These bosses may have good intentions in attempting to control the work and behavior of their subordinates, thinking they’re being helpful, not controlling. Or maybe the boss is a rescuer happy to take over when people turn to her in need. Or she notices when others are in trouble and wants to keep them from failing. Perhaps she believes no one can do the work as well as she, so she steps in. (Perfectionism is a common trait among control freaks.)

Control freaks know how things “should” and “shouldn’t” be done. An employee could produce the desired outcome for the boss but if it’s not done his way, it’s not good enough. So they’re often the micro-managers at work. It’s difficult to just let others do their thing. But micro-managing is very de-motivating to employees.

Usually, it’s a supervisory weakness when employees don’t produce good work. Either they’re not trained well enough, there’s too much looking over their shoulders or priority switching. To get better results, it’s usually the supervisor who must change his approach.

Everyone experiences socialstress, whether it is nervousness over a job interview, difficulty meeting people at parties, or angst over giving a speech. In a new report, UCLA researchers have discovered that how your brain responds to social stressors can influence the body’s immune system in ways that may negatively affect health.

Lead author George Slavich, a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, and senior author Shelley Taylor, a UCLA professor of psychology, show that individuals who exhibit greater neural sensitivity to social rejection also exhibit greater increases in inflammatory activity to social stress.

And although such increases can be adaptive, chronic inflammation can increase the risk of a variety of disorders, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and depression.

The study appears in the current online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It turns out, there are important differences in how people interpret and respond to social situations,” Slavich said. “For example, some people see giving a speech in front of an audience as a welcome challenge; others see it as threatening and distressing. In this study, we sought to examine the neural bases for these differences in response and to understand how these differences relate to biological processes that can affect human health and well-being.”

View the full article at Medical News Today

Women with mental stress may have more trouble conceiving than their unstressed peers, a new study shows. Among 274 English women, all trying to get pregnant, those with the highest levels of alpha-amylase — a salivary biomarker for stress — had an estimated 12% reduction in their chance of getting pregnant each menstrual cycle, compared to women with the lowest levels.

These new results come from researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Oxford. Although the precise mechanisms by which stress hormones interfere with reproductive-system hormones are not entirely known, there is evidence that, in extreme cases, mental stress can even lead to lack of menstruation — missed periods. At least in this current study, however, there was no correlation between women’s levels of cortisol, another more commonly measured stress hormone, and their chance of conception.

Read the full article at Time

Empty nest syndrome can cause symptoms of depression and a loss of sense of self, but preparation can help you transition to your new parenting role. Here’s how.

One day, the house is full of noise. You’re tripping over sneakers left in the middle of the living room floor or complaining for the zillionth time that the new driver in the house didn’t leave any gas in the car.

And then they’re gone.

Life takes myriad twists and turns and, even when you expect them, they’re not always easy to handle. Parents know their children will leave home one day, but transitioning through this stage of parenting can be difficult, no matter how proud you are that they’re all grown up or how you might be looking forward to re-focusing on your marriage.

“The second-to-last definitive phase of family development would be the empty nest,” says Grattan Giesey, MSSA, a licensed social worker in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. “It’s the time at which the last child leaves the house and basically does not return.”

View the full article at Everyday Health

And you thought the in-laws were stressful.

Almost one in three couples say finances cause the most stress in their relationship, and 91% of Americans surveyed find reasons to avoid talking about money with their partner, according to a recent American Express Spending & Saving Tracker.

In fact, people say “they are more likely to know their partner’s weight than their salary,” according to the May online survey of 2,008 adults conducted by American Express.

But in tough times, communication is important for couples to overcome sudden financial strife, such as a job loss, experts say. “If you are the spouse that has more of a handle on the finances, don’t take it for granted that the other spouse knows these things,” says Robert Schmansky, a certified financial planner with Northern Financial Advisors in Franklin, Mich. “Over-communication is better than under-communication.”

View the full article at Yahoo