Below is stress that we all don't need and China is again the culprit.
Chinese Drywall Lawsuit Information
Homes and office buildings built between 2004 and 2006 are reporting unpleasant odors and electrical problems from defective drywall made in China. The defective drywall could also pose heath risks.
The defective drywall was imported from China during the construction boom from 2004 - 2006. Due to a drywall shortage during this boom, builders imported drywall from China. Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co. Ltd. of China, a subsidiary of German-based manufacturer Knauf, manufactured the drywall.
Signs that you may have defective Chinese drywall included:
Unpleasant odor emitting from walls resembling rotten eggs
Wiring that has corroded and/or turned black
Piping that has turned black or needs replacing
Silver jewelry that has turned black
Air-conditioning system components that needs replacing
Electrical problems
Respiratory discomfort and other problems
Eye irritations, nose bleeds and headaches
Who Says Stress Is Bad For You?
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This is the problem with all stress-management tactics: you have to want them to succeed and be willing to throw yourself into them, or they'll fail. If you force yourself to do them, you'll just stress yourself out more. This is why exercise relieves stress for some people and makes others miserable. It's also why Sapolsky says he's "totally frazzled" but doesn't bother with meditation: "If I had to do that for 30 minutes a day," he says, "I'm pretty sure I'd have a stroke."
For all of the science's shortfalls, there's animal research that suggests why something that should lower stress can actually cause stress if it's done in the wrong spirit. In a classic study, scientists put two rats in a cage, each of them locked in a running wheel. The first rat could exercise whenever he liked. The second was yoked to the first, forced to run when his counterpart did. Exercise, like meditation, usually tamps down stress and encourages neuron growth, and indeed, the first rat's brain bloomed with new cells. The second rat, however, lost brain cells. He was doing something that should have been good for his brain, but he lacked one crucial factor: control. He could not determine his own "workout" schedule, so he didn't perceive it as exercise. Instead, he experienced it as a literal rat race.
This experiment brings up a troubling point about stress. Psychologists have known for years that one of the biggest factors in how we process stressful events is how much control we have over our lives. As a rule, if we feel we're in control, we cope. If we don't, we collapse. And no amount of meditation or reframing our thinking can change certain facts of our lives. With the market languishing and jobs hemorrhaging and the world going to hell, too many of us probably feel like that rat in the second wheel: it's hard to convince ourselves we're in control of anything.
But stress science even provides a little hope here, if we go back to Selye. He first published his ideas during the Great Depression—a time of stress if ever there was one, and a time in which survival demanded creativity. That Depression ended. Now we're entering what may be a new one, and we'll need more creative thinking to get out of it. We're going to have to figure out what parts of our future we can control, and we'll need to engage with them thoughtfully. Fortunately, we have the kind of brain that permits that. Sure, it will be stressful. Maybe that isn't a bad thing.
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