By REBECCA TORR
gulf-daily-news.com

STRESS is one of the main causes of lifestyle diseases such as migraine, hypertension and diabetes, according to a Bahrain-based counsellor.

When you are stressed your immunity decreases and your health suffers, says Indian School counsellor and Kerala Agricultural University assistant professor Dr Bela Manoj.

“We need to learn how to release stress from the body, not just manage it,” she explained.

“Stress has an impact on our breathing patterns, when you’re happy your breathing is light and when you are unhappy your breathing becomes heavy.

“Likewise, you can affect your emotions through breathing exercises.”

Dr Manoj said there were particular breathing exercises she taught as an Art of Living instructor that could help people release stress.

The health expert was speaking at the Rotary Club of Adliya’s weekly meeting at the Diplomat Radisson SAS Hotel.

The event was attended by club president Dr Yousef Mashal, members and guests.

Dr Manoj is a specialist in child development and nutrition with over 13 years of research and teaching experience.

She is the author of the Handbook on Child Development for Pre-Primary Teachers and has worked with the Integrated Child Development projects of the Indian government from 1993 to 1994. She has developed a maternal stress scale, acceptance scale and has standardised several other psychometric and dietary tests.

Her area of interest is on maternal factors and neonatal reflexes. Results of her various research projects showed that maternal factors like stress have a significant impact on neonatal reflexes.

“I’ve done a lot of research into how children’s IQs and intelligence vary and in a study on newborn babies I found maternal stress had a big impact,” Dr Manoj told the GDN on the sidelines of the talk.

“I found pregnant women that work are more stressed than those who stay at home and this is reflected in the children’s reflexes. “Therefore, it is important before a women gets pregnant that she learns how to release stress.”