Americans are receiving a daily barrage of gloomy news that could inevitably begin to take its toll. The focus on the front pages of newspapers and on the screens of the nightly network news is of a financial calamity engulfing the planet. But it starts at home. The neighbor's house is foreclosed upon. Gas and food are more expensive. A friend loses his job. The daily market tickers on cable news shows remind people, in real time, how their investments are faring.

A survey by the American Psychological Association indicated that financial concerns "topped the list of stressors for at least 80% of those surveyed," according to last week's front-page story in USA Today. More than half reported the most common symptoms of stress being anger, fatigue and an inability to sleep. Close to half responded by overeating or eating poorly, a trend that will definitely lead to killer diseases that include heart attacks and strokes.

A new study from Utah researchers shows that touch in the form of massage, decreases stress hormones, increasing the feel-good hormone oxytocin, and lowers blood pressure. I am all for more touching and hugging, but people who feel a disaster is looming generally are resistant to altering their increasing unstable lives. A sleepless Wall Street trader or even a Nebraska farmer is too concerned about his or her bank account to consider health.

As stress rates increase, more people are turning to massage therapy for relaxation, according to the 12th annual consumer survey conducted by the American Massage Therapy Association® (AMTA®). The survey found that 59 percent of Americans are more stressed this year than last year, and stress and relaxation are the top reasons Americans received their last massage. 

“People continue to seek massage because it provides multiple therapeutic benefits, including stress relief, at an affordable price,” says M.K. Brennan, RN, AMTA president. “Massage therapy has not only been shown to reduce anxiety and depression, but it can also relieve stress symptoms like chronic migraines and high blood pressure.”

Thirty-six percent of Americans received massage for stress reduction and relaxation in the last five years, compared with just 22 percent last year. Additionally, 38 percent of Americans say they receive regular massages in order to manage stress. 

The best advice is often the simplest: Eat healthy food, sleep right and avoid obsessing on the doom and gloom. Get a massage, meditate or exercise regularly to combat the growing stress.  But for each one of us, awareness is a vital weapon, and we must consider that there is still time for us to take the same kind of common sense approach to health that might have saved our economy from this crisis in the first place.

As the father of stress research, Hans Selye, once wrote, "It's not stress that kills us; it is our reaction to it."