I want to tell you about my eyelashes. The ones that fell out when I went through a really stressful, overworked period about a decade ago. Because to me, those eyelashes speak volumes — in a cautionary-tale way — about the power of the Third Metric.
As a health journalist, I’ve read (and written and edited) reams about the negative impacts of chronic stress. I know that ultimately, there is virtually no system of the body that is NOT negatively affected by it.
Stress causes inflammation (a driving factor in heart disease, diabetes and cancer). It can also cause hormonal imbalances, weight gain, skin disorders, digestive disorders, lowered immunity, accelerated aging, mood problems, impaired memory and neurological chaos of all kinds.
New and alarming statistics about stress scream for our attention on a daily basis. But for me, it was my lost eyelashes that got my attention …
(Read the rest of my Huffington Post blog, originally written in honor of HuffPo’s first Third Metric event, here.)
