Page 6-C � Thursday, December 16, 2010 • HERITAGE NEWSPAPERS/WESTERN REGION

School and homework, social life and friends, family life, and trying hard to fit in or to be accepted in school all creates stress in teenag-ers’ lives. And most don’t know how to deal with it.

Some tips on how to deal with stress can be found on the website

www.pamf.org, which says allow plenty of time by yourself as being too busy is a big source of stress.

Exercise is a great stress-buster. The website recommends at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day. Also, get plenty of rest sleep and eat a healthy diet that includes high-fiber foods.

If you’re under stress, discuss your stress with a friend or family member and ask for help from them if you feel you need it.

According to www.thehealth-center.info, other ways to deal with stress include taking breaks during stressful activities. Say “no” to things that will make you over-worked. Also, avoid major changes in your life that will increase your stress.

Teens undergo many stressors in their lives, and if they do not seek

help on how to deal with stress, they may have it throughout their adolescence lives. The website Livestrong.com states that school pressure such as completing daily homework, studying for exams, scheduling that cuts into study time and relaxing downtime all create stress.

Also, peer pressure, family prob-lems, sense of loss and self-doubt make life stressful. Stressfocus.com states some stressors include puber-tal changes, changing relationship with peers, responsibilities to their families and new responsibilities that come with being a teen.

There are five types of stress, according to www.thehealthcenter.info.

• Eustress is a short-term stress and it arises at the points of increased physical activity. To cure

it, stress motivation and inspiration are needed.

• Distress is a negative stress and is prompted by constant readjust-ments or alternations in a routine. You may experience a sense of dis-comfort and unfamiliarity.

• Acute stress is an intense stress that arrives and disappears quickly.

• Chronic stress is a prolonged stress that exists for weeks, months or even years and it is one of the harder types of stress to elimintate.

• Hyper stress is when an indi-vidual is pushed beyond what he or she can handle. Little issues cause an emotional response and they become overloaded or overworked easily.

To most, stress doesn’t appear to be a big deal and easily curable. But what we seem to ignore is how fast stress can build and become harder

to cure.Girls are affected more then boys

and they respond to stress by seek-ing help from others and taking action to reduce their stress. Boys, however, respond by not dealing with stress at all or by getting their mind away from sources of stress.

To cure all types of stress, we need to realize what the signs of stress are and then not ignore stress if you have it. If you have it, figure out a way to get rid of it because building up stress is an unhealthy thing, and ignoring it now can make it difficult to deal with in the future.

Alyssa Stuart is a student at Milan High School and intern at The Milan News-Leader. She can be reached via Michelle Rogers at mrogers@heritage.com.

Don’t ignore stress in teens’ livesBIG RED COUNTRY

ALYSSA STUART

MLK Day speaker on tap

Tricia Rose, professor and chairwoman of the Africana Studies Department at Brown University, will be Eastern Michigan University’s key-note speaker on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Her talk, called “MLK and the Legacies of the Civil Rights Era,” will occur at 10 a.m. Jan. 17 in the EMU Student Center auditorium. This event is free and open to the public

Rose was born and raised in New York City, spending her childhood in Harlem and the Bronx.

She went on to graduate from Yale University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in sociology and then her doctorate from Brown University in the field of American Studies. She taught at Rutgers, New York University and at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Rose lectures frequently to scholarly, corporate and general audiences on a wide range of topics relating to American cultural politics, inequality, diversity, black cul-ture, music and gender.

Rose has also been featured as an expert commentator on NPR, MSNBC and other national and local outlets.

She is most well-known for her ground-breaking book on the emergence of hip hop culture, “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.” The book won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1995 and was also considered one of the top 25 books of 1995 by the Village Voice.

In 1999, Black Issues in Higher Education listed “Black Noise” as one of its “Top Books of the Twentieth Century.”

In 2003, Rose published another book, “Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy.”

Publisher’s Weekly noted that the book was “heart-breaking, inspiring, and bru-tally honest... as compelling as it is sorely needed.”

Her most recent book, “The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop — and Why it Matters,” is a rebuttal to both sides of the contemporary debates on hip hop, which she contends negatively shape our much larger conversation about race and identity in America.

“Hip Hop Wars” explores 10 of the most crucial issues at stake in the public conversa-tion on hip hop.

She concludes with a call for reincarnating the progres-sive and creative heart of what hip hop once was.

Rose’s keynote address is part of a weeklong celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy. More details about the week can be found at www.emich.edu/mlk.

For more information about this event, contact Campus Life at 487-3045, campuslife@emich.edu or emich.edu/campuslife.

It’sComing

Dec. 23rd...A Chance

to Win

$250