Differences in stress level between people living in the cities and those who live in the countryside

Too often when we think of places where quality of life is threatened by the spiral of rising taxes and declining services, cities come to mind - aging, rundown, unappealing cities.
Stress is an omnipresent fact of life in big city - and it’s getting worse. We work harder - an increase of almost four hours per week between the late eighties and the tu
of the century. We need more money to pay for rising taxes and inflation. We worry about another terrorist attack. And, to top it all off, stress might even age us more quickly at the cellular level. Researchers in San Francisco just completed a study that found that chronic emotional stress erodes telomerase, an enzyme in our cells that helps extend our life span, keeping us young and healthy. The cells of the most stressed-out women in the studies were effectively aged ten years more than normal.
In 1999, Nicholas Christenfeld, a psychology professor at the University of Califo
ia, examined the national rates at which people die of heart attacks. In New York, he noticed, the rates are 55 percent higher than the national average. “It stands out like a red light on the map,” he says. Then Christenfeld examined the rates of heart attacks among visitors to New York. Amazingly, those numbers were also elevated - 34 percent higher than normal. The reverse was also true - when New Yorkers travel to other parts of the country, their rates drop below the city’s norm by 20 percent.
A new survey of rural health workers and volunteers has identified an increase in rural stress, especially amongst land managers and country sports workers.
The research was carried out by the Countryside Alliance. A questionnaire was distributed to an estimated survey sample of 500 rural health workers and volunteers and received a 30% response rate.
Respondents indicated that groups most susceptible to stress are those directly involved with land and countryside management and primary food production i.e. farmers, farm workers, estate...

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