A NEW STUDY has found that watching, listening or reading the news could be having a negative impact on your stress levels.

The study, carried out in America by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health found that one in four Americans felt they had a “great deal” of stress in their lives. The survey asked 2,500 people and found the media was a major source of day-to-day stress (not that TheJournal.ie has anything to do with that).

One of the findings in the study related to the coverage of the Boston bombings. It found that people who were exposed to six or more hours of media a day experienced more acute stress symptoms than those who were at the site of the bombings when they occurred.

Mary McNaughton-Cassill is an expert in the area of stress and media coverage and a psychologist with the University of Texas. Speaking to NPR, she said:

Certain kinds of news can push your own buttons and make you very anxious…there is so much more news available, and so many different channels that are competing, that they’re trying harder to be sensational.

It was found that amongst the recipients of the survey, the most popular way of relieving stress was spending time with family. Other popular methods were meditation or prayer, spending time outdoors and eating healthily.

And just in case you’re feeling the weight of all the Garth Brooks speculation, here are a couple of bits of good news:

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