Episode 5 Health: Truth or Scare

Every day we're bombarded with conflicting messages

about how to live a healthy, happy life.

One minute we're told something's the right thing to do,

the next it's the complete opposite,

and we are left without a clue which advice to follow.

So we've been wading through the confusion to separate

the scare stories from the truth,

to help you work out what's best for you.

Hello, and welcome to Health: Truth Or Scare, the series that cuts

right through those conflicting claims about our health

that seem to be appearing just about every day, don't they, Kevin?

They certainly do, Angela.

Today's programme isn't so much about,

well, keeping our bodies healthy, but our minds,

and because we're the only ones who know what's really going on

up here, I mean, there's no way every single bold headline

or sweeping statement we read has advice that's right for us all.

So, whether it's sleep or stress,

by the end of today's programme you really should be pretty clear

about how to make sure that you are getting plenty of one of those

and not too much of the other.

Coming up:

We all deal with it differently, but can stress ever be good for us?

There is the word pressure and there is the word stress.

When pressure exceeds your ability to cope,

then you're in the stress arena.

And why you shouldn't lose sleep if you don't get eight hours shuteye a night.

-Five hours.

-Six hours' sleep, I got.

-Four hours' sleep.

-I got six hours, that's not really enough.

Now, stress has long been linked to all manner of health problems,

from the old claims that it can cause ulcers to much more

modern ones, linking it to dementia and even to cancer.

Now, while you might be worried by headlines like this one

that was in The Times, which actually says anxious people are

more likely to die from cancer.

I mean, you'd get stressed just reading the headline, wouldn't you?

-Absolutely.

-There is, in fact, a flipside,

because some stories do suggest that stress can actually be good for us -

an idea that, I think, to anyone who's ever experienced

too much stress, might seem a bit far-fetched, so I wanted to find out

once and for all what stress really does mean to our health.

Good evening. First...

'I've spent my career working in a fast paced industry,

'from tight newsroom deadlines to presenting live programmes to millions of people.'

Let me pick up on that point...

'I know a fair amount about workplace pressure.'

While there's always been a certain amount of pressure

in the job that I do on a day-to-day basis, I think I've been

lucky enough to ensure that that pressure doesn't turn into stress.

Unfortunately for many people stress in the workplace is

a regular occurrence.

I have a child at home, so knowing that I'm not going to be at home

to put him to bed after a long day is quite hard.

It's believed to be behind 45% of sick days

and one in five visits to GPs.

I sometimes have problems with my back, which is quite painful,

so it means I can't do things that I really want to do.

And behind the wheel it can even lead to road rage.

The things that really stress me out are, like, traffic in Manchester.

Manchester driving is horrible. People in Manchester cannot drive.

Many of the people we met thought stress is always bad

and according to lots of reports, being stressed can also have

serious implications for our health,

but last autumn two other stories really took me by surprise

because they said stress might actually be good for us and,

in some cases, people with stressful jobs might even live longer.

My boyfriend tends to stress me out a lot. He can be a pain.

Clearly stress can come in different guises, but the idea that it

can be good for us is so different to what we've come to believe

that I want to find out how stress really does affect us.

And I'm starting with people who have what's reported to be

-one of the most stressful jobs around.

-There you are.

On a typical night Mr Thomas's Chop House in Manchester can seat up to 90 people at a time,

not to mention the drinkers standing at the bar.

Cheers.

And, while it might not look stressful now,

the team is well aware of how bad it can get.

Thursday nights can get quite busy

because it's that last day before Friday.

People just want to go out and just try and get

a head start on the weekend.

Steak and ale, yeah.

Most stressful times are just kind of when it gets really busy.

You've got ten different things to do and ten different people

waiting to get sat down and that's the most stressful time.

Some parts are stressful,

so if it is particularly busy and you've got ten other customers

to serve you might not get a break for probably two hours,

you are always on the go, so, yeah, things can get a bit more stressful.

But what is it that makes their job apparently one of the most stressful around?

-Hi, Angela.

-Cary, hi.

-Good meeting you.

'Professor of Psychology Sir Cary Cooper is behind

'one of the UK's largest studies into workplace stress.'

Now, we've been talking to some people who work in the restaurant business.

First of all, would you expect being a waiter to be a stressful job?

It's frenetic, a lot of people there, a lot of demands.

The chef's not getting the food out in time.

Where I think it becomes more stressful for them is where

the customer then says, this is lousy food, terrible service,

you know, and causes problems, because they have to be polite

so the stress for me occurs in situations like that.

The study that said restaurant waiting staff are among

the most stressed blamed the fact that they often don't have

much control over their day-to-day jobs, and feel powerless to stop

a shift getting on top of them.

That's very different to some other professions where you might

think they're seemingly more stressed, but Cary says, unlike

many low-paid waiting jobs, those are careers that people strive for.

A lot of people think that things like being a pilot,

an air traffic controller,

a dealer in the City of London, are very stressful jobs,

but they self select in, so people know what they're going to get.

There's what we call a person/job fit in a sense, psychological fit

between me, the individual, my psychology and the psychology of the job.

And there are some people who thrive on high-pressure situations.

There is a word pressure and there's the word stress.

Now, pressure is stimulating and motivating.

You go on camera, it's stimulating, you love it,

I go and give a lecture, it's stimulating.

But when pressure exceeds your ability to cope

then you're in the stress arena.

Waiting staff Chris, Sarah and Sam are all very experienced

at their jobs, so they're used to the challenges and the pressure

that it can throw at them.

I'm showing Cary some of the footage to get his take on how they all cope.

Working in hospitality, I think the majority of people need to have quite a thick skin.

You get a lot of bad comments towards you sometimes,

it may be towards you personally, it may be towards the environment

you're in, maybe something to do with the food and some people

can get quite nasty sometimes,

but you've just got to learn to kind of shake it off.

He's got the right attitude, his attitude is I'm going to get this

from time to time from customers, they're going to be difficult,

and I have to find a way in which I cope with that.

He's got it right.

Being front of house you obviously have to present the brand

that you're working for, so the restaurant, and yourself

so you give good service so doing it for a length of time,

doing it for sort of six hours at a time, it can get quite stressful.

Definitely compared to other jobs where if you are behind

a computer screen you can have a few minutes to yourself

or go and get a cup of tea, you're not always being watched upon, in

a way, so waitressing and bar staff definitely,

cos you're always standing there,

people are always watching you, whatever you're doing.

She makes an interesting point there, which is being under

-scrutiny, in vision, if you like...

-Yeah.

..that that can add to your stress level.

Yes, for anybody customer-facing all the time

it's potentially very stressful.

It can turn into stress if you actually need some space for yourself.

They're not allowed to take a few minutes off

and so it is potentially a stressful aspect of their job.

But the staff say there's one thing above everything else

that helps them to cope.

I think we're very lucky here with the team that we've got,

we help each other a lot.

Having the supportive team within this environment,

within hospitality, if you don't have that it easily crumbles.

In any job, if you get on with the people you work with, fine,

they are what we call your social support system.

They're your safety net.

They're your safety net, they're people you can talk to,

they're people who can see when you are not coping and they

come in and help you, so the team is really important.

If you don't get on with the people you're working with, then you're

in trouble. Then the pressure easily could turn into stress.

Let's broaden this out now because you have said right at the very

beginning that there is a difference between pressure and stress.

Where, for you, is the tipping point?

You know you're moving from pressure to stress

when your behaviour begins to change.

OK, so, you become... Normally you have a great sense of humour,

you lose it. In other words, change of behaviour.

When you're in the stress zone, the next set of symptoms you get

would be health symptoms.

Ultimately, you can get a stress-related illness.

Stress can raise your chances of developing conditions ranging from

depression to heart disease and, if some of the claims I've heard

are true, it could have a serious impact on our lifelong health.

GP Dr Arun Ghosh regularly sees patients with stress in his practice.

Arun, we tend to think of stress as affecting us psychologically

and emotionally, but it actually can have a major effect

on us physically, can't it?

What sort of things can stress do to our bodies?

So, stress can have a number of effects on different parts of

the body. One of the main things is that it can cause fatigue.

You can also get problems with your diabetes and controlling

chronic conditions such as your asthma, with your breathing.

Dermatological conditions, such as psoriasis, can easily flare up if stress come around.

All of these can be affected by stress, as well as

very serious conditions such as hypertension

and cardiovascular disease, but the problem in the modern-day

world is the stress now can actually be there every single day,

five days a week, if not longer, and when that goes on for

weeks and weeks and weeks, the body cannot cope with that.

So, while some of those reports about the impact of stress

on our health might have seemed far-fetched,

Arun says they are actually much closer to the truth.

What evidence is there that stress can exacerbate cancer?

We know again stress can make you choose poor lifestyle choices

so you can tend to be, if you're stressed, less likely

to exercise, more likely to have a poor diet, more likely to smoke,

more likely to drink. Now, all those have a cascade effect

to causing cancer, so again, stress is a risk factor for cancer,

but at this moment in time we don't know the direct cause.

That's all very worrying, but I can't forget those reports that

claimed that far from causing cancer or putting us in an early grave,

stress could actually be good for us,

and it's something that the visitors to our stress booth

mostly agreed with.

I think stress can be a positive, can be positive,

cos it releases all the chemicals in your body,

doesn't it? You know, and your adrenaline and things.

Fear is a form of stress so overcoming that challenge,

overcoming that fear and then feeling good afterwards,

I think is very positive.

I think stress can sometimes be a good thing, yeah,

like, if it makes you get things done.

But some reports take it one step further than that, by claiming

that it can even have a beneficial impact

on conditions such as Alzheimer's.

How do you react to a headline which says "Stressful job?

"It might help you to fight Alzheimer's"?

I think it's quite misleading, isn't it,

when we talk about stress because there's a large spectrum of stress

and some people will work under stress very, very well.

In that particular instance those people often keep their brain

exercising, so often what they do is they're very intelligent,

so they'll often be working, they'll be reading, they'll be studying,

and we know that can help prevent conditions like Alzheimer's, but

chronic stress, stress that goes on for a long period of time, without

a doubt has a devastating effect on the body and is actually more

likely to cause dementia because of the ongoing effects if not treated.

So if we want to keep Alzheimer's, dementia,

any of the dementias at bay, the answer is, you've got to keep

your brain working, not necessarily under stress, but challenged?

That's the key word.

'So we shouldn't take any claims about stress being good for us

'as a reason not to act when it starts to get too much.'

What should we be doing?

I think as the population, we've really got to identify when we become stressed.

It's very important that we realise that it's just a symptom.

It's something that if we get too early,

like any other condition, there's a lot more we can do about it.

Once we've identified it, it's very important that we look at

some of the lifestyle ways of trying to change and adjust it,

but, if you can't, it's very important that you think the door

is open to have a chat with your GP JUST about stress

because very often it isn't JUST about stress.

Even if you're someone who thrives under pressure,

when it turns to stress it can easily feel too much,

and that can have a much bigger impact on your health.

But of course a trip to your GP doesn't have to be the first step,

you can implement other simple measures to stop it getting

the better of you, as our stress booth visitors suggest.

I'm all the time singing and smiling,

and I think, "OK, it's fine, I will be fine, I will survive,

"it's not the end."

I take my kids out, like, walk in the park or something.

I look at on more as a logical problem and just accept that

there's some things I can't do today and hopefully tomorrow

I'll be able to manage them a little bit better.

Don't hold it all in, just share your burden with somebody else.

If your in the car and you're driving, shut the windows,

roll them up, but the music on, have a chill out.

I feel in this country that people, they need to smile

a little bit more, calm down, and live the moment.

And back at the restaurant, the staff there also have their own tips

for winding down.

Tomorrow's my day off, so I'm looking forward to that,

so have a little lie-in and probably go out to dinner myself

and get served by someone else.

Today's been a pretty good day overall, yeah,

so now to relax with a pint.

Next, something that a lot of us may think we don't get enough of -

sleep - but, you know, Angela,

when we're busy and stressed, it tends to be one of the first things

that get worse, making it even harder to deal with the

initial thing we were getting stressed about in the first place.

-That was probably keeping you awake.

-Stress!

One thing I think we do agree on, Kevin, or at least

most people do, is the benefit we get from a good night's sleep.

What very few of us agree on is how many hours that should be.

-Now, for years people have said it's eight hours.

-Yes.

But in actual fact very few of us actually hit that target, but

I tell you someone who takes his sleep very seriously indeed

is the former Paralympian Steve Brown,

so we thought he was the best person to get to the bottom of this.

So what's the real story about sleep?

-Last night I got seven hours' sleep.

-Five hours.

-Eight hours.

Six hours' sleep, I got.

The amount of shuteye we get each night varies massively.

-Four hours' sleep.

-I got six hours, that's not really enough.

And, while we might think we should be aiming for eight hours

a night, a whopping 90% of us actually get less than that.

-For a healthy night's sleep, I need eight hours.

-Eight hours' sleep.

ALL: Eight hours' sleep.

But judging by some reports

the idea we need eight hours is a bit of a myth.

Some say it's too much and we should be aiming for around

six hours instead.

Before you relax about how much sleep you get, hang on,

because other reports say too little might contribute to some

serious health conditions like asthma, heart disease and strokes.

So how much do we really need?

When I was an athlete, getting at least seven hours a night

was vital for me, so I had a night-time routine

to send me quickly into a deep, sound sleep all night.

I have a warm bath, followed by a hot drink with honey,

an hour before bed and then I brush my teeth and read.

I can't remember the last time I had less than seven hours,

but obviously I'm one of the lucky ones.

One national study says two thirds of Brits get less than that

and around one in 15 people sleep for less than five hours a night.

If some of the headlines are right then those people are putting their health at risk.

Now, there's no way I'd manage on that little sleep,

so how do some people get by?

Sleep expert Neil Stanley might have some answers.

I know that if I don't get a good seven or eight hours' sleep

at night I'm not at my best,

yet I've got friends and family that can get by on four, five,

six hours' sleep, what is it that I'm doing wrong?

I don't think you're doing anything wrong.

Some people do genuinely need less sleep than others.

Sleep's like height,

we're all different and it's genetically determined

so, just as you have short people and tall people, you have

short sleepers and long sleepers, so some people can get away with

just having four hours, other people need to have 11 hours' sleep

in order to feel good during the day.

But, as we heard earlier, there's a big difference between

how much sleep we need and how much we actually get.

According to one study, the number of people getting seven or eight

hours a night has fallen, whilst those getting five or six is up,

and it could be modern life that's to blame.

It is very easy to get distracted when you're on your phone and

trying to go to bed, so it's not ideal to have both at the same time.

I do have a TV in my bedroom and I do watch TV at night

and that probably doesn't help.

Especially kids, I think they spend too much on their laptops

and tablets and basically they're distracted by that.

Neil Stanley says these experiences are common

because modern life makes it very hard for us to switch off.

When I was growing up pubs closed at half-ten,

late-night shopping was six o'clock on a Thursday night,

TV went off at ten o'clock.

It was very easy to get sleep because there was nothing else to do.

Now we work longer, there's 24-hour entertainment,

and so we neglect sleep, we don't see sleep as being important

because, you know, everything else seems much more exciting.

We've yet to learn that the 24-hour society is not the new, shiny thing,

and it's conning us out of a good night's sleep.

Losing sleep, whether it's working late, trawling the internet,

or staring at your tablet or smartphone in bed can

very quickly start to affect the rest of your life.

Just one hour less sleep than you need has an effect

on the way you perform during the day.

So you find it difficult to focus,

you're not good at problem-solving, there are emotional things -

you're going to be more argumentative with your partner

or your colleagues at work, you're going to have less empathy.

If you do have a fight you're less liable to make up

so the effects that you sort of just put down to

"It's Monday morning" or "I don't like my job"

are usually actually the effects of having poor sleep.

If you can't get the amount of sleep your body needs at night

there is, of course, the continental solution - a midday siesta -

but the papers can't decide whether napping is good or bad for you and

Manchester's coffee-loving morning commuters are equally divided.

Do you find yourself napping in a day?

No, I try not to. My girlfriend does, but I don't.

She believes in it, she has her power naps.

No, I only nap if I decided to nap and the structure of my day allows it.

Are you a napper?

I find that does help, yeah, even if it just you having to sleep,

just find a quiet place and, you know.

Now, I've got to admit I love a good nap, but, thanks to my job,

I don't get the chance all that often, but if I worked in

a place like this it might all be a bit different.

Technology firm UKFast is so happy to let its staff nap at work

that it's even installed special sleep pods.

Many multinationals like Uber and Google have them in their offices too

because, the theory goes, letting staff sleep on the job

makes them more productive when they're awake.

Jonathan, lovely to see you. Nice to meet you.

'Jonathan is the managing director here.'

The opportunity just to get your head down and get some quiet time

to yourself can often be very advantageous for people

and can refresh them really enough to feel as though they are starting the day again.

We have a growing team of people having young children and babies at the moment,

who are probably a little bit sleep-deprived at home

and are able to actually think,

"Do you know what? At lunchtime I'm going to get 45 minutes' shuteye."

And they'd rather do that in a sleeping pod than down in

the lounge area where you are surrounded by noisy people.

But it's not just sleep-deprived new parents who use the sleep pods,

there are workers, like avid office-napper Chris,

who say being able to sleep at work is vital to his job.

Sleeping pods are fantastic for us.

We've got lots of big businesses that require maintenance work

to be done out of hours, rather than during the daytime,

and the sleeping pods are brilliant because we can go in there,

have a nap in the middle of the work if you've got a period

of a couple of hours where nothing's going on.

Of course, for most of us, napping is impractical, even if our

employers allow it, and Dr Neil Stanley isn't a massive fan either.

Well, it's a 50/50 argument.

Of course there are benefits to napping,

if you are sleepy during the day and you're not performing well,

then a 20-minute power nap will give you great benefit,

much more than two strong black cups of coffee, for instance.

If you need to nap because you are sleep-deprived,

then it is a good thing, but the question should be

why are you sleep deprived?

But we've got headlines right here that are saying

napping is good for you on so many levels.

It is good for you if you need to do it,

so we shouldn't get hung up on napping and we shouldn't

build in napping into our work days,

we should actually be getting the sleep at night that we need.

Napping might be one of the side-effects of not sleeping

properly you're happy to put up with, but according to some

headlines there's others that are much more serious.

They say the estimated quarter of us in the UK who have

problem sleep may, according to American studies, have a higher risk

of developing diabetes, heart complications and even cancer.

I've come to see how true this is at the sleep clinic at

Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, which assesses and treats patients

whose bad sleeping patterns could be putting their health at risk.

Hundreds of patients pass through the clinic every year,

including Jane.

Jane, tell us a little bit about your relationship with sleep.

How many hours of sleep do you think you do get on average?

I'll average at say about three hours probably.

That's not much sleep at all, three hours.

How do you function during the day on that kind of level?

Quite well actually, yeah.

I get tired, but obviously I probably put that down to my age.

What about your partner, surely they slept more,

they must have realised with you that that wasn't normal?

Yeah, he did actually realise it's not normal,

but what I tend to do, cos if I was snoring, I'd wait till

he'd go to sleep, then I wouldn't wake him up!

So that was the plan, let him fall off to sleep first...

Let him fall asleep first so I could sleep, so I'm not disturbing him.

I just thought it was normal for me to just snore.

It was only after the staff at Jane's local weight management

clinic suggested her sleeping habits could have a more serious impact

on her health that Jane was referred here to the sleep clinic.

Last week, the team ran tests on her sleep and she's back for the results.

What are you expecting from the result?

Hopefully to feel better, not as tired during the day.

But, whilst Jane thinks three hours' sleep is just making her tired,

sleep expert David Jones has much more worrying news

when he delivers her test results.

You stopped breathing 83 times every hour,

which is more than once a minute,

for quite a considerable period of time, so most of the time

you're not sleeping and not breathing very well at all.

Jane only sleeps for three hours a night because she wakes up

every time she stops breathing.

David diagnoses Jane with sleep apnoea,

a condition that's caused by a variety of factors, including

being overweight and having sinuses that could collapse easily.

If kept untreated, it can lead to significant heart problems

and potentially even strokes,

and David says Jane's sleeping habits influence how much she eats.

That reflects back on to the hormone system,

which means that it is very difficult for you to resist eating,

you'll tend to want to eat a little bit more than

what the fair average person might want to eat,

you may want to graze as well,

your satisfaction with the food that you put in is not as great,

so that leads to the potential of diabetes developing as well,

so it's not a very nice prognosis if we leave it untreated,

-but we can treat it. OK.

-Thank you.

Just a bit shocked.

Yes, it is a big shock and frequently people get a little bit

of a fright about this, but the positive side of it is that

there is a way forward and the consequences of it are huge,

but the treatment system is very simple.

Curing Jane's sleep apnoea will transform her health.

Hi, Jane, my name is Colette, I'm going to be providing you

with your magic machine today.

In the short term, she will need to wear a mask in bed, which will

help regulate her breathing through the night.

-How do you feel about everything?

-A bit daunted at the minute.

-OK, so we'll go slowly, we'll go very slowly.

-Thank you.

-No worries.

With the machine regulating her breathing Jane should start

getting good quality sleep for more than three hours a night.

If she applies herself and works steadily with us

then she should see results within days - not weeks, not months, days.

-How did that feel?

-It felt fine.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

Over the next few months, Jane should find it easier to sleep,

and over time that will help her lose weight,

strengthen her heart, and make breathing easier.

The hope is she'll no longer need the machine.

When it comes to conditions like Jane's, there is no doubt that

reports saying lack of sleep can lead to heart problems and diabetes

are true, but doctor Neil Stanley says that even those of us

who don't have such serious conditions should be wary of

the impacts not sleeping can have on our health.

Sleep is as important as diet and exercise for wellbeing, if not more

important, because poor sleep leads you to make poor food choices,

eat more sugary and fatty foods,

leads to less motivation to exercise,

so we should be prioritising sleep above anything else that we do.

-Would you like a coffee?

-Yes, please.

-OK.

It's now five days after leaving the hospital with her new breathing machine.

Jane and her husband, Steve, have noticed a huge improvement.

The first couple of days were hard work, just getting used to wearing

a mask and having something over, covering my nose and mouth

was quite scary at first because, obviously,

it's something you're not used to doing, but once I had got used to it

and it's made a difference already to me,

-I don't feel as tired in the mornings.

-You don't get up as much.

-No, I don't, do I? I don't visit the bathroom as much.

-Which is a bonus.

It certainly is, isn't it?

After a week, Jane is getting an extra hour of good sleep a night.

Now she's got her sights set on getting the same number of hours a night as Steve.

It can only get better.

It's definitely made a big improvement

and I would recommend it to anybody.

Of course, not everybody struggles with sleep in the way Jane did,

but if you're otherwise healthy and feel great after

just five or six hours' sleep a night, then there's probably

no need to worry you're not getting enough.

The best news for me is that it works the other way too,

so I'm going to stick to my seven or eight hours a night.

-HE YAWNS

-Night, then.

For hundreds of thousands of students all over the country,

-springtime means just one thing - exams.

-Exams, yes.

It really is the most intense time of the year, isn't it, for study?

It certainly is, absolutely.

Because, what, they start with the mocks and that works its way

through up until the real thing.

Sadly, however, all of that work really does become

just a bit overwhelming for too many of them, doesn't it?

It can be, yes, and if students can conquer that exam stress

they really can see their exam results and, I guess,

more importantly, their overall health soar.

I paid a visit to a really interesting college

that's helping its students do just that.

I remember the feeling of exam stress.

I felt like the workload was making my school life out of control.

It really stressed me out being so paranoid that I wasn't

getting enough stuff done.

I was never positive about anything I did.

Any pressure that I did receive was mainly self-inflicted.

I was losing hours because I would sometimes just give up.

'As a dad of three,

'I know all too well how stressful exams can be.

'My middle child, Joe, is preparing for his AS-levels

'after sitting his GCSEs last year.'

What's the feeling just before you're taking the exam?

For me, I find it really nervous

because, you know, I want to do well.

You're going to be packing in all of the revision,

-and that's when the stress starts...

-Yeah.

..cos you just start overloading, yeah, and it's not good.

And just as Joe was busy revising for his exams in 2016,

some really shocking

news reports hit the papers,

saying not just that teens

are feeling stressed more acutely

than ever before

and it could have a huge impact on their health in later life,

but, worse still,

that exam stress was a factor

in teen suicides.

I'm sure, like most parents,

I found those headlines really worrying

because your child is going through their exams and they're stressed,

and sometimes it's hard to know how deep it's affecting them,

and, actually, sometimes it's even harder to know how to help.

I'm about to go into my GCSEs

and I'm finding it quite hard work and stressful.

I found there was a lot of pressure put on me,

but I try to contain it well.

We have a bit of a revision schedule.

-Arguments, really, a lot.

-Yeah, arguments.

It's just a difficult time, really.

Usually, it ends up Mum taking all my electronics off me,

-making me do work.

-SHE LAUGHS

I think it's key, for any child going through exams,

to have supportive parents.

Even though you can be calm at home, you can help with all of that,

it's very, very difficult come the day of the exam.

For lots of students, that stress can easily become overwhelming.

One study found that two thirds

of 16 and 17-year-olds

have felt overwhelmed by their schoolwork,

and almost half have been

so anxious about their exams,

it made them feel sick.

But those concerns pale in comparison

to some of the problems reported to children's charities.

Hi, you're through to someone you can talk to at Childline.

Last year, Childline received more than 3,000 calls

about exam stress, almost a quarter of them in May

when pressure really mounted ahead of exam season.

And manager Anna Krayla says those headlines about how bad it can get

for some teens really aren't overstated.

There are young people who disclose quite concerning behaviours.

We have calls where young people say that they cannot cope any more

because they're very, very fearful of what's going to happen tomorrow.

Their anxieties are so high.

Those are the calls that we're really, really concerned about

because, obviously, nobody wants to hear

that young people are feeling this way

because of the pressures of exams.

So, when children actually ring up, what are they ringing up about?

What are they stressing about?

Well, they're stressing about not achieving.

They obviously don't want to let parents down.

They might have, you know, lots of anxieties.

So, thinking about exams is making that worse for them

and they're picking up the phone saying

they just cannot cope with this,

they don't know what to do, they need help,

who can they talk to, they can't do these exams.

So, teaching teenagers how to cope with the pressure of exams

is starting to be seen as something that's absolutely key

to their future success.

I'm in Merseyside to visit a school

whose approach to dealing with exam stress is,

well, let's just say, I think you might be surprised.

Just let yourself be fully aware of your breathing.

Notice the air as it moves in and out of your nose.

Notice, too, how your chest and abdomen are rising.

These students are all part of a course

designed to help them cope with the stresses of revision and exams.

OK, everybody. So, in your own time,

just bring yourself up to a seated position on the mat.

Over six weeks, they're taught techniques including positivity,

thoughtfulness and resilience.

Kevin, good to meet you.

-Glad you get to experience the BePART programme.

-Yeah, thank you.

-Is it all right to have a seat?

-Yeah, of course. Take a seat.

Would any of you like to tell me, just briefly,

how you found that experience?

Yeah. I reckon, like, it proper relaxes you.

-Like, I struggle, do you know?

-Yeah.

"Oh, I've got this due tomorrow, I've got this next week,"

-and, like, it really just clears your head.

-Mm.

So, that's the idea of the meditation.

It's to move your attention away from your busy mind

more into your breathing and your body

so you can get to sleep an awful lot easier at night.

And if you can sleep better, then you can be more efficient students during the day.

You can focus more in class.

You can hopefully get more done, as well.

Meditation classes are a far cry from when I was doing exam revision,

but for the students here like Ben,

it's been vital in helping him deal with stress.

So, what kind of things were you stressed about?

I was very much, like, "I need to do well.

"I need to do this because I want to go to university.

"I want to get a really good job."

So, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself.

And then, obviously, you've got your teachers being like,

"You could do this. You could do that."

So, you're just thinking, "I've got to live up to their expectations, as well.

A nice, big, deep in-breath just through your nose.

All the students I spoke to said the course really helps them deal

with the stress of exams and revision,

and there's no doubt that stress is now part and parcel

of modern teenage life.

Psychologist Anna Colton works with teenagers,

and she's seen how acutely exam pressure can affect them.

You know, I'm thinking back to when I went to school, you know,

and I'm thinking, "I can't even begin to think

"how close it was to being as stressful

"as the things I'm reading now." What do you think has changed?

There is relentless testing nowadays,

and it starts really young, and so they're having to jump

through more and more hoops through their educational life.

But also there is increasing competition for university places,

for degrees, for schools, even.

You know, it's increasingly difficult,

and that's adding to it, as well.

And for today's teens who are never far from a mobile or laptop,

there's another big, new, 24/7 factor

that wasn't around when I was that age - social media.

Everyone posts, particularly successes, on social media,

so it makes it hard if you're not successful,

and young people worry about that.

Children and young people compete with each other

and that's a real pity cos it's much, much healthier

if they compete with themselves.

They know what their level is

and they go and try and better their level each time

rather than worrying about their friends.

But whatever fans the flames of their exam stress,

Anna says there's a clear difference

between the way boys and girls cope with it.

Girls report a much higher level of anxiety than boys

at both 16 and 17.

Whether that is that they experience more anxiety

-or they just report more...

-I'm with you.

-..is the question.

My sense is that boys under-report,

and actually that is why boys get into more difficulties,

from a mental health perspective, a bit later on in life,

is because they don't report, so they don't get the help.

But if what some of the headlines say is true,

students who don't talk about their exam stress now

are at even greater risk

because some reports claim

it's one of the key causes

of teenage suicide.

But Anna says it's just not

that simple, and those reports are

taking the situation out of context.

What's important to note about that is that those young people

who do do that, it won't just be exam stress.

There'll be a lot of other stuff going on,

and it will have built up over a long time.

That said, those teens who are pushed to that extreme act

are the ones who haven't done the talking,

who haven't processed, and they are completely overwhelmed

by what they're feeling

and by the levels of stress and the hopelessness that accompanies,

you know, feeling profoundly stressed.

None of us want our kids to experience exam stress

as severe as this.

To help students manage, however hard they find it...

..the BBC has brought together advisors like Anna

and a group of 12 students to form the Mind Set,

which helps young people cope with the pressure of exams

using Bitesize online tips and advice.

Where did you get this from, again?

One of the mentors is 17-year-old Angel,

who faced her own exam stress last year.

One night, before a maths exam,

I thought that doing an all-nighter

and surviving on energy drinks only was a good idea.

Everything was running out of my head

and I just wasn't prepared,

and so when I went into the exam, I was stressed.

I actually ended up falling asleep in it.

Angel sat 12 GCSEs in 2016,

and while her maths exam was the worst point,

she says she found the whole experience stressful,

especially because of social media.

I was worried that I wouldn't get the grades I wanted to.

There's often a lot of people putting up posts

of specific grades they've got,

and I guess, when you're comparing yourself,

you put a lot of pressure on yourself.

I learned to not use social media as a negative thing.

Facebook has several revision groups

where people can talk about their problems,

and so I used it in the better way.

And it's by turning negatives like that into positives

that Angel thinks other students can learn from her experience.

I retook some exams and I learned,

from experience, that retaking isn't a bad thing.

You don't need to put pressure on yourself.

You need to take time and understand your way of learning.

So, understand if you're a visual learner

or if you're a verbal learner.

Ask your teachers for help, talk to your parents, and with time,

you should get the grades you want to.

So, today, we're going to be looking at gratitude to build resilience.

And in Birkenhead, it's just that kind of support

that underpins the college's pioneering approach

to dealing with exam stress.

OK. So, we're going to do a little game.

We're going to go round each person one at a time.

We're each going to name something

that we're grateful for having in our lives.

While this might sound a bit like New Age therapy,

the students say it encourages them not to bottle up their stress.

So, Ben, what were your initial thoughts about the programme when you heard about it?

I was very sceptical cos it's all a bit cliche and cringey

with the "express gratitude,

"challenge your negative thoughts" and stuff.

But then it actually changed a lot throughout my life,

and I know that, if I am stressed, I can go,

calm myself down and then get back into the swing of things.

And then it's the same at home, like, with revision, as well.

'And as deputy principal Mike Kilbride tells me,

'this holistic approach produces great results

'for the students and the college.'

What kind of results are you seeing, Mike?

Well, the students themselves are reporting back to us

that they are seeing the benefits

in terms of how they engage with their studies,

with their life and with their challenges.

We've had students who have had, say, very, very deep exam anxiety,

and there was a couple of students who had such exam stress,

they couldn't even go into an exam hall.

They can now do exams.

-So, that's a very, very sort of quantifiable improvement...

-I see.

..in those sorts of students.

We're now top 10% in terms of A-level results in the country,

and this programme is integral to what we want students to do.

I have to say, it seemed unorthodox at first,

but the college's programme is clearly working.

OK. So, thanks, everybody, for taking part today.

You can close your booklets over,

pack your things away, and I'll see you all next week.

For more advice from the BBC's Mind Set coaches

like Angel, as well as tips to help you revise effectively, visit...

Whatever the cause, stress affects us all in so many different ways.

-But, Angela, it was SO lovely to meet the students...

-Yes.

..and so refreshing to see their approach to exam pressure,

and so determined not to let it get the better of them. It was lovely.

And I bet that that'll be reflected in their exam results.

-Hopefully, yeah.

-Let's hope so, anyway.

And I have to say, I certainly learned an awful lot

from my own report into stress,

but you know what I'm going to take away most from today's programme?

-And that was in the report that Steve did on sleep.

-Oh, yeah.

It is great to know we don't all need eight hours a night anyway.

-Yeah.

-I get, I suppose, somewhere between six, six and a half.

-How about you, Kev?

-What, BC?

-Yes.

-Before children?

-SHE LAUGHS

Back in the day, eh? Eight, nine hours' sleep, maybe.

-But now, probably... I'd be lucky if I get six hours a night now.

-Yeah.

I have to say, the make-up artist has done

a great job on your bags, darling.

-They look really good.

-Soft focus. Soft focus.

But I'm afraid that's all we've got time for today,

but don't you lose any sleep over that

because we will be back very soon

to debunk even more of those conflicting headlines.

-But until then, thanks so much for joining us.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.