STRESS has a lot to answer for.

Hair loss, weight gain, insomnia, depression, acne and even decreased fertility and heart disease are among the conditions being stressed can induce.

And Colchester-based businesswoman Paula Ruane is championing a ground-breaking approach to overcoming stress alongside running her own very successful networking groups.

Paula, who has three grown up children, says her own husband had to have major heart surgery when he was just a young man and the couple's three children were all aged under five.

And whilst looking at his lifestyle she began thinking even at that time about the link between stress and poor health.

"It was hard - I was running a successful design company and we had three children under the aged of five.

"But I could see his heart condition had been building up, he was quite angry and stressed out and he had given up drinking and smoking two years before and I could see this coming.

"And it was that which got me looking into it really, I could see where it had affected him and knew there was more to it," she explains.

Having begun to study the long-term effects of stress Paula subsequently launched her business to help people overcome it themselves.

And she is particularly interested in helping women cope with the stress juggling busy lives can often bring.

She explains statistics reveal women of all ages, particularly between 25 and 54, have higher than average levels of work-related stress, anxiety and depression.

Over the past three years around 200,000 men have reported work-related stress compared with 272,000 women.

"At the time I started my business you couldn't use the word 'stress' as companies did not want to recognise there was such a thing but it has changed a lot now.

"At that time I was introduced, by a woman in Colchester, to something called the HeartMath programme which was developed for US Navy Seals about 20 years ago," she adds.

She says the approach is not about stress management but rather equipping people with the tools to better deal with it.

"I help people increase their capacity to be able to cope with stress.

"It is about how the brain calibrates all the information it has so we do something called a bio-test and we use the results of that to be able to train them to be able to cope better.

"I am a resilience trainer really and it basically can help improve relationships and restore control.

"What I do is not about stress management, if that worked we would not be stressed in the first place - we have to be able to deal with the effects of it, to be more resilient."

Paula can run one-to-one sessions or group sessions which involve a range of exercises.

"Using those and the bio feedback we can identify the things that trigger the stress," says Paula who also runs the Women in Business Network, which has groups in Colchester and across London.

By producing quantifiable feedback, she explains she is able to monitor the individual’s progress and set achievable targets that can alleviate the symptoms of stress and increase overall resilience.

It's a painless process with no talk-therapy, drugs or side effects that Paula explains will increase energy, mood and mental stamina.

"I work with all kinds of people and everyone responds to stress in a different way.

"I am also seeing young people more and more, 15-year-olds and sometimes younger.

"There is just so much more for them to worry and stress about nowadays and everyone reacts differently.

"It was a lot simpler when I was a child and now we have the added strain of social media and 24 hour television to deal with too.

"There all these apps and mobile phones and it has a real effect on stress levels," says Paula.

Paula says the approach she adopts is not mindfulness.

"That is different and I would encourage things like mindfulness and yoga and things that will keep you relaxed.

"But there is no point doing it if you are already stressed.

"I like to do yoga but if I am in a stressed state already then I couldn't achieve certain difficult poses that require balance because stress affects things like balance."

For more information on workshops run by paula go to www.paularuane.com