Day by day lately, I have been seeing friends and just running across random people who clearly are strung out with stress.

Exhibit A is a close friend who has often accepted to work two eight-hour shifts back to back in an already high-stress human services position. After suffering a collapsed lung, she is now recovering at a local hospital and being told it may take "three or four months" to get her health back.

A neighbor, meanwhile, was exultant for a day or so after completing a grueling master's degree program as a mid-life adult without having slowed down much on his regular 40-hour-a-week job in scientific research and application.

Then the accumulation of long days, short nights and tough papers and exams caught up with him and he had to recognize that he could barely lift a rake to clear out the residues of last autumn's leaves.

A graduate of my Life Writing Classes had been making steady and encouraging progress on his memoir of his high-school days until his federal job, with heavy doses of overtime to finish a critical project, wore him out and left him feeling depressed.

I have been to visit my friend in the hospital several times and have commiserated with my neighbor and my former student as well and told them all that they were "in my prayers."

It's become a cliché for folks to say, "I'm just too busy. I don't know whether I'm coming or going." Cliché or not, we're hurting ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually when we let daily stress get the best of us. Beyond prayer, what in the world can we do with all this stress we're building up?

What follows is purely a concerned layman's view of our "stress city" quandary. But for what it may be worth:

• Drink more water. Much more. My daughter, Joy, who is a biologist, says, "If you're not drinking one glass of water every hour, you're not well hydrated."
• Cut down sharply on sugary snacks and junk food lunches and suppers. Major in fresh fruits and vegetables. Fall in love with salads.
• Walk, at least 10 minutes if not 20 or a half hour, every day, or do the equivalent on a treadmill.
• Learn to say "no." As in "No, I can't join one more committee," or "No, I can't work as much overtime as you might want me to."
• Say "yes" to occasions to get out into nature and smell the flowers and the woodlands. Or, in the city, enjoy our parks and riverfront. Picnic, play and chat with a friend. And bring a book.
• Sing! Sing in the shower, sing on the deck and if you have the voice for it, sing with a choir or a chorale. For me, Wednesday evening choir practice has become a favorite moment in the week and a great way to let off stress.
• If you have trouble sleeping, I recommend cutting up an apple and eating the slices with a mug of warm milk. It's a natural sleep-inducing combo that won't give you the side effects you might get from barbiturates (such as addiction).
• Resolve to live "one day at a time." As Proverbs says, "Sufficient for the day are the troubles thereof. Tomorrow will have troubles of its own."

John Patrick Grace is a former newspaper health editor. He now is a book editor and publisher. He lives in Huntington and is a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.