A SCOTS businessman who got so stressed at work it made him ill has started a firm to help companies stop the same happening to their employees.

David Sime, 30, had his own successful marketing firm but the pressures of work made him so ill the stress-related bowel illness Crohn's disease, which had affected him mildly in the past, flared up.

It was so bad he was unable to work or even leave his house for two years.

Though David was taking conventional medicines, he decided to look into complementary healthcare to try to help improve his condition.

And he realised that he had to get to the root cause of his illness, rather than just mask the symptoms.

He came up with a combination of aromatherapy, nutritional therapy and psycho-physiology (the link between mental and physical health) which improved his health enough to return to work.

But he began to notice that stress-related health issues were common across the firms he worked with.

According to the Health and Safety Executive 13.4million working days a year are lost to stress, anxiety and depression at a cost of £3.8billion to industry.

And David, from Eaglesham, decided to use what he'd learned to help others.

He set up Total Therapy Group, which helps employers stop their staff getting stressed, in September 2006.

He said: "I realised that companies were fighting a losing battle against illness, absenteeism and skill leakage because they were frequently unaware of the core stress and health issues causing the problem.

"People kept coming to me with problems that they couldn't cure and I seemed to be able to come up with a solution.

"I realised the demand was among workers because they were going through what I had been through.

"I realised there was a real benefit to getting complementary therapies out there."

David's firm, which is based in Glasgow's Bath Street but works across Scotland, has now helped staff at high- profile firms as well as Scottish Enterprise and the NHS in Glasgow and Ayrshire and Arran.

Although massage is a popular therapy, David and his team of 120 different therapists also aim to tackle the problems that can cause stress, by offering postural health, desk ergonomics, management coaching and lectures on communication.

David said: "The response has been overwhelmingly positive, with feedback that the therapies should be longer!"