Stress Relief Articles

If you are living a high stress lifestyle, nothing you eat is about to change that. But, you can change how your body copes with stress by making careful food choices.

Stress is often thought of as a modern day illness but, in fact, the stress reaction has been fundamental to man’s survival throughout the ages. In prehistoric times, the stress reaction was a ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction, vital for survival in life-threatening situations. Today’s stresses are less likely to be of the life-threatening variety but the human body still responds by reacting as if they are!

“Stress is the trash of modern life – we all generate it but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life” – Danzae Pace

The stress reaction

The adrenal glands, situated just above the kidneys, release a hormone called adrenaline when the body is under stress. The release of adrenalin brings about a number of physical reactions designed to help the body deal with the current crisis.

1.    The liver releases sugar into the blood to supply the body with an extra surge of energy for the ‘fight-or flight’ response – fight the danger or run away from it!
2.    The breathing rate increases so that more oxygen can be taken in
3.    The heart rate speeds up so that the extra sugar and oxygen can be pumped quickly to the brain and the muscles
4.    Cholesterol levels rise to thicken the blood so it will clot more easily in the event of an injury
5.    Digestion slows down as it not an essential function in a crisis

All of the above reactions were once crucial when living with life or death situations, such as coming face-to-face with a man-eating beast, on a daily basis and they prepared the body to deal with an immediate danger. Today’s stresses are more likely to be along the lines of coming face-to-face with a disgruntled bank manager or trying to meet a looming dead-line with a million things still to be done. The ‘dangers’ are no longer so immediate and common sources of stress, such as financial worries, traffic jams, crowds and noise are much longer term in nature. However, the body still responds to each stressful situation as an immediate, short-term danger so it’s being subjected to the physical effects of the stress reaction over much longer periods of time. It is this prolonged stress response that leads to stress related illness.

Common symptoms of stress:

• Fatigue
• Insomnia
• Back and neck ache
• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Tearfulness
• High blood pressure
• Frequent colds and flu
• Digestive disorders: indigestion, heartburn, diarrhoea, constipation (sometimes ulcers)

These symptoms are the result of the body failing to cope with the excessive nutritional demands being placed upon it by the stress reaction. Ironically, individuals living with stress often eat nutritionally poor diets. A fast paced, high stress lifestyle tends to go hand-in-hand with fast food eating habits, high sugar foods and often a high caffeine intake.

Anti-stress nutrition

When the body is under stress, it has different nutritional needs. The B vitamins are important for converting protein, carbohydrates, and fats into energy in order to cope with increased needs during a stress reaction. Vitamin B5 is essential for the adrenal glands to function normally and it is considered to be the ‘anti-stress vitamin’ because it helps the body cope with stress.
Vitamin C is also key for adrenal gland function but it can quickly become depleted when the stress reaction places increased demands on the glands.

A number of minerals are equally important in anti-stress nutrition. Extra potassium is needed. When extra stress is placed on the body, the increased energy production causes potassium to be excreted but replacing it is important as it plays a role in nerve cell function. Magnesium is needed for efficient nerve transmission but levels can also become depleted during periods of stress. A deficiency can cause fatigue, mental confusion, and insomnia. Calcium is also important in maintaining healthy nerve function and works with magnesium to combat irritability and insomnia.

• B vitamins

Found in liver and brewer’s yeast

• Vitamin B5 – the anti-stress vitamin

Found in mushrooms and avocado

• Vitamin C

Found in blackcurrants, green pepper, mango, and papaya

• Iron

Transports oxygen to the brain and found in liver, wholemeal bread, eggs, and meat

• Magnesium

Found in green leafy vegetables

• Calcium

Found in dairy products and green leafy vegetables

Periods of prolonged stress can lead to the body becoming deficient in the above listed vitamins and minerals so the nervous system begins to function less efficiently. During stress the body also digests and absorbs food less efficiently so it becomes difficult to replace these key anti-stress nutrients. A vicious circle begins: the body needs the nutrients to combat the effects of the stress reaction but the effects of the stress reaction make it difficult for the body to get them!

Not so anti-stress nutrients

When you feel under stress it’s tempting to turn to comforts such as chocolate, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine if you’re a smoker. Unfortunately, they only compound the problem. Alcohol and tobacco will increase adrenal output – already a physical response in the stress reaction – and they can interfere with normal sleep patterns. A lack of sleep will only add to the body’s burden. Caffeine can also disrupt sleep and in some people it can induce irritability, anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not have a ‘calming’ effect on the body and research has shown that individuals with a dependency on alcohol are four times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder than those who don’t.

Tips to help you eat your way to less stress

• Eat lots of fruit and vegetables to boost essential vitamin and mineral levels

• Eat in a relaxed environment to give your body the best chance of digesting and absorbing essential vitamins and minerals

• Avoid junk foods – they use up valuable nutrients to digest empty calories, cause imbalances in blood sugar levels and can result in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and irritability

• Avoid foods that may cause an allergic reaction – they may lead to a stress reaction

• Reduce your caffeine intake – try replacing coffee and tea with herbal and fruit teas

• When under stress, do not drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or take recreational drugs

Finding ways to incorporate anti-stress nutrients into your daily diet is very much a case of personal choice but here’s a sample daily menu created by nutritionist Oona van den Berg for the book Brain Food.

Stress-busting menu for a day

Breakfast:
Molasses with muesli and thick yoghurt
Unsweetened fruit juice
Lunch:
Mango and avocado salad with smoked chicken
Mushroom soup
Walnut and sunflower seed snacks
Dinner:
Griddled liver and bacon with grilled potatoes
Steamed spinach
Poached guava with yoghurt
Snacks:
Fresh fruits, especially papaya
Herbal and fruit teas

Not all stress is a bad thing. In small doses it can tone up the body’s reaction times, increase motivation, and add a bit of excitement to life. It’s the continued exposure to the effects of the stress reaction that can be detrimental to health. Eating well will clearly help your body to cope with the excessive nutritional demands the stress reaction creates but it will also be of great benefit to your body to allow it some ‘time off’ now and again. There are no sabre-toothed tigers chasing you – take a break!

“The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it” – Author Unknown

We breathe in a world of distrust and conflict and we are more likely to expose our children to a future full of stress and negative feelings. As parents and teachers, we have responsibilities to play the perfect role models to our children and teach them how to relieve stress to enable them to be creative, accepting, healthy, and above all, resilient.

Build Self-Esteem

People with greater self-esteem enjoy life more than the others. Self-esteem is a realistic estimate of your own capabilities and worth. If you enjoy better self-esteem, that implies you are more likely to have a positive attitude, you are productive, responsive, imaginative, and attentive to other people’s needs. As parents, we need to encourage our children to develop their natural aptitudes and interests. Knowing their true self-worth will take time, but in the process they’ll learn to be more responsible.

Parents’ Attention and Acceptance

You need to communicate with your children better, and spend more time with them, with your regular, focused, and undivided attention. When your children know and feel your unconditional love around them, they are less likely to feel depressed and stressed.

Creative Thinking

We are shaped by our thoughts. If you give your children a positive environment, they will accept change in a positive way. They will learn that adversities are part and parcel of life and how to handle them; they’ll persist until they are successful, and will become more focused to other people’s needs. Productive thinking can cut down the risk of stress and they will encounter reality with more resilience.  Teach them how to replace negative thinking with creative thinking, and how to create room for self-esteem and coping skills.

Decision-making Strategies

People can make good decisions when they’re able to see alternative solutions to a problem, predict outcomes, view the problem from a neutral perspective and know how to implement alternatives to reach a solution. Children at a young age of four or five can usually generate alternatives and predict outcomes – however, they are still far from advance decision making skills. Give them examples from stories to show how protagonists make decisions.

Stress-busting Skills

You can teach your children breathing exercises, physical relaxation techniques, imagery, and muscle relaxation exercises. Help them identify their stress indicators and responses, and figure out what method will work for them. Let them laugh, read amusing stories, watch cartoons and comedies, and appreciate the humor in them.

Nourishment and Exercise

Sound mind rests in a sound body – take care your children get all the nutrition and exercise. Proper frame of mind and a healthy body triggers self-esteem and resilience. When you make aerobic exercise and recreation a family affair, your children are more likely to take them up and build a lifelong positive habit.

Sense of Commitment

Life becomes more meaningful when you’re committed. Commitment makes your children look for realistic goals. Educate them to be less rigid in how they achieve their goals, and help them learn the goodness of perseverance.

Building Social Skills

To save your children from the negative effects of stress, teach them how to grow in self-esteem and healthy relationships. Help them learn the skills of conflict management and help them grow self-awareness skills.

Persons with more self-control, resilience, positive outlooks towards life, will be able to find meaning in life and emerge true winners. Doesn’t that describe the personality you want your children to grow into?

When you have stress and anger working together, can you think of any greater disaster! Stress and anger are sufficient to get on your nerves and eat up all your positive energy. While you are out to destroy a person and release all your anger on people around you, you are in essence destroying yourself. Anger is a mighty weapon of destruction and it’s beyond any logic. All your positive faculties are destroyed in an instant- and you become an aggressive and hostile individual worked up by rage and wrath. It ebbs within you along with stress and erupts out like a volcano! Can you control such negative emotional impulses that can even overpower a mighty dam!

Think of human civilization, and you picture the ruthless battles, you hear the sounds of the war drums – human history is replete with blood stains and revenges. It is the angry Kings, the angry generals, the angry statesmen and politicians who waged the bloody wars and contrived a destruction plan for humanity. Think closely and you’ll find out that the scariest murders were committed in a fit of rage and stress! If you have stress overpower you, you lose sense of proportion, and your power of reason. You never know, when you can commit an act which you wouldn’t have otherwise committed in a normal state!

Don’t you think we should all give peace a chance? That way we can make this world peaceful and beautiful. When you are surrounded by people who are compassionate and understanding, coping with stress becomes easy. Imagine a stress-free world where you can manage conflicts and crisis more easily and conveniently. No one would like an individual with an angry face, and frayed tempers.  Can you think of marrying an overstressed angry fellow! Even for the boys, would they ever end up marrying an overstressed angry girl? You know the answer – they wouldn’t.

Consider this wise and intelligent way of looking at temper – temper is valuable and don’t lose it so often. Make a poster out of it, and display it in a prominent place in your office or at your home.

Though the implications of stress and anger can be overbearing, managing these negative impulses are not that impossible either. Only thing you will need is the resolve and guts to get rid of such provocative feelings. You have the confidence – you can achieve it.

Place yourself in a comfortable position and peep into your own self. Do some introspection and analyze your personality traits. Then make a list of to do and not to do things. Don’t forget to include the ‘should have done’ and ‘should not have done’ things – that way initiate your war against anger and stress.

Sometimes life seems to overwhelm you with plied up work, annoying children, pending housework, and partner asking for your help. You need a respite. When under stress, you become hostile towards other people as a form of stress-release, or you simply become submissive by hiding the stress.

When you suppress stress, it can blow you from inside. Aggression to people is not a wise thing to do, though you temporarily feel some relief. When reality bites, you feel more stressed from the idea of hurting people around.

Why not learn the ways to relieve stress, so that it doesn’t get the better of you and the people around you! Stress can sometimes be a motivator but it can work against us as well. Let’s mull over these easy and manageable ways to de-stress:

I.    Treat People Appropriately: When people are not responsible for your stress, why get them involved and release your stress on them! Treat your fellows as they deserve to be treated. Not doing so, you build up more stress they will be happy to put back on you. If there’s someone causing you stress, talk to the person explaining how you feel, why you feel that way, and what can be done to change your hard feelings.

II.    Take Responsibility: Responsibility creates more realistic actions and you are less likely to become a victim of others. You begin to control and create your feelings. A responsible person won’t go on blaming others but becomes proactive to control thoughts, feelings, and stresses. You begin self-control, when you assume responsibilities.

III.    Stop Worrying for Future: When you worry too much, you increase the chances of a heart-attack. Being miserable can only ruin relationships around you. The future is not us to see – believe that. Don’t over-anticipate future events and crowd your head with ‘what if’ thoughts.  Stop living in the future; think of today and how you can control things now, at present.

IV.     Self-control: You are the controller of your emotions and when you know to control it better, you can better deal with stress. Self-control makes you more in control of your emotions and actions. However, you’re ability to be in charge of your emotions and actions will depend on the levels of your desire, discipline, and skill sets.

V.    Know Yourself: You need to know that you are stressed and causing pain and discomfort to others. You need to be aware if you are treating a person inappropriately. Figure out the reasons behind your stress and ways to stop the stress.

VI.    Don’t Give up: It is easy to give up when things go wrong. Only thing that can save you from a complete chaos is your zeal to keep going. Don’t stop and give up. If need be, stop, take a pause, think and relax, but don’t lose the perseverance to keep going. If you are going through harrowing times, you cannot get ahead of that if you stop.

VII.    Unwind: You’ll need a ‘get away’ and leave everything behind those are causing you stress. Think of a holiday, if you can’t manage, go for a short walk or work-out. When you’re active you release hormones that counter stress. Distancing yourself from a stressed situation clears your mind and let you contemplate better.

We are allowed the ability to produce stress to complete tasks, or else we would be sitting pretty and be complacent about our lives. With proper stress management tips, you’ll have stress working for you and not you for it.

When you look at the clock, it gives you a time well past midnight. You have been struggling to have sleep since the last two hours and you are still at the square one, you are wide awake. Does that sound alarming! When you push your nerves to the edges of sleep, your mind starts to race, your muscles get tensed. You think you’ll never get any rest. You are suffering from a scary sleep disorder, none other than insomnia. You are not alone; there are million people in the U.S. who struggle to have sleep and end up with stressed feeling and restless tempers.

According to a recent survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, there are more than fifty percent of adults in America who experience insomnia at least a few nights a week. You know the bouts of insomnia gets bigger with age and it affects the sleeping cycle of approximately thirty percent of men and forty percent of women. Don’t just press the alarm yet.

People cannot sleep, because they are too stressed out. Stress is one of the major contributors to all sorts of health hazards, starting from weight gain to heart problems. Stress is almost invincible in today’s fast-moving world. Is there nothing you can do about stress and sleepless nights? There are stress relief techniques using which you can reduce or eliminate stress from your life, minimize the stressful situations and get better sleep cycles.

Consider Strategies to Combat Stress and Regain Sleep -

1)    Make ‘to do’ Lists: You can make an exhaustive list and organize your next day’s activities into three categories: ‘To Call’, ‘To Buy’, and ‘To Do’. Remember to attach specific time schedules to each of these activities. Now you are less likely to mess with the things and won’t wake up to chaos.

2)    Get Away: Before you hit the pillows, think of some get away. Take your time out and listen to your kind of music. If you feel like, read a book, as you drink a cup of herbal tea or warm milk. Interpose your busy and unnerving day and your bedtime with this ‘unwind’ regime.

3)   Relax Your Body. When we are stressed, our muscles get the worst blow, especially those of the neck and lower back. You can do stretching exercises to ease out the muscular tension. When you get into bed, lie flat on your back for a few minutes. Flex your muscles as you work your way up from your toes to your temples. You can even try some sleep aids to help you ease into a deep sleep.