How can you reduce stress?

In today's fast-paced world, stress is becoming more common, with 74% of adults feeling so stressed they feel overwhelmed or unable to cope. Undoubtedly, this number is enormous and needs a discussion.

But before you learn how you can reduce stress, you need to find the route cause. To make this easier, you need to know how stress is generated in our bodies.

When we're stressed, our bodies go into "Fight-or-Flight" mode. This means when you feel threatened, your nervous system releases a ton of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, making us take emergency action. In this state, your heart beats faster, blood pressure rises, muscles tighten, and you become sharper.

Sometimes stress can be good because it can quickly get you out of a dangerous situation. However, long-term stress can cause significant problems in all major parts of our body, including:

• Musculoskeletal system - If muscles are always tight from stress, it can cause tension headaches like migraines, etc.

• Respiratory system - Can make breathing even harder for those with asthma or emphysema.

• Cardiovascular system - Your heart rate can increase, enhancing the chances of heart attacks, strokes, etc.

• Endocrine system - Reduces the reabsorption rate of blood sugar, increasing the possibilities of type 2 diabetes.

• Gastrointestinal system - This can lead to chronic pain and changes in your eating habits, which can develop gastrointestinal-related issues like acid reflux.

Despite a considerable percentage of adults having stress, it can cause serious health problems.

We want to help. Now that you know how stress is caused let's dive into some methods to reduce this health risk.

5 Ways to reduce stress

Feel stressed? Don't worry, it's normal. However, only if it's in small quantities. As we now know, stress can cause serious health implications that we want to avoid. To learn the top 5 ways to reduce stress, see below:

1. Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present. For instance, knowing where we are and what we're doing without becoming overwhelmed.

One of the most popular ways to practice mindfulness is through meditation, which is a habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect thoughts. Doing this will allow you to increase the awareness of yourself and your surroundings, which are normally two factors that develop stress.

There are many different ways to practice mindfulness, and meditation can help reduce stress, such as:

  • Improves sleep - Most people have insomnia nowadays and struggle to sleep. Although the reasons can vary, people commonly sleep poorly because of runaway thoughts. This study showcased that mindfulness-based meditation programs can reduce this significantly, allowing you to control your thoughts better.
  • Lower blood pressure - Another study also included it reduces blood pressure. This is huge because high blood pressure can lead to atherosclerosis, heart attacks, or strokes.
  • Decrease cortisol levels - When we're stressed, we release cortisol and inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. However, reduce cortisol levels, you reduce the production of cytokine. You can reduce this considerably by meditating, which is showcased in this study.

Practising mindfulness can offer significant benefits. However, there are more ways to reduce stress, including:

2. Physical exercise

Another long-established way to reduce stress is with physical exercise. Getting healthier through exercise can reduce fatigue, enhance cognitive function, and improve concentration.

When stress affects our brain, there are many nerve connections that impact our entire body. Therefore, it's common for people to say, "healthy body, healthy mind".

Unsurprisingly, this is true. Physical exercise produces endorphins, which are chemicals in the brain that act like natural painkillers. With this higher production of endorphins, you'll experience less pain or discomfort, better mood, higher self-esteem, and increased pleasure.

3. Healthy diet

Stress affects the body by releasing hormones from your adrenal glands (adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol). Over time, these can get overworked and find it challenging to produce the right amount of these hormones.

One way to control this and manage the physiological changes caused by stress is by eating a well- balanced, healthy diet. Blood sugar levels heavily influence the adrenal glands. As a result, you'll want to follow dietary advice that stabilises levels of sugar in the blood.

As a very basic outline, below are some tips to help with this:

  • Choose whole, natural foods
  • Start the day with a balanced breakfast
  • Prioritise protein (roughly 0.7 - 1.8 per kg of body weight)
  • Never skip large meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner)
  • Avoid highly refined foods
  • Stop emotional eating
  • Watch out for caffeine consumption

Becoming conscious of how stress is caused regarding diet and acting on it can help lower its adverse effects. Memorise the above and start implementing it into your daily life.

4. Lifestyle changes

In many instances, people experiencing chronic stress have a much higher chance of developing poor lifestyle habits like a substance use disorder.

The most common three are alcohol, marijuana, and smoking:

  • Alcohol - Despite the anecdotal suggestion that drinking can help somebody unwind, consuming alcohol to cope with stress is ineffective. When paired with the physical side effects of alcohol, it's amplified.

  • Marijuana - When the effects of marijuana become less apparent, a rebound effect of increased anxiety is common, which increases stress tenfold.

  • Smoking - Although nicotine can feel like a stress reliever, it isn't. You quickly become dependent on this, resulting in it becoming a need and stress multiplier.

If you're feeling stressed, eliminating these three factors from your life can have a positive result.

5. Supplements

While there are many ways to reduce stress, another common method is consuming supplements and vitamins that target our bodies' vital "feel good" reactions.

We understood the power of supplements, so we created the first ever all-in-one stress & mild anxiety support supplement in the UK. With help from nutritionists and medical professionals, we manage to optimise this supplement to help reduce stress and make people feel good.

To make this work, we combined top-rated herbs and natural supplements in five daily capsules that aim to help with stress. By consuming these daily, you can help circulate these nutrients and quickly lower stress levels.

To find out more, check out our Stress Support Formula or our Probiotic Blend that's proven to help with the Gut-Brain connection.

Summary

Now you understand how stress is caused; it's easier to know the ways to reduce it. By implementing the above into your daily life, it's possible to lower stress symptoms and improve your well-being significantly.

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