We’ve all felt the crippling burden of stress at some point. However, if it’s becoming a constant companion then you may be suffering more than you realise. Dealing with stress isn’t fun, especially when it starts affecting your overall health. When you let your stress get the best of you, you put yourself at risk of developing a range of illnesses – from the common cold to severe heart disease.
Stress isn’t just in your head. Your body interprets this naturally occurring reaction as a threat. So it responds accordingly. Your blood vessels constrict. Along with your blood pressure. You breathe faster. Your bloodstream is flooded with hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Chronic stress negatively affects all your bodily functions and can cause serious illnesses. Such as obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma. The most common effects of stress, are headaches, back and shoulder pain and body aches. When you feel stressed your muscles tense up to protect themselves from injury.
Asthma
When you’re stressed, you breathe faster in an effort to distribute oxygen and blood quickly to your body core. If you have pre-existing respiratory problems like asthma, stress can make it harder to breathe. When you can’t breathe you, naturally, get scared and panicked, which only makes the situation even worse.
Diabetes
There have been vast improvements made in treatments so that diabetics can lead a fairly normal life. There are plenty of sugar-free recipes are available online. Diabetics can order metformin from an online doctor and get any other medications they require. There’s plenty of advice for dealing with blood glucose problems. However, stress might as well be a whole other condition.
You need to find ways to deal with it or your diabetes could worsen. Not only does stress seem to directly raise the glucose levels of people with type 2 diabetes, you’re more likely to indulge in bad behaviours, such as excessive drinking or unhealthy eating, to cope with the pressure.
Obesity
Stress affects obesity in two ways; first, people tend to cope with their high levels of pressure by eating unhealthy food in excessive amounts. Secondly, stress triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which helps cause higher insulin levels, your blood sugar drops and you crave sugary, fatty foods.
Depression & Anxiety
Obviously, most of our stress comes from situations that we find difficult to deal with, such as pressure at work or problems at home. Therefore, it’s probably no surprise that chronic stress is connected with higher rates of depression and anxiety.
The first signs that stress is affecting your mood is an increase in irritability, sleep disruption and cognitive changes such as impaired concentration. Eventually, these symptoms will affect relationships, physical and mental health, and performance at work. Ultimately, stress is a health hazard that you must take steps to reduce, if not eliminate entirely.
How to deal with stress…
Meditation
Life is hectic and overwhelming, which is why so many people suffer from stress. But letting yourself get seriously ill clearly isn’t doing you any good, so you need to change the way you react to stressful situation. One of the most effective and rewarding techniques is meditation, which encourages you to relax your mind and examine your inner self with a sense of honesty and compassion, rather than judgment and criticism.
Meditation encourages you to concentrate on your breathing and to stay present in the moment. Don’t worry about the things you still have to do. Don’t focus on the past or the future. Just sit quietly, breathing deeply, and feel the air moving in and out of your lungs.
The practice of meditation will, in time, boost your overall happiness, decrease stress, ease your anxieties, and lower your blood pressure. You don’t need to do more than 15 minutes a day to reap the full benefits. You could even do this just before going to bed, so you can drift off into peaceful sleep.
Being Organised
Some thing so simple as having an organised life can make a huge difference when it comes to being able to reduce your stress levels. If you’re one of these people always on the go, never really feeling in control, try stopping for a second. Get yourself organised and see how much better you feel. Write lists of the things you have to do, in priority of their importance or urgency. This way you can tick them off as you go. For me, being able to tick something off my to do list feels amazing!
Being organised doesn’t just mean being mentally organised though. Having your home in order will also help you to feel more in control. Put things away after you have used them, do the washing up as you go so you don’t have a tonne of it to do after dinner…etc. Eve things like your paper work – bank statements, car insurance, utility bills..etc, make sure these are put away in their correct places so when you come to need them again in a years time, you can find them easily without having that last minute panic!
Exercise
When you’re stressed, your body releases cortisol and adrenaline, which are essentially preparing your body to fight a perceived threat, or run away from it. You may know this as Fight or Flight. You can’t rewrite your biology, so the best way to reduce stress is to give in to your basic instincts. Exercise fits the requirements of Fight or Flight.
Engaging in regular moderate exercise such as walking, yoga or swimming has proven stress-reducing benefits. Exercise releases positive stress-busting endorphins and can increase self-confidence and lower the symptoms associated with anxiety and depression. Try to incorporate some physical activity into your daily routine on a regular basis, either before or after work, or at lunchtime. Regular physical activity will also improve the quality of your sleep.
Sleep
After reading the many ways stress affects your body, you might have a better idea of how exhausted it must be from trying to fight off a perceived threat. Without sleep, your body has no way of dealing with the thoughts that keep whirling through our heads, so it’s an endless cycle of stress and suffering. Although meditation and exercise should be helping you to sleep better, you can take further steps to ensure you’re in the perfect sleeping environment. Clear your room of any distracting clutter, make sure it’s completely dark and at the perfect temperature, and make sure you turn off all electronic devices.
Talk To Someone
A problem shared is a problem halved, or so the saying goes. Reaching out to your friends and family can do wonders for relieving your stress. Not only is it good to remove yourself from the situation for a while, but they might be able to give you a solution to your problems. Even if they don’t have any useful advice, just the feeling of being with people who love and support you can calm your nerves and reduce some of your symptoms.
Collaborative Post
Leave a Reply