Whether you are someone who finds yourself stressed more times than you can count, or you would consider yourself more easy-going, stress is a part of being human. In fact, stress can even be a good thing, believe it or not. However, stress becomes distress when it crosses into unhealthy levels. In order to use remedies to alleviate it, it is helpful to first understand the biopsychosocial purpose of stress.
The Biology & Purpose of Stress
From a physiological perspective, stress is our body’s intrinsic mechanism in response to a threatening stimulus or environment. Stress is our friend when it sharpens our agility and helps us effectively manage what we perceive as threats. Our ancestors would not have survived the paleolithic period if it weren’t for stress. Stress becomes problematic when our body’s parasympathetic (also known as the rest and digest system) is never activated, because our sympathetic nervous system is constantly in overdrive. Symptoms of stress and anxiety show up in the digestive system, immune system and even the integumentary system (your skin) – not to mention the psychological distortions stress can cause as well.
https://blogs.webmd.com/mental-health/20190219/how-to-harness-your-anxiety
Stress Remedies
It is no question that stress has a deleterious effect on both our physical and psychological health. Here are scientifically-proven stress remedies for when stress and anxiety attack:
1. Diet and Exercise
You don’t need me to tell you that society already shoves dieting and exercise down our throats, but it turns out that it is empirically proven to reduce stress. When stress is registered in the body, it throws the body off its equilibrium by disturbing the balance of neurotransmitters. When you’re stressed, you have an excessive amount of norepinephrine floating around, so endorphins are needed to counteract it. You can release endorphins through exercise and also by eating whole foods that naturally boost your microbiome. Everybody reacts to stress differently, so if you know yourself to be one that stress eats, try eating natural sweets that satisfy those cravings and still release endorphins and dopamine. If you have little to no appetite when stressed, this is because you’re deficient in the hormone ghrelin (which activates hunger) and have an excess of leptin (which suppresses appetite). In this case, exercise can help increase your appetite by stimulating your endocrine system to secrete more ghrelin.
http://tuulia.co/smoothiekulho-ensimmainen-e-kirjani/dsc_0784-2/
2. Make friends with your stress
You’ve probably been warned about the adverse effects of stress on your health and longevity once if not several times before. It is for this reason that stress can easily become augmented realities in our minds. Yet, when we stop perceiving stress to be this big scary monster out to get us, we can learn to manage it more productively. A simple way you can start taking back control of stress is simply by cultivating an attitude of gratitude. Being grateful and appreciative that our bodies are complex and sophisticated enough to be able to have an autonomic nervous system to help us can change our perspective and help us redefine stress. Part of making stress your friend is listening to what it is trying to tell you. Is stress trying to get your attention by keeping you up at night? Do you find yourself procrastinating when stress comes your way? Taking time to acknowledge and honor the presence of stress can make managing stress a collaboration instead of a competition.