Always Stressed?

Here Are 8 Natural

Stress Relievers to Try Now

Stress: We all deal with it, yet we know how much better off we’d be —
both physically and mentally — if we could only get it under control and
nd stress relievers that really work. While stress can be a positive,
motivating factor at times (such as when you’re under pressure to
perform well at work or to ace an important exam), more and more
research shows that chronic stress impacts the body in ways similar to
a poor diet, lack of sleep or sedentary lifestyle.

Would you believe that 75 percent to 90 percent of all doctors of ce

visits are related to conditions caused by stress? (1) How exactly does
stress negatively affect our health in so many ways? It mostly boils
down to changes in our hormones, which then cascade to an increase in
in ammation and various other problems.

Uncontrolled stress experienced over a long period of time is considered

“chronic,” dangerous and capable of increasing someone’s risk for heart
disease, diabetes, weight gain or obesity, mental disorders, autoimmune
diseases, digestive disorders, and even cancer.

Let’s face it, the stress we face today isn’t going anywhere, which is
exactly why it’s more important than ever to nd natural ways to bust
stress that work well for us. If you’re up against large amounts of stress
in your life (and who isn’t?), studies show you can greatly bene t from
carving out more time in your busy schedule for things like regular
exercise, meditation, spending time outdoors and keeping up with fun
hobbies.

We can’t always control sources of stress in our lives, but we change

how we react to them. The good news is this: The human body is
actually designed to experience and handle stress, which is exactly why
our bodies react to it so strongly. With some practice, we have the power
to learn to use certain elements of stress to our advantage (for example,
the fact that stress keeps us more alert and attentive), while better
controlling other negative reactions (like digestion problems or giving in
to cravings for unhealthy foods).

So, what are the best stress relievers available to us, and how can we
ensure we don’t allow stress to control our lives? If you adhere to the
following eight practices, you’re sure to feel less pressure and better
manage your stress on a daily basis.

8 Natural Stress Relievers to Try Now

1. Exercise and Yoga

One of the best stress relievers available to us is exercise, a natural

remedy for anxiety because it releases powerful endorphin chemicals
in the brain, which act like the body’s built-in painkillers and mood-
lifters.

Research suggests the negative effects of stress on the body seem to

be exaggerated in people who are inactive, a phenomenon
called”stress-induced/exercise de cient” phenotype. Because we react
to stress by experiencing changes in our neuro-endocrine systems,
regular exercise is protective because it regulates various metabolic and
psychological processes in the body, including reinforcing our natural
circadian rhythms, sleep/wake cycles, moods and blood sugar levels.

Exercises improves insulin sensitivity, can help someone become more

aware of their hunger levels, improves con dence/self-esteem, and
leads to better mental processing and a lower risk for depression. (2)
Can’t sleep? Well, exercise can help with that too, which is very
important considering quality sleep is needed to regulate hormones and
help the body recover.

Yoga has been shown to have similar bene ts, reinforcing the “mind-
body connection,” improving how people (especially women) feel about
their bodies, helping with sleep and controlling anxiety. A review of over
35 clinical trials that tested the effects of regular yoga on stress levels
and health found that, overall, yoga offers signi cant improvements in
various physical and psychological health markers for the majority of
people. (3)
Looking for an even more impactful way to feel the bene ts of
exercise? Do so while listening to uplifting music. Research  ndings
indicate that music listening positively impacts the psycho-biological
stress system, helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system,
improves recovery time, and has bene ts for hormonal balance and
brain functioning overall. (4)

2. Meditation/Devotional Prayer

Meditation and healing prayer are both proven stress relievers that
help people deal with worry, anxiety and nding peace of mind. Best of
all, they can both be practiced conveniently anytime of day, in your own
home and with no therapist, practitioner or program needed, making
them a no-brainer.

Meditation and prayer have been used for literally thousands of years to
improve well-being and connection to others, but today they’re actually
backed up by science as well. Breathing exer

Natural stress relief meditation and mindfulness-based stress

reduction are types of simple mental techniques that are practiced for
as little as 10–15 minutes once or twice a day in order to bring about
more “mindfulness” and reduce stress or anxiety. (5, 6)

Various other forms of meditation have been shown to lower

physiological responses to stress, improve mental alertness, and help
people overcome various emotional and physical problems, such
as: anxiety, depression, poor mental health that affects quality of life,
attention problems, substance use, eating habits, sleep, pain and weight
gain. (7)

3.  Acupuncture

Acupuncture has increasingly been used to treat many stress-related

conditions, including psychiatric disorders, autoimmune or
immunological-related diseases, infertility, anxiety, and depression.
Researchers have found that acupunture treatments result in changes in
the cardiovascular and immune systems, increasing protective T-cell
proliferation and helping with cellular immuno-responses. (8)

Studies have shown that acupuncture is one of the best stress relievers
for patients recovering from heart disease because it helps regulate the
nervous system, therefore having positive effects on blood pressure
levels, circulation, hormones and other factors. (9)

4. A Nutrient-Dense Diet

A steady supply of nutrients like essential vitamins, trace minerals,

healthy fats, electrolytes, amino acids and antioxidants all help your
brain handle stress better, therefore bene ting your entire body.

Some of the best foods for natural stress relief include:

Foods high in B vitamins (which the body uses to convert nutrients

to energy) — raw or cultured dairy products, cage-free eggs, grass-
fed beef, wild-caught sh, poultry, brewer’s yeast and green leafy
vegetables.
Foods high in calcium and magnesium — as relaxing minerals
and electrolytes, calcium and magnesium are important for relaxing
muscles, relieving headaches and helping you sleep. Try
unsweetened organic yogurt, wild-caught salmon, beans/legumes,
leafy green veggies, cruciferous veggies like broccoli, avocados and
nuts.
High protein foods — foods with protein provide amino acids
that are needed for proper neurotransmitter functions.
Healthy fats and omega-3 fatty acids — cold-water, wild-caught
sh like salmon or sardines can reduce in ammation and help
stabilize moods, plus omega-3s are great for the brain, development
and heart health. Other healthy fats that support brain health
include nuts/seeds, avocado, olive oil and coconut oil.
On the other hand, foods to avoid in order to keep stress levels down
include:

Packaged or sugary foods — processed, re ned foods or those with

added sugar can give you blood sugar highs and lows throughout
the day, increasing anxiety and causing cravings and fatigue.
Too much alcohol or caffeine — both alcohol and caffeine can
cause or worsen anxiety, make you dehydrated, interfere with sleep
leaving you tired, and make you unable to cope with stress well.
Re ned vegetable oils — imbalances in polyunaturated fatty acids,
meaning getting much more omega-6s than omega-3s from your
diet, are tied to metabolic damage, in ammation and even poor gut
health, which can affect mental processes.

 
 

5. Challenging Your Thoughts with “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of therapeutic practice

that has been proven to lower anxiety, stress and multiple disorders —
including addiction, eating disorders, insomnia and depression. Knowing
that at least 50 percent of the time experiencing a mental disorder is
due mostly to chronic, untreated stress reactions, therapists use CBT to
train all types of people to better react to situations that are stressful.

CBT focuses on challenging and changing your thoughts rst and

foremost, since the way you perceive an event (not the actual event
itself) means everything in terms of how your body reacts. (10) Once
you can identify the root thought pattern that is causing harmful
behaviors, you can work on changing how you think about events and
therefore react to them.

The idea behind CBT is this: If you can reframe the way you think about
events in your life — for example, instead of panicking over a job change
you choose to embrace it, prepare as best you can and seize the
opportunity to start fresh — you can literally reduce the stress you wind
up feeling from the event. CBT is useful for training us to avoid internal
causes of stress, such as “all-or-nothing” thinking, jumping to
conclusions, pessimism, having unrealistic expectations for ourselves,
always expecting the worst-case scenario, and feeling guilt or shame
over events that are out of our control. (11)

6. Spending More Time in Nature and Being Social

Making time for connecting with the people around you, spending time
outside and doing things you love with family, friends and your spouse
are all stress relievers that are good for your health in many ways. Social
connection is tied to longevity, since it helps people feel like they’re a
part of something larger than themselves and helps give them
perspective. Being outdoors has some similar effects, reminding people
that they’re one piece of a much larger universe, lifting their moods and
making it easier to get good sleep. (12)

7. Keeping a Journal

Keeping track of your emotions, both positive and negative, along with
the events that can trigger them helps you identify what’s causing stress.
A journal is an easy, effective way to monitor your state of mind
throughout the day, focus on thoughts that cause you harm and gure
out what’s really bothering you when you’re unsure.

A journal can also reduce stress by helping you to stay organized, such
as listing out appointments, household responsibilities, job assignments
or other tasks so you’re less frantic and likely to miss important
deadlines.

8. Using Adaptogen Herbs and Essential Oils

Several adaptogenic herbs and essential oils have been shown to

improve anxiety symptoms by reducing the effects that stress and
cortisol have on the body. Adaptogens (including ginseng,
ashwagandga, maca, rhodiola, holy basil and cocoa) are a unique class
of healing plants that balance, restore and protect the body and make it
easier to handle stress by regulating hormones and physiological
functions.

Essential oils such as lavender, myrrh, frankincense and bergamot are

also capable of reducing in ammation, improving immunity, balancing
hormones, and helping with sleep and digestion. (13)

Bonus: Breathing Exercises

Slow, deep breathing and speci c breathing exercises helps the body

override the sympathetic system, which controls our ght-or- ight
response, and lets the parasympathetic system — which controls our
ability to relax — play a more dominant role. (13b)

The Impact of Stress on Your Health

Stress can be de ned as “the body’s reaction to any change that

requires an adjustment or response.” While feeling stressed has certain
protective roles, too much stress can also do scary things to our health.
(14)

What are some common experiences or thought patterns that can

cause the body to feel stress, including some that you might never have
associated with stress before? Things like nancial pressure, a lack of
sleep, emotional problems in your relationships, overtraining or doing
too much exercise, and even dieting can all send signals to the body
that it’s under stress.
Stress can either be perceived as feeling good/positive or bad/negative
depending on the context, and the body reacts differently to both kinds.
However, where the body isn’t so clever is distinguishing between very
serious threats (like being robbed or starved) and events that are
stressful but not actually life-threatening. Unfortunately, whether a
problem is very serious or not, the body usually has no way of knowing
the difference− — anything that causes you to worry, anticipate, regret,
overthink or panic can send your stress levels through the roof.

Stress can result from changes in your lifestyle (like your diet, exercise
routine or a lack of sleep), your environment (a new job or a move) or
even simply recurring negative thoughts. (15)

In many ways, stress, even the “good kind of stress,” has an immediate
and noticeable effect on the body. For example, have you ever noticed
you lose your appetite when you’re anxious or excited, your palms sweat
when you’re nervous, or you can’t seem to sleep the night before a big
meeting at work or a date you care a lot about?

But below the surface, stress also manifests in the body in multiple ways
you can’t always feel: increasing levels of “stress hormones” like cortisol,
causing blood sugar levels to rise, altering your appetite, getting in the
way of normal digestion by changing the gut environment, and affecting
the way our thyroid glands and hormones works.

Dozens of studies have shown that chronic stress is related to health

conditions and stress symptoms, including:

tension headache
fatigue (including chronic or adrenal fatigue)
high blood pressure
heart disease
obesity
diabetes
acne and other skin conditions
allergies and asthma
 arthritis
depression and anxiety
infertility
autoimmune disorders
sleep disorders
eating disorders
addiction

One of the most well-known effects of stress is that it increases cortisol

levels. Not surprisingly, the brain is the central player in terms feeling
stress inside in the body. The brain rst processes your thought patterns
and then changes messages sent to various hormonal glands, the heart,
the gut and elsewhere. (16)

The brain (speci cally the hippocampus) determines which feelings or

events in your life are threatening, possibly helpful or damaging, and
then sends signals to the cardiovascular, immune, and digestive
systems via neural and endocrine mechanisms.

Cortisol is the principle hormone (although not the only hormone) tied
to our innate “ ight-or- ght” response, which is how the body reacts to
acute stress by either helping us run from the situation or stick around
and ght our way through. When short spikes in cortisol/adrenaline
happen over and over again nearly every day, they cause wear and tear
on the body and speed up the aging process.

So should the goal be to avoid any and all sorts of stress? Of course not
— remember that some types of stress are useful and considered
“adaptive,” while others are “maladaptive.”

For example, exercise and perusing a goal very ambitiously are both
types of stress, except they ultimately bene t the body. Areas of the
brain, including the hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex can
pick up on positive stressful experiences and cause “stress-induced
structural remodeling” of the brain, which means you experience
alterations in behavioral and physiological responses to these positive
events. The result is that in the future you’re better able to handle similar
situations because you learn from them, associate them with a reward
and stop perceiving them as threatening.

 
 

Takeaways on Stress Relievers and Stress Relief

Stress is an unavoidable part of life. Everyone deals with it, and certain
types of stress are even good for your health. However, chronic, negative
stress than really impair your physical and mental well-being.

That’s why it’s so important to nd the proper stress relievers to maintain

a strong quality of life. The eight stress relievers above — exercise and
yoga, meditation/healing prayer, acupuncture, a nutrient-dense diet,
cognitive behavioral therapy, spending more time in nature and being
social, keeping a journal and using adaptogen herbs and essential oils
— can help you maintain a good mood, remain calm and better handle
your day-to-day stress.

And when you do that, you’re entire body, along with you mind, bene ts,
leading you to an even better, more well-rounded life.

Read Next: 10 Ways Chronic Stress is Killing Your Quality

of Life