Reduce Stress, Develop Greater Resilience
Among the Key factors contributing to poor health and early death, stress is perhaps the most destructive.
In early times, the stress response was a lifesaving biological function, enabling humans to run from predators or take down prey.
Today, the same lifesaving reaction comes on to cope with fear of public speaking, difficult bosses and traffic jams.
The vast number of stress-inducing situations that face people on a daily basis now can make it difficult to turn the stress response off.
As a result, many people are living with corrosive stress hormones around the 24/7, and this can have serious consequences, from adding belly fat to elevating blood pressure and triggering a heart attack.
This means when we experience acute stress, real or imagined, the body releases stress hormones that prepare your body to either fight or flee the stressful event.
Heart rate increases, lungs take in more oxygen, blood flow increases, and parts of the immune system are temporarily suppressed, which reduces your inflammatory response to pathogens and other foreign invaders.
When stress becomes chronic, the immune system becomes increasingly desensitized to cortisol, and since inflammation is partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation to get out of control.
Inflammation is a hallmark of most diseases, from diabetes to heart disease, and cancer.
Elevated cortisol levels also affect your memory by causing a gradual loss of synapses in your prefrontal cortex.
Stress may even trigger the onset of dementia.
In one study, 72% Alzheimer’s patients had experienced severe emotional stress during the 2 years preceding their diagnosis.
Stress is an inescapable part of our lives, but it is important to understand that it is how we deal with it that will determine whether it will translate into health problems later on.
As noted in a recent article about stress in The New York Times, the stress reaction should dissipate as quickly as possible after the perceived danger has passed.
The scientific term for this is resilience: “the ability of your body to rapidly return to normal, both physically and emotionally, after a stressful event.”
Some people are naturally more resilient than others, and researchers have long questioned the reasons.
One speculation is that people who are more resilient have learned to listen to their body.
In one experiment, elite adventure athletes and Special Forces soldiers were placed in a brain scanning machine while wearing a face mask that made it difficult to breathe once the researcher pressed a button.
What they discovered was that these people were able to closely monitor the signals from their body indicating rising panic, and suppress their physical response. They were acutely aware of their biological stress response, but did not overreact.
The same test was later administered on “Normal” people, who had 1st completed a questionnaire to gauge their self-perceived resilience. Those whose scores suggested high resilience had brain activity very similar to the former group; the soldiers and elite athletes.
Those with low resilience scores reacted in the converse way.
As reported by The New York Times: “As their face masks threatened to close, they displayed surprisingly little activity in those portions of the brain that monitor signals from the body. And then, when breathing did grow difficult, they showed high activation in parts of the brain that increase physiological arousal.
In effect, they paid little attention to what was happening inside their bodies as they waited for breathing to become difficult — and then overreacted when the threat occurred.
Such brain responses would undermine resilience, the scientists concluded, by making it more difficult for the body to return to a calm state … Improving internal communications with our bodies may be as simple as spending a few minutes each day in focused breathing, Dr. Haase said.
Quietly pay attention to inhaling and exhaling without otherwise reacting, she said. Over time, this exercise should ‘teach you to have a change in breathing when anxious but be less attached to that reaction,’ Dr. Haase said, ‘which may help to improve your reaction in a stressful situation.’”
All breathing techniques can help us get in touch with our body and soothe our mind.
Below is the is the 4-7-8 breathing exercise taught by Dr. Andrew Weil who recommends using it “whenever anything upsetting happens — before you react,” and “whenever you are aware of internal tension.”
The Key to this exercise is to remember the numbers 4, 7 and 8. It is not important to focus on how much time you spend in each phase of the breathing activity, but rather that you get the ratio correct.
If you commit to it, I believe you will be surprised by how quickly and easily it can center and relax you.
This is how it is done, as follows:
- Sit up straight and place the tip of your tongue up against the back of your front teeth. Keep it there through the entire breathing process
- Breathe in silently through your nose to the Count of 4
- Hold your breath to the Count of 7
- Exhale through your mouth to the Count of 8, making an audible sound. That completes 1 full breath
- Repeat the cycle another 3 times, for a total of 4 breaths, then over a month work your way up to a total of 8 breaths per session.
- Stress begone…
Stress is widespread in today’s modern world, but suffering ill effects from stress is not inevitable
A lot depends on how we respond to day-to-day stresses. Learn to effectively decrease the stress level, and health improves with it.
There are many different stress reduction techniques.
The Key is to find out what works best, and stick to a daily stress-reduction program.
A Key strategy is getting adequate sleep, as sleep deprivation dramatically impairs the body’s ability to handle stress and is yet another risk factor for heart attack.
Some other stress management approaches are, as follows:
- Regular physical activity
- Meditation: Taking even 10 mins to sit quietly, such as during work breaks, can help decrease feelings of stress and anxiety
- Mindfulness training
- Yoga: Health benefits from regular yoga practice have been shown to decrease stress, improve sleep and immune function, and reduce food cravings
- Social connectedness
- Laughter and Levity
- Spend time in nature
- Music
- Aromatherapy
Have a happy day today and everyday.
Eat healthy, Be healthy, Live lively.
HeffX-LTN
Paul Ebeling
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