Stress! That one simple word conjures up an incredible emotional reaction in people. An incredible negative emotional reaction, that is. While stress can occur from a physical threat to life, far more stress occurs normally due to family, friends, job and relationship events or simply from worrisome thoughts. During physical danger, your body uses the "fight or flight" response to its benefit, but during mental triggers when the released hormones and chemistry is not used for a useful purpose, they create tension in the walls of the arteries and begin a number of serious disease processes. Perhaps worse, they accelerate aging.
Managing stress is a personal matter, but fundamentally it involves balance; a balance between friends, work and self. When any one of these areas begin to dwarf the others then mental stress triggers are more likely to happen.
Here are three good ways to manage stress:
1. Exercise. Exercise is a great way to lessen the likelihood of stressful triggers occurring and also eliminate some of the destructive chemical components of stress. When you exercise you put time into yourself and you might even enjoy exercise as part of a larger group or community of people. This helps provide important balance to your life. Further, since exercise is a physical response, you get to “use” the chemicals that occur after the mental trigger event, thereby lessening the physical impact they have on you.
2. Relaxation Techniques. There are a variety of simple relaxation techniques including progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, meditation, even prayer. These help create balance in the body also. Research these techniques on the internet and choose one that is best for you. The key is to be consistent as consistency matters in using stress management tools.
3. GABA. Gamma Amino Butyric Acid is a natural amino acid based compound that acts as an important neurotransmitter in the brain. Taken before bed GABA helps promote deep, relaxing sleep and taken during the day acts as an effective calming agent.
Whatever you decide to do to help manage stress, you need to realize that having a positive outlook or mind set is very important. There is a huge body of research demonstrating that people with happy, positive attitudes get ill less often, recover faster, age more slowly and live longer than do people with negative mental attitudes.
As important as choosing the right stress management technique is, it is equally important not to take short cuts and choose stress management routes which add to the destructive component of stress. Here are some of the improper stress management techniques that you should avoid.
Pharmaceutical Drugs. There are millions of people taking drugs such as the Benzodiazepines. While these may be helpful in the very short term for managing seriously acute stress episodes, using them for extended periods to alleviate anxiety is a prescription for biochemical disaster. Pharmaceutical drugs come with a host of negatives and should not be the first line of defense against stress. When evaluating drug options, you might also want to consider the natural alternative GABA which when taken during the day in 500 mg. to 1 gram doses can act as a mild sedative.
Recreational Drugs. Even worse, many people try recreational drugs such as cocaine to limit their stress. While cocaine might make you feel a bit less stressed temporarily since it affects dopamine levels, over time, you need more and more of the drug to get the same reaction. And along with drug use, comes a variety of very negative physiological and psychological effects.
Alcohol. Alcohol is widely used as a stress deterrent. A small amount of alcohol may actually be beneficial to a person’s health but few people can consume alcohol in small amounts. Alcohol use leads to alcohol abuse and an incredible number of physical and mental problems.
Nicotine. Many people enjoy smoking, believing that nicotine helps them to sharpen a bit mentally and help create a calm, relaxed feeling and attitude. Since cigarette smoke contains an uncountable number of harmful chemicals and is directly responsible for 450,000 deaths a year, obviously, the harm here greatly outweighs the benefits.
Avoid all these negative stress coping mechanisms. They can only lead to harm.
