Put an End to Stress With These Simple Steps

By Lauren S Johnson

Stress can play a major role in our lives. People who suffer from tension and anxiety often have a difficult time completing the simplest tasks and leading a healthy lifestyle. Stress can decrease your appetite, disrupt your sleep, and increase your risk for various diseases. In this article I will list several tips which can help you put an end to stress once and for all.

1. Listen to soothing music. Music with a slow beat causes your brain waves to slow down and follow the melody.
2. Have something to look forward. Do you remember when you were young and the about a month before Christmas you couldn't think of anything else? That type of a mental state allows you to escape your troubles. You need to plan a shopping trip or a weekend getaway. Something that will keep your thoughts away from stress. Even the anticipation of a weekly TV show can help!
3. Exercise more. Thirty minutes of aerobic activity can release chemicals that help blunt your body's anxiety response for up to a full day. So be sure to make time for at least 30 minutes of aerobics each morning.
4. Talk to a friend. Calling a loved one or a friend is a great way to release some of the tension. Simply talking about your problems will make them appear fixable. Even the knowledge that someone out there care about you will reduce the burden of stress.

These four tips will help you get rid of stress once and for all. Ignoring the problem can lead to weight gain and various diseases. When dealing with stress induced weight gain people have found help from all natural diet pills and all natural sleep aids. So whether you want to lose weight or reduce the tension in your life, remember that there is always a safe solution.

Lauren S. Johnson writes health articles about fitness and nutrition.
Some of her favorite passions include studying the medicinal benefits of herbal remedies, diet pills.

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Is Stress Causing You to Comfort Eat?

By Maryon Stewart

Do you ever pace around and find yourself eating more chocolate, snacks or generally grazing as a comfort while distracted by your life stresses? It happens to all of us.

When stress becomes distressful we often lose our resolve to eat healthily, find it hard to love ourselves and that's when the rot sets in.

Up to a point, stress can actually be healthy, in that it keeps us alert and ready to face the day ahead. However, there is a fine line between stress and distress. Professor Hans Selye, the founder of modern research into stress, described it as "the rate of wear and tear on the body."

Good Stress VS Bad Stress

Selye distinguishes between good and bad stress. Good stress can be reasonably healthy as it stretches us to capacity and keeps us on our toes. However, when we reach the point of overload, stress has an adverse effect, leaving many of us feeling overwhelmed and under par.

We all have different ways of dealing with stress, and while some of us take it in our stride, others use methods of coping that can result in undesirable symptoms. Weight gain, as a result of comfort eating, or bingeing, is a classic side-effect of the "too much on my plate syndrome."

If you are experiencing emotional problems, strained family relationships, fitful sleep, irritability and notice that you are grazing on junk food instead of eating proper meals, it's probably time for a stress check to ensure you're keeping the balance between good and bad stress.

If the scales lean towards the bad, it's time to set in place a protective plan so your body is in the best possible state to stand up to stress and without it causing you to gain weight rather than lose it.

Three Steps To A Stress Protection Plan

Step 1: Eat Well. Stress is a common cause of digestive upsets such as indigestion, bloating, IBS and heartburn. While some people eat less when stressed, many more comfort eat and gradually gain weight as a result.

Stress hormones can also dry up saliva, making swallowing difficult. A healthy, balanced diet will provide the necessary fuel you need to see you through the most difficult times. Some tips to consider:

* Consume nutritious food in little amounts (and often) to keep blood sugar levels constant. Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, with a wholesome mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack.
* Eat fresh, home-cooked foods wherever possible.
* Eat foods that are naturally sweet: dried fruit, fresh fruit, nuts and seeds, rather than foods with added sugar.
* Relax while you are eating and enjoy your food. Bolting food down or eating on the run can result in you swallowing too much air, which can lead to bloating.
* Cut down on tea and coffee. Try caffeine-free Redbush tea or coffee substitutes instead, or herbal teas.

Step 2: Sleep Well

While asleep your body gets into cell repair and rejuvenation, so a good night's sleep is essential to wake up ready to face the day ahead. If you can't sleep or feel sleepy all the time, chances are you're suffering from stress overload. Waking up in the middle of the night and fitful dreams are other common signs.


* Try to get at least 8 hours sleep a night and if your sleep is stress-disturbed, take some valerian, a natural relaxation herb.
* Establish a regular sleep pattern: go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
* Avoid eating and exercising too close to bedtime.
* Take a short power nap after lunch to recharge your batteries.

Step 3: Make Time for Yourself

Making time for yourself is essential, especially if your life is busy and full. The ability to 'switch off' and refresh is the key to well-being, but it's not always as easy as it sounds. If you're preoccupied and tense, it can be hard to see the benefits of taking time out.

Being able to relax thoroughly is an acquired skill, which for some of us takes a little practice. But all that is required is 15-20 minutes a day, and a comfortable space in which to spend that time.

Relaxation is becoming more important as many of us continue to live life in the fast lane. The Pzizz machine is a portable unit that provides a relaxation program of music and sound effects tailored to your preferences. Meditation CDs work equally well. Once you've learned the art of relaxation you can practise it at any time, and, best of all, it is free.

In addition you might like to try a more formal method of relaxation such as yoga, meditation or the martial art Tai Chi. All of these can be very calming, so it's just a question of which method suits you the best.

Other top stress-busters:

* Tell your family how you feel and ask for their support.
* If your stress comes from work, discuss with colleagues how you can make changes, or if you are self-employed you will need to re-evaluate.
* Try to get away; even only for a few days.
* Learn not to take on too much.
* Prioritise your responsibilities and see if you can offload or delegate some of the less important tasks.
* Make sure you are getting enough magnesium. Good sources include fruit and dark green leafy vegetables.
* Avoid caffeine in the form of tea, coffee, chocolate and cola as it acts as a stimulant.
* Keep your alcohol consumption to a minimum as it can also act as a stimulant and disturb your sleep.
* Ask your partner or close friend to give you a massage.
* Watch an entertaining film or read a good book.
* Make sure you find things to laugh about.
* Make a point of singing in the bath!

Nurturing yourself when the going gets tough will increase your well being as well as help you to cope with stressful situations. It will also lessen the chances of you dipping into the cookie jar or running out to the late night garage to get yourself a sweet fix.

About the Author

Maryon Stewart is well known in both the UK and Australia as a pioneer in the field on non-drug medicine. She is the author of 25 best selling self-help books and founder of the Natural Health Advisory Service, an advisory clinic created to help people deal with health, nutrition and aging issues naturally. Visit: http://www.helpmeloseweightforgood.com

Is stress causing you to comfort eat? Become empowered and learn how to live an active life with healthy foods that won't leave you feeling that you are greedy and weak willed. Visit http://www.helpmeloseweightforgood.com for diet tips, recipes, a 5 step plan for weight loss and a copy of The Real Life Diet by Maryon Stewart of the Natural Health Advisory Service.

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Laugh It OFF

If you read your medical magazines now a day’s all you read about is stress. Stress has taken a big part in today’s life, and although we all tell our self we do not have any stress in truth we know that this is not true. We as adults worry about or jobs, cars, children, bills, and even what our neighbors are doing this weekend. Every time you drive down the highway or through town the stress just starts building because of the traffic. So stress is just about every were we go now days. But what can we do personely to reduce stress. I say take a drive on a country road, you would not believe how much stress is relieved when you just get out in the country and start driving. There are very few cars on the road and the ones that are out there you just seem not to care about. Why because you are not going anyplace we are just riding around seeing the sites. Our just take a few minutes with your family ever evening and tell a few jokes. This is another good stress reducer. Doctors, Psychologist, and Therapists are finding out that laughter is the best medicine. That’s right take a few minutes every day and just laugh off what is stressing you out. Most people now a day’s don’t take anytime out to just laugh. Don’t think about how much of a pain your boss is being, just listen to what he/she says, agree with him/her, walk back to your work station and have a little laugh and get back to work. Take the time and look at your next light bill, say yea right why am I paying this much, Look at your family and say Ok we are going to have to cut back on the light usage, and then laugh about it. Of course you’re going to have to do what your boss is telling you to do, and you’re going to have to pay that light bill but laugh about it. If you worry about it all you are doing is getting stressed out and hurting yourself.

How does stress affect health? Stress is a major element of being human -- a state of bodily or mental tensions resulting from factors that tend to alter an existing balance.
Everyday we are faced with struggles, hardships and angst in our home, school or workplace that are all complementary components of stress. It would be rare for anyone not to undergo this kind of state every once in a while.
In this day and age, the question 'How does stress affect health?" has brought tremendous concern for most of us, and it has been an increasingly talked about issue.
Stress is the body's response to certain environmental changes. In relation to our health, this is any factor that may have an adverse consequence on our body and its proper functioning.
Eustress vs. Distress
According to Hans Selye, a well-known endocrinologist in the early 1930's, not all types of stress are detrimental; thus, he came up with eustress and distress.
We all do undergo mild, brief and controllable moments of nervous tension that are considered to be common, and act as positive stimuli towards a person's intellectual and emotional growth. Selye termed these eustress.
He defined distress to be something of the opposite and is characterized by severe physical and psychological distress that is disruptive to general health.
The physiological effects of distress on the body include:
- chest pain - insomnia or sleep problems - constant head aches - hypertension - ulcers
Stress is said to be a contributory factor to the production of a certain disease, or it may be the cause of negative behavioral response, such as smoking, drinking alcohol and drug abuse - all of which may make us susceptible to diseases. It can adversely influence the immune system, thereby causing our body to be less resilient to a number of health problems.
Stressors versus Response
To know how does stress affect health, you should understand the triggers. Stressors are events or environmental agents directly responsible for the body's stress response.
On the other hand, stress response would mean how we react to these stressors and are intended to protect us against the threats they might bring. They can be physical, emotional, or mental reactions, or even all of them.
Adapting To Stressful Factors As A Way to Fight Stress
Our ability to adapt to these stressors has greatly helped us combat the detrimental effects.
Knowing how does stress affect health can help you manage better. Coping can be negative or positive. An example would be when a person is faced with a serious emotional distress because of a death of a love one. He can either cope with such loss positively by directing his thoughts towards more meaningful things that would help ease the pain, or he can cope with the loss negatively by maintaining an unhealthy eating habit and even threatening serious injury to himself.
How to Combat Stress
Studies and research tell us that treatment should be directed towards helping a person cope positively with its known adverse effects. After knowing how does stress affect health, you need to adopt some stress-reducing strategies:
1) Relaxation.
Mental and muscle relaxation are good ways to relieve tension. Too much muscle activity can bring forth anxiety and strain.
2) Massage Therapy.
Gentle strokes and application of pressure along the length of our body helps alleviate physical strain and muscle tension.
3) Scenic imagery.
In this kind of strategy a person is asked to sit and close his eyes and focus on a scene that is asked of him, usually by a therapist.
4) Music Therapy.
This involves listening to selected music as a means of reducing feelings of pain, loneliness and anxiety. Certain rhythms of selected music are said to harmonize with bodily rhythms, like heart and respiratory functions.
Depending on how does stress affect health, you get to choose the proper methods for relief.
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Your report is overdue. You've heard rumors at work, and you wonder if your job is the next one to be cut. Your wife says if you're late one more time you're sleeping on the couch. Your kid just failed his third grade spelling test. You desperately need another cup of coffee because you were up late last night worrying if you could make your mortgage payment. Everyday you turn on the news there's nothing but bad news. Terrorists. Shootings. You look forward to the weekend only to find put of tasks beginning to grow out of hand, out of reach. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
You are stressed. Perhaps you have a little big of high blood pressure. Perhaps your doctor even recommended something about that. Of course, he likely didn't give you any helpful advice. Maybe a handful of pills that your insurance wouldn't pay for. He just told you of the dangers of stress, and in telling you how many different ways it can kill you, probably made it even worse. I won't tell you that most doctors think that stress is behind fully 75% of illnesses today. I won't tell you that stress is directly responsible habits such as drinking, smoking, over eating, that can cause a slew of health problems, and shorten your life by ten years or more. I'm sure that you already knew that.
Because you are sitting there now, reading this, in that chair, you can naturally begin to realize that you are about to discover the secret that can beat stress before it even starts. Not that stress is all bad. You need a little bit in life to keep you motivated. You can keep the good stress. Competition among peers, a slight bit of frustration that naturally turns into curiosity to give your brain a boost as you are about to learn something new here.
I'm talking about the deadly, useless stress that only seems to make everything worse. That is what you need to get rid of.
The secret? A combination of your breath, appreciation, and choice. Sounds hokey. Sounds metaphysical. Sounds like some goofy tip you'd read in a free online article (wait a sec..). But guess what? It works. The more you practice it, the sooner you will realize that because it is up to you to choose how to respond to your environment, it is you that can decide to feel stress, or not. It may not seem like that now, but after you give this a go, I mean a serious effort, and keep practicing, you'll your life change for the better.
Ready to learn? Ok, here we go.
If you can try now, fantastic. Otherwise try it at home or when you won't be disturbed for a couple minutes. It takes a couple minutes to learn, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to do it in the middle of a heated conversation and nobody will be the wiser.
Take in a deep breath, hold it just a bit, and then exhale. After you exhale, wait a little bit before you inhale again. Wait until you build up a fairly strong desire for oxygen. Then inhale slowly, and as you do so, feel a deep sense of appreciation for the air you are breathing (I said this was hokey, right?). You might need to try this a few times and really feel the gratitude for the air, the oxygen, whose absence would surely kill you must faster than any amount of stress.
Then when your lungs are full, hold it again. And really imagine all the molecules in your lungs greedily extracting the oxygen from the air and transferring it to your red blood cells, to carry and feed your body. Delicious nutritious oxygen food that keeps you alive. Just before you breath out, when you are feeling the gratitude for the gift of life from the air you breath everyday, say to yourself:
I
and then as you breath out slowly, again say to yourself:
CHOOSE
And let it sink in, really sink in that it is up to you to choose all your reactions to the world. All the ways you respond to how people treat you. From your wife of fifty years to the guy that bumped into you on the way to the bus stop. It is up to you to wish things were different, to figure out a way to extract what you want from your circumstances. It is up to you to choose to be a victim, or a victor. It is up to you to feel stressed, or feel relaxed. It is up to you to give in to hypertension, and take bottle after bottle of pills that may or may not work. The choice is, has always been, and always will be yours.
Breath
Gratitude
Choice
You can practice these three anywhere. Walking, driving, sitting, watching movies, even during sex. The more you practice the easier it gets and the more it will become second nature to you.
Because I'm so interested in personal potential and personal development, I write many articles like this on my blog on a daily basis. Many people, just like you, have decided stop by from time to time to have a look, and participate in the conversation. It's entertaining and helpful, and will only take you as long as it took to read this article.
George Hutton is a widely read author and blogger who writes inspirational and life changing articles. You can join many others who read daily at http://www.georgehutton.net/wordpress
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Everyday stresses can get you down, which can result in a number of mental, physical and even social situations. Many people experience headaches, have bouts of crying and may even experiencing loss of sleep or not want to get out of bed. You may also have extreme feelings of anxiety due to stressful situations.
You may find that stress affects your ability to care for your children, do your school work or perform properly at your job. When you are having too much stress, you may need to consult with a counselor who will help you find ways to reduce your stress.
One way to reduce stress is to take the time to set realistic goals. Stop trying to fit a hundred things to do into one day. Find a way to prioritize everything you need done in a day and get the most important ones done first, then if you have time you can complete the less important tasks.
Another way to reduce stress is to learn how to relax. There are many techniques that help a person relax such as breathing and meditation techniques. A person may also try yoga techniques to find a way to reduce stress. You can also clear your mind and only think of things that make you happy.
Yet another stress reliever is doing things for other people. By seeing other people with worse problems than yours and being available to help them through this crisis, you may find that your problems are really not all that bad and may be better able to face them.
As a long term stress reduction strategy, you may want to research other stress relief techniques and promise yourself you will try them out in those situations where you feel yourself becoming stressed out. This will teach you how to find the right alternative solutions to your stress.
To get more help on how to reduce stress just click here
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