Stress comes in so many forms: an argument with someone you love, a demanding job, a chronic disease, or a traffic-packed commute. Unfortunately, constant stress—no matter the source—can have some serious physical and mental effects. In fact, Harvard Health notes that it's been linked to many health issues, including appetite, sleep, mood, and even heart problems.
How do you know if you're too stressed? Some of the physical symptoms of stress include back pain, heart palpitations, headaches, and indigestion. Chronic stress may also cause difficulty concentrating, edginess, or irritability. When you're overly stressed, it can even manifest in negative behaviors.
To prevent stress from ruining your health and your life, it's essential to begin taking measures to manage stress. While it takes some practice, stress management is possible. Here are a few evidence-backed ways to manage and reduce stress for a happier, healthier life.
It's well-known that stress—particularly when we aren't able to cope with it—can make us sick. But gratitude has been proven to be one of the best antidotes to stress, and a growing body of research supports the idea that gratitude offers excellent stress relief and overall great health benefits. Researchers believe that gratitude works because it requires you to be present and celebrate your life. When you value and appreciate yourself, your friends, and circumstances, it focuses the mind on what you have instead of what you don't have. According to the University of California Davis Health, just a few of the research-backed benefits of gratitude include:
How can you incorporate gratitude into your daily life to start reaping the stress-relief benefits?
Too much caffeine can make anxiety worse, dehydrate you, interfere with your sleep, and make it even more difficult for you to cope with stress. Caffeine, a stimulant, can be found in coffee, many sodas, tea, energy drinks, and chocolate. While every person has their own threshold for the amount they can tolerate, studies show that high doses of caffeine can increase your anxiety and stress.
Pay attention to how caffeine makes you feel. If you notice that it makes you feel more anxious or jittery, then cut back or take it out of your diet completely.
One of the best and most important things you can do to combat stress is to get regular physical exercise. People who exercise regularly enjoy the strongest benefits, and studies show that routine exercise makes you less likely to deal with anxiety. Why?
There are several reasons:
To reap the stress-relieving benefits of exercise, try to find an activity that you really enjoy, such as rock climbing, dancing, running, walking, or yoga. Activities that involve the repetitive movements of the body's large muscle groups are especially good at reducing stress. Yoga is particularly effective at lowering stress levels, and studies testing the effects of yoga on overall health and stress levels found suggestive benefits of this practice for relieving anxiety and stress.
One of the fastest ways to cope with stress is to stop and do some deep breathing exercises. It's an instant way to relieve some pressure, and with a bit of practice, it can help you reduce your stress levels in a hurry. Simply follow these easy steps:
Spending some time with a pet is an excellent way to reduce stress and improve your mood. Whether you're playing fetch with your pooch, petting your cat, or having some fun with a pet bird, there's something about spending time with animals that offers some serious stress-busting benefits.
First, petting a dog, cat, or other pet can relax you. The power of touch not only relaxes your pet, but it releases those feel-good endorphins in you, which can lower your heart rate and make you feel happy. Try petting with purpose, like giving your pet a head-to-tail massage that will leave you both feeling great.
Communicating and spending time with animals may actually improve overall health and lower blood pressure. Think you're crazy talking to your pet? You're not! Happy-talking to your pet or laughing around Fido releases feel-good hormones that can put you at ease.
Recent reports have shown that mental exercises and mental training may promote structural changes to your brain that help reduce stress. These mental exercises can be fun mental games or they can be more structured mental training activities like mindfulness meditation or visualization. Try one or both of them yourself when you're feeling stressed.
Visualization, sometimes called guided imagery, can be a fun and relaxing mental exercise to try as well. To practice it, do the following:
Fun mental exercises can also offer brain-boosting benefits. Stress relief in and of itself is one possible way to help boost memory, for one. Specially designed brain-boosting exercises can help improve memory as well.
Connecting with nature, green time, ecotherapy—whatever you like to call it—can relieve anxiety and stress, boost feelings of happiness, and improve your mood. Unfortunately, many people spend a lot of time indoors hunched over a phone or working over a computer, and we get less time outdoors than ever before. We're hard-wired to need time out in nature, and if you're not getting it, your body and mind may suffer.
While a weekend of camping offers a great way to bask in nature, you don't have to spend a weekend in the wild to connect with nature and lower your stress levels. Some easy ideas that anyone can incorporate into their daily life include:
The social support that comes from family members and friends can be critical to getting through stressful times. Being part of a network of loved ones gives you a sense of self-worth and belonging, which is helpful when you're dealing with tough times. One study discovered that spending time with children and friends, particularly for women, results in the release of oxytocin, the body's natural stress reliever. This helps to calm the fight-or-flight response that's associated with chronic stress.
Try doing things that you love, whether it's something as simple as watching a movie or heading out on a camping trip, with people you care about. Social connections are tied to longevity, so even if you feel too stressed to spend time with others, make social time with your partner, friends, or family members a priority. Sometimes simply talking to a trusted friend about what you're going through is enough to lower your stress.
A steady supply of essential nutrients like healthy fats, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids can help your body and brain deal with stress better. On the other hand, the wrong foods can make it harder for you to cope.
Foods you'll want to limit or avoid to reduce stress levels include:
Setting aside time for hobbies you enjoy is essential for your mental health and offers stress-busting benefits. You should do something every day that makes you feel great, even if you only take 15-20 minutes to engage in your hobby. No matter what you're into, hobbies are just as important to stress relief and overall health as exercising. In fact, a study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine found that people who took time for leisure activates (like hobbies) were 34% less stressed and significantly less sad. Beyond feeling less stressed and happier, their heart rate slowed down, and they enjoyed the calming effect of a hobby for hours.
While it doesn't matter what your hobby is, as long as you enjoy it, a few relaxing hobbies you may want to consider include: