I’m here to accompany you through this challenging journey! Today let’s look at some effective ways to de-stress together to help make your journey easier!
How Your Stress Affects Your Hormones
When you feel stressed, various hormones change in response. A number of them includes glucocorticoids, catecholamines, growth hormone and prolactin. These can lead to a wide range of health problems like irregular menstrual cycles, suppressed immune system, weakened digestive system, etc. To have our hormones functioning properly and maintain our good health, it’s important to manage our stress well.
3 Ways to Effectively Manage Stress
1. Chew Some Gums.
You never saw this coming, but it sure does work. Although is often not listed as one of the relaxing techniques, it does help in relieving stress, supported by empirical findings. The Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, showed that gum chewing reduces tension and a feeling of anxiety by 12%. They suspect that chewing gum increases one’s blood flow and neural activities in the brain.
2. Take A Nap
Leonardo Da Vinci and Albert Einstein were creative minds who took multiple breaks from work to take a nap [1]. A recent example is Arianna Huffington, the publisher of The Huffington Post who recently wrote a book on the importance of sleep, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time. The book is about how having enough sleep can help us perform better. When we sleep, we gain back lost energies.
3. Meditation.
Until now meditation was only popular in the east, the rest of the world – particularly the west – is just beginning to catch up on the power of meditation and what it does to the body and mind. But in case you’re wondering if you would benefit from sitting still with your eyes closed, here is one amongst many reasons to meditate: regular meditation helps to calm one’s mind, shift your focus away from the problems which sometimes only exist in your head, and lower your blood pressure level. Regular meditation also prevents or cures you of anxiety disorder and sleep issues. According to a study conducted by Maharishi University, participants who meditated for four months were reported to have experienced a 20% decrease of the stress-causing hormone, known as cortisol, while on the other hand, participants who didn’t meditate for the same period of time were reported to have an increase of cortisol. [2]
Demonstration
A 10-minute guided meditation video to help ease anxiety, worry and the sense of urgency.
