Let’s Talk About Stress

Stress can be debilitating and very harmful to our health and wellbeing.

A fantastic in depth article follows with many expert top tips and explanations. In my opinion, sleep is at the top of the tree. But if getting to sleep or staying asleep is your problem, here are some great ideas to help. We are all different and respond to different calming approaches; for Tom Daley it is knitting, for me it is exercise and fresh air, whilst a sure way to get my husband to sleep it is listening to The Archers. Find your ‘go to’ calming and heart-slowing mechanism and practise it daily. 

Starting with writing down your thoughts to organise them and put them into perspective, this can alleviate a common aspect of stress, the feeling of being out of control.

Now decide on which course of action (ideas below) you are going to take to help your stress and when you are going to practice them.

Time to get on with your life and enjoy the moment, hopefully feeling more in control.

Have a great day.
Ophelia

How to reduce your stress levels: the experts’ advice

Stress is the result of an in-built alarm system that triggers a cascade of physiological events. This fight-or-flight response sets off nerve and hormone signals that prompt our adrenal glands to release a surge of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. When we are under chronic stress, the fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on and the long-term effects begin to take their toll. But there are proven ways to counteract this.

Running releases calming biochemicals

That floaty sense of euphoria known as the runner’s high is largely responsible for running’s tension-relieving powers. And scientists now think it is not down to a flood of feel-good endorphins during exercise, but due to the release of a set of biochemicals called endocannabinoids, similar in structure to cannabis, that are produced when we run and are known to have a calming effect on the brain. There’s evidence that running also increases the brain’s resilience to stress by boosting levels of a brain protein called galanin that influences stress and mood, researchers reported in the journal Neuroscience last year.

More Sleep will bolster the brain’s coping function

Experts say that sleep is so crucial for you brain and body: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-to-get-a-good-night-sleep-better-l375h9zc6; even slight sleep deprivation can affect judgment and mood. Not getting your seven to eight hours a night might also create a negative feedback loop — poor sleep worsens stress that further interrupts sleep. “Poor sleep effectively exacerbates our anxieties,” says Neil Stanley, a sleep researcher and the author of How to Sleep Well. “When we get sufficient sleep it enhances the brain’s processing of emotional information, which impacts how we feel and how we respond to different situations.

Deep breathing stimulates the Vagus Nerve

Steven Laureys, a neurologist and neuroscientist and the author of The No-Nonsense Meditation Book (Bloomsbury), describes deep breathing as “a formidable tool for controlling and consciously inhibiting unconscious stress reactions”. Every time you breathe in deeply through your nose and then slowly exhale through your mouth, your heartbeat slows and the production of stress hormones diminishes.

According to Laureys, by breathing slowly and deeply — even for a few minutes a day — you stimulate the vagus nerve, an important part of the parasympathetic nervous system that carries signals to and from the brain and regulates the body when it is in a calm and relaxed state. In turn this will have a stress-relieving effect on body and mind.

Get a pet to boost oxytocin release

Interacting with pets has been shown to decrease levels of stress hormones and boost production of the feel-good hormone oxytocin (the same hormone that bonds mothers to newborn babies). In a 2019 study of 249 stressed students, one group was allowed hands-on interaction with cats and dogs for ten minutes at a time; a second group observed people stroking animals while they waited for their turn; a third watched a slideshow of the same animals; while a control group had no exposure to the pets. Samples of saliva taken from all the participants showed that stress levels were lowest in those allowed direct interaction.

Meditation Reduces Cortisol

Mindfulness meditation, a practice that encourages a heightened state of awareness for as little as a few minutes at a time, has been shown to induce calm and reduce stress and anxiety. Done regularly for eight weeks or longer, it can alter brain activity in regions associated with anxiety and has been shown to reduce the levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in the blood. “It teaches you to be more aware of what happens around you by fixing your awareness on something and opening your mind to all stimuli experienced at that time,” Laureys says. “If you practise every day you will achieve enhanced mental wellbeing

Listening to music stimulates calming brain waves

Costas Karageorghis, a professor in sport and exercise psychology and the head of Brunel University London’s Sound and Vision Innovations group, says music can have a profound effect on stress. “We now know that music affects deep parts of the brain influencing mood and anxiety,” Karageorghis says. It works because a strong beat stimulates the brain so that brainwaves resonate in time with the rhythm of the music. Slow beats are associated with hypnotic or meditative states, helping you to relax, while faster beats can help you feel more alert and positive.

Listening to a podcast can also provide stress relief. In one of his trials, Karageorghis found that listening to a TED Radio Hour talk — in this case about cities — boosted mood more than if people listened to upbeat music or walked in silence. “Listening to something that fires the imagination can help you to turn your mind off from stress,” Karageorghis says. “Or listening to an audiobook that provides a sense of escapism will work for some people.

Knitting can lower your heart rate

It’s for good reason that the Olympic diving champion Tom Daley used knitting to lower his stress levels during the Tokyo Games. Research at Harvard University found that knitting induces the relaxation response, lowering the heart rate by an average of 11 beats per minute and causing blood pressure to drop. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School suggests that “the repetitive quality of the stitching, along with the needles clicking, resembles a calming mantra” that offsets stress.

Writing by hand helps to reduce anxiety

Writing therapy — from poetry to letters and journals — is considered one of the most effective ways to beat stress. It helps to organise your thoughts and put them into perspective, which in turn alleviates a common aspect of stress, the feeling of being out of control. “Stress and worry block your capacity to problem-solve,” says Jennifer Wild, a consultant clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Oxford, who is the author of Be Extraordinary. “You can get on top of it before it gets on top of you by writing down the things that you find stressful.” Research at Northumbria University has shown how jotting down positive thoughts and emotions for 20 minutes a day helps reduce anxiety

Cold-water swimming trains the parasympathetic nervous system

The many fans of a cold-water dip can be almost evangelical about its stress-reducing benefits — and for good reason. Mike Tipton, a professor of human and applied physiology at the University of Portsmouth’s Extreme Environments Laboratory, has shown how five-minute dips in cold water over a period of time significantly reduce the adrenaline-driven “sympathetic” response to stress and increase the so-called parasympathetic activity that helps to calm the body down. Essentially by placing the body in a stress situation — cold water — it becomes used to that stress, and thus better able to cope with other stresses when they present themselves.

Tipton also suggests that regular cold-water swimming results in a “post-swim ‘high’, triggered by the release of beta-endorphins”, which might also reduce anxiety. Don’t dive straight in, though — you do need to acclimatise with just a few seconds at a time.

REFERENCE
Peta Bee
The Times, Saturday 11th September 2021