Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life!

Stress and anxiety are common feelings experienced around the holidays.  The holidays can be a time of joy and celebration, but are also a potential source of stress. You may feel there is too much to do in too little time. Overspending or not being able to spend what you would like will also cause stress. Stress and anxiety can affect your health by causing you to overeat. The AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center team recommend that you avoid constant stress by meditating and avoid excess caffeine to help hold back anxiety. Do a little planning and have a positive mindset. Learn to cope and manage your stressors and live a longer, healthy life.

Dr. Dalal Akoury suggests some ways to reduce your stress is through meditation, exercise and diet. Learn to meditate through yoga. Take a deep breath and listen to soothing music. Exercise and take a walk. Stretch your muscles and help them relax. Watch your diet. Don’t over eat those high-fat and high-

Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life!

sugar foods. Eat a heart-healthy diet to help you to manage your stress.

Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life! Stress is normal. It is a person’s physiological and psychological response to events when threatened. Your body reacts with a rapid, automatic process known as the stress response or “fight or flight”. “This is the way your body reacts to protect itself by helping you to be focused and alert” Dr. Dalal Akoury explains from AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center. In everyday life or emergencies, the stress response helps you to meet challenges or can save your life. Your body’s stress-response system is self-regulating and allows your body to return to normal once the perceived threat has passed.

However, stress can cause major damage to your health if it is constant. Chronic stress is caused by excessive worry, poor decisions and procrastination affecting stress hormone adrenaline and cortisol production. It can cause affect your mood, your productivity, your relationships and your overall health. It can cause addictions, depression, obesity, diabetes, hypertension,

heart disease, pain and sleep disorders. You need to be able to reduce your stress to save your health.

Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life! Your body releases a flood of adrenaline, cortisone and other stress hormones that induce physiologic changes. Your blood races to your brain and heart and causes your heart to pound faster and your blood pressure to rise, which can cause hypertension when in excess. You start to breathe more rapidly and your blood sugar level rises.  Since your blood races to your brain and heart, it moves away from your kidneys, liver, stomach and skin and decreases the production of white blood cells which is needed to fight virus-infected cells, foreign cells and cancer cells if it remains constant. As your blood sugar rises, so do the amounts of fats and bad cholesterol, which can cause diabetes and heart disease if it remains high. Stress causes system-wide changes in your body and will alter your immune system if it is not under control explains Dr. Dalal Akoury .

 Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life! Take control. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, so does your heart rate and blood pressure. Your body returns to its normal state and all your body’s systems resume their regular activities.

Stress is not meant to be continuous. It has to be minimal. But if stressors in your life are always present and you are constantly feeling stressed, your body will not be able to function as it should, therefore, causing health issues.

You can reverse the stress cycle through relaxation. This positive reaction will lower your blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate and blood sugar levels. There are a number of stress reduction techniques like taking a bubble bath, a walk or meditation. It is important to learn healthy ways to cope with the stressors in your life.

Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life!

Reduce Your Stress 

and Live a Long Healthy Life by the team of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center!

Exercise is an excellent way to deal with stress. It can be walking, meditation, yoga stretching, etc. Exercise at least three to four times a week for at least 30 minutes.  Any activity that raises your heart rate and makes your sweat will improve your mood, increase your energy, improve your focus and relax your mind and body.

Dr. Dalal Akoury  explains that Yoga and meditation not only increases your flexibility and improves your muscle tone, it also increases your concentration and lessens stress. Meditation helps you to focus your mind and feel relaxed. Deep breathing increases your blood flood throughout your body with extra oxygen and an improved sense of well-being.

Learn to cope with the stressors in your life in a positive way and have self-control. Find time for yourself.  Continue to exercise and make good choices about other important health related behaviors such as sleep and nutrition.

Eat a healthy diet to maintain an even level of blood sugar so you won’t over eat. Low blood sugar can make you feel anxious and irritable and cause you to eat the first thing you see. High blood sugar will make you feel tired and lazy and less focused. This swing in blood sugar will affect your mood and cause your stress. Eat small and frequent healthy foods throughout the day to maintain an even level of blood sugar and avoid those swings in your mood.

Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and the Omega-3’s, fish oils. Fish oil helps stabilize your mood and reduces your stress.

Dr. Dalal Akoury  recommends that you get plenty of rest to Reduce Your Stress. Having uncontrollable stress in your life can cause insomnia and lower your immune system leaving you vulnerable to illnesses. When you are well rested, your mind is alert, you have more control and your body’s immune system is stronger to cope with stress.

Managing stress is a peace of mind and a longer, healthier life at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center

Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life!