Reduce Your Stress and Live a Long Healthy Life!

December 6, 2012

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!

Do You Really KNOW Stress Management!?

September 13, 2012

Dr. Dalal Akoury

Do You Really KNOW Stress Management!?

Your body is hard-wired to react to stress in ways meant to protect you against threats from predators and other aggressors. Such threats are rare today, but that doesn’t mean that life is free of stress.

Stress Management

On the contrary, you undoubtedly face multiple demands each day, such as shouldering a huge workload, making ends meet, taking care of your family, or just making it through the morning rush hour. Your body treats these so-called minor hassles as threats. As a result you may feel as if you’re constantly under assault. But you can fight back. You don’t have to let stress control your life.

Stress Management: Fight or Flight

If your mind and body are constantly on edge because of excessive stress in your life, you may face serious health problems. That’s because your body’s “fight-or-flight reaction” — its natural alarm system — is constantly on.

When you encounter perceived threats — a large dog barks at you during your morning walk, for instance — your hypothalamus, a tiny region at the base of your brain, sets off an alarm system in your body. Through a combination of nerve and hormonal signals, this system prompts your adrenal glands, located atop your kidneys, to release a surge of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol.

Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure and boosts energy supplies. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhances your brain’s use of glucose and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues.

Cortisol also curbs functions that would be nonessential or detrimental in a fight-or-flight situation. It alters immune system responses and suppresses the digestive system, the reproductive system and growth processes. This complex natural alarm system also communicates with regions of your brain that control mood, motivation and fear.

Stress Management means Take Control

The body’s stress-response system is usually self-regulating. It decreases hormone levels and enables your body to return to normal once a perceived threat has passed. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, your heart rate and blood pressure return to baseline levels, and other systems resume their regular activities.

But when the stressors of your life are always present, leaving you constantly feeling stressed, tense, and nervous or on edge, that fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on. The less control you have over potentially stress-inducing events and the more uncertainty they create, the more likely you are to feel stressed. Even the typical day-to-day demands of living can contribute to your body’s stress response.

The long-term activation of the stress-response system — and the subsequent overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones — can disrupt almost all your body’s processes. This puts you at increased risk of numerous health problems, including:

Heart disease
Sleep problems
Digestive problems
Depression
Obesity
Memory impairment
Worsening of skin conditions, such as eczema

That’s why it’s so important to learn healthy ways to cope with the stressors in your life.

Stress Management means identify your Unique Stressors

Your reaction to a potentially stressful event is different from anyone else’s. How you react to stressors in your life includes such factors as:

Genetics. The genes that control the stress response keep most people on a fairly even keel, only occasionally priming the body for fight or flight. Overactive or underactive stress responses may stem from slight differences in these genes.
Life experiences. Strong stress reactions sometimes can be traced to early environmental factors. People who were exposed to extremely stressful events as children, such as neglect or abuse, tend to be particularly vulnerable to stress as adults.

You may have some friends who seem laid-back about almost everything and others who react strongly at the slightest stress. Most reactions to life stressors fall somewhere between those extremes.

Stress Management teach how to React to Life Stressors

Stressful events are a fact of life. And you may not be able to change your current situation. But you can take steps to manage the impact these events have on you. You can learn to identify what stresses you out, how to take control of some stress-inducing circumstances, and how to take care of yourself physically and emotionally in the face of stressful situations.

Stress Management: Means Move that Body and Exercise!

Stress Management

Any activity that raises your heart rate and makes you sweat will greatly lighten your mood, increase energy, sharpen focus, and relax both the mind and body. For maximum stress relief, try to get at least 30 minutes of activity on most days.

Eat right

Low blood sugar can make you feel anxious and irritable, while eating too much can make you lethargic. Eat small, but frequent meals throughout the day to maintain an even level of blood sugar and avoid these swings in mood.

Get enough sleep

Not only can stress and worry cause insomnia, but also a lack of sleep can leave you vulnerable to even more stress. When you’re well rested, it’s much easier to keep your emotional balance.

When job and workplace stress threatens to overwhelm you, there are simple steps you can take to regain control over yourself and the situation. Your coworkers will love your self-control and may try to adopt your habits, too.