WE LIVE in a world of haste. We have all suffered from stress at some point in our life. Stress has devastating consequences for your health, but managing it more healthily is possible. 

We discuss stress and how to overcome it below.

Symptoms of Stress

Some of the most common symptoms of stress are, but are not limited to:

• Headache
• Lack of concentration
• Sleep problems
• Fatigue
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Chest pain
• Sickness
• Loss of libido

1. Stress Increases Appetite

When stressed, cravings begin to appear, and you could eat and eat without getting full and satisfied. It is as if the stomach suddenly has an endless black hole.

Over time, chronic stress or frequent episodes of stress could be the cause of weight gain. Food is something easy and comforting to go to when you feel stressed and it tastes good and is pleasurable at that precise and ephemeral moment.

2. Increases the Risk of Heart Diseases

When stress appears, your heart speeds up, your blood pressure rises, and you start to breathe faster and shallower. This does not have a serious impact on the body when it comes to a specific situation since when it happens everything returns to normal.

The problem appears when this mechanism is switched on for a long time. It is then when the risk of dying due to heart disease increases since the body is constantly in tension and forcing its possibilities.

3. It Worsens Existing Health Problems and Creates Bad Habits

The American Psychological Association notes that stressful circumstances lead to adopting precarious lifestyle habits, such as smoking, drug abuse, drinking, or eating constantly. When stressed, it’s important to seek help. ARC Drug Rehab Centre helps you deal with addiction.

You already know the risks that this entails – cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes … There are many diseases that we could relate to stress if we look at it that way.

4. Makes Belly Fat appear

Do you feel like your tummy is coming out? This can be caused by stress. Fat around the abdomen has been particularly associated with insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, and chronic inflammation.

5. It Weakens the Immune System

Chronic stress weakens your defenses, facilitating infection from whatever is around you. If your body is under stress, small intruders (bacteria and viruses) have the doors open to enter your body and make you sick.

How to Manage Stress

In life, you can’t control everything that comes your way, but you can control how you react to it, and create a strategy to manage stress.

Time to Stop

Take some time for yourself and your thoughts. It’s something you can’t avoid if you want to control your stress levels. In a world with so much movement and so many inputs coming in day after day,  you need moments of silence and solitude away from your partner, children, and friends.

Yoga

Yoga helps you align with your breathing, with your body, and keeps your attention on performing the poses and movements correctly, which means that you are in the present, in the here and now, and all stress dissolves. Best of all, this feeling lingers with you for hours.

Time with Friends

Face-to-face interaction with your friends helps you melt away tension, reset, and stay stress-free Spend time with your friends.