With free time in shortage, shoulder care and active family and social life, many of us find themselves trapped in a whirlwind without stopping. The common outcome is stress exhaustion, a subject of great concern to leading psychological researchers and hundreds of thousands of victims each year.
You've probably experienced the symptoms: knots in the neck, butterflies in the stomach, irritability. Stress can be even worse, and if bottled, it can be a powerful and disruptive force for the healthy body and mind.
So, what do you do when you find your teeth? Cure can be a good workout. Recent research has once again asserted common sense: getting pumping from the heart and letting sweat start flowing can tone your attitude as much as it shapes your physique.
Overall, people who exercise regularly and who take the athletic time to steam can better manage stress.
In addition, as a weapon against stress, exercise is healthier than having a drink and cheaper than visiting a psychiatrist. And it works.
What we generally know as "bad stress" - tension - is actually an instinctive physiological response that has allowed our prehistoric ancestors to survive the dangers of nature.
When you perceive a danger or a threat, your body assumes the known mode of "fight or flight" that prepares you to defend itself against the attack. The region of the brain's hypothalamus sends a message to the pituitary gland to secrete cortisol, the "stress hormone," into the bloodstream. In the chain reaction that follows, the signals begin to rush on all parts of your body. Adrenalin enters your bloodstream, your heart beats faster, your blood pressure increases and your breathing becomes heavy. You are ready for action. Normally, however, the possibility of physical liberation is not there; Sit down and relax. Although the stressful event is over, lack of reaction means that these chemicals remain in the blood stream. Over a prolonged period, they can become overwhelming, which even leads to high blood pressure, hypertension or nervous breakdown.
Dr. Hans Selye, pioneer of stress study and author of "Stress Without Distress", explains that we have a three-step reaction to stress. First, we experienced an initial alarm stage. Followed by a step of adaptation or resistance, and finally, we are exhausted. If we do not move through these stages, stress is bottled up inside - a cumulative and insidious process.
Of course, exercise will not help if it simply adds more stress to a stressful life. So do not create a situation where it means a train ride to the gym, enrolling in a class you will not be able to do or spending more money than you can reasonably afford. But take courage, almost any regular activity of muscular movements, whatever the rarity or humility, is to reduce stress. In fact, Selye even qualifies the exercise as "good stress".
Joining the local football team, playing tennis in the club and going out to dance are all great ways to fly. The reason is that they incorporate aerobic exercise.
When you hear the word aerobic, do not just think of the calisthenics that tightens the belly in the leotards. Any exercise is classified as aerobic if you increase your breathing rate without taking your breath away, and your heart and lungs work to provide more oxygenated blood to the muscles in action.
The best aerobic sports are swimming, cycling, jogging, tennis and ball racket. Team sports involving running, throwing and agility are also good (however, you might be a little more prone to injury). They will all be beneficial physically if you do them consistently and can only offer the release of tension you need to relax, breathe deeply and put things into perspective.
Choose an activity that you enjoy and not the one that will make you even more stressed. Depending on your fitness level when starting an aerobic exercise, walking may be the appropriate exercise to meet your stress reduction needs. Consult your doctor when designing an anti-stress diet.
Those who work regularly have expressed the astonishment of knowing how to add an exercise program in their daily routines can make a difference in their attitudes, their health and even their sexual life.
The human body was not designed to sit at an office; We were built to be movers and agitators in the physical sense, not business. When you give your body the mouth it requires, the symptoms of apathy caused by sexual desire reduces the tension of the headaches mysteriously often disappear.
And you will learn to cope better with stress over time. Dr. Kenneth Cooper, founder of the Dallas Aerobics Research Institute, notes: "People with aerobic fitness have lower heart rates during stressful situations than people who are not in shape."
# Follow these general guidelines for stress reduction :
Work hard, but not too hard. When performing aerobic exercises, your goal should be to circulate the heart at 70% of its maximum capacity. Once you have reached this point, you should keep it for about 20 minutes. A good general rule to determine how much an aerobic exercise should last is that you should be able to hold a conversation at the same time.
Also, choose a place to make it make you comfortable. Try to schedule your workout at an appropriate time, and stick with it. Nothing makes you more tense than feeling forced rather than being inspired to move your body.
And do not expect too much at the same time. Remember, as with all activities, they only come out to the extent they are set up.
By entering the exercise routine to reduce stress, you risk discovering yet another benefit - it can become high.
When resolved, the body secretes endorphins, substances similar to morphine, which are often responsible for the euphoric feeling called "the high level runner". These endorphins that make you feel good during a workout can be a powerful weapon in your war against stress.
When tension is established, endorphins are released into the bloodstream with the cortisol hormone, and the combination can largely help compensate for the bad feelings. You only get this benefit if you are in good physical condition.
Although research is ongoing, some scientists claim that endorphins have a stabilizing effect on hormones (such as cortisol) released during stress, which adversely affects negative effects on the body. According to Dr. Daniel Landers, a physical education teacher at Arizona State University, "If you block the effects of endorphins, your heart rate will increase to twice the normal level."
In the end, not only does exercise help offset the stress you've already endured, but it will help you cope with the growing tensions ahead.
All this should not make you think that aerobic exercise is the end of all and all of the body conditioning techniques of mind. It still has its limits. If it is not resolved on a regular basis, the best exercise will do little or nothing to improve your reaction to stress and can even exacerbate stress by increasing your heartbeat between periods of inactivity.
There are also chemical disadvantages to work sporadically. If you are not used to exercising, your body will not increase your endorphin levels until training is complete; In this case you can act for dull muscle pain tight and out of shape but it will be released too late to counter the hormone stress in your system.
Once you have built your heart and become a high-performance stress machine, it's time to move on to the next step: learning to relax.
To relieve stress, consider activities that take place in the open air. Whether you're working outdoors every day or completing an indoor fitness program with occasional walks through Mother Earth, you'll find that a little communion with nature can help melt away stress.
More importantly - enjoy. As the song by Simon & Garfunkle says: "slow, you move too fast, you have to finish in the morning ..."
Make it last with a sporting activity that makes you happy. And the next time you want to blow your top, you may find that you can cope better.
