Stress is something that can come to you anytime and can stay with you for a long time. If you are suffering from stress for a very long time, then it can lead you to depression that can result in a number of health issues. It can affect your immune system and also can cause disturbances in your sleep, blood pressure, and others. Thus, it is important to take care of your stress before it takes the form of depression and starts affecting your health negatively.
Researchers have come up with many methods and ways that can help you in getting out of the status of stress easily. If not all, then at least a few can be surely discussed that can help you in overcoming the stress in some time.
Meditation
Though it may seem something that is not that easy to be done, but meditation can help you to a great extent in getting rid of stress and even depression. It has been learned from the Buddhists that meditation keeps your mind and soul calm and hence you stay away from any kind of negative emotions such as anger, sadness or even stress. As per a Thai study, people who went for the Buddhist meditation session can feel a change in their cortisol level and also blood pressure in just 6 weeks time. Similarly, it has been also noticed at the Maharishi University in India that people practicing regular meditation were able to have controlled the growth of abnormal hormone in the body by 20% in just 4 months time.
Music
Music is a great way of soothing your brain away from stress. Few years back in Osaka Medical Center of Japan, doctors experimented music therapy on their patients and found that they had cortisol levels lesser than the other patients.
In normal day to day life also, it can be noticed that a person listening to music while doing some other difficult task is likely to get less stressed than the others. If you are stuck up in a traffic jam, and you are listening to music, you are likely to get lesser tensed and disturbed than the person who is just sitting idle in car waiting for the jam to get cleared. Even while sleeping, it has been noticed that people who listen to music in place of watching television get a better sleep and a fresher morning. Also, it depends on a person to person about which type of music they would wish to enjoy.
Take a nap
Have you imagined ever about why it is always said to sleep for eight hours? It has been observed when a few pilots were allowed to sleep just for six hours in place of eight hours for a week, the next two days; the cortisol level was marked to have increased more than the normal. It is because when you sleep properly for 8 hours at night, the cortisol level comes to a normal level, and thus you stay away from any kind of serious stress. If you are somehow not able to complete the eight hours sleep at night, you may feel irritation the very next day. Thus, in this situation it is advised that you should take a nap whenever you can. Especially when you are getting hyper of stressed, you need to understand that your cortisol level must be rising, and you need a nap.
Black tea
At the University College in London, a stressful task was given to two groups of students. While one group did the task along with drinking tea, the other did the same task while drinking normal tea. It was noticed that the group of students who did the task while drinking black tea got their stress level or cortisol level dropped by 47% in an hour’s time after the completion of the task.
On the other hand, the group of students who consumed normal tea in place of black tea experienced a loss of 27% in their cortisol level after the an hour of the completion of the task. It was later mentioned by the experts that this calming effect was due to the natural chemicals flavonoids and polyphenol in tea.
Hanging out with funny friends
There is no other better remedy to stress than laughing. Hang out with a friend who is funny and can crack jokes at any moment. The more you laugh, you get distracted from your stress and your cortisol level drops down drastically. Normally, laughing at a joke that you read in a book or by watching television also works. But when you indulge yourself with a funny friend, you also become a part of his or her jokes, and it leaves a much long lasting impact on your mind.
Massage session
Stress is always not connected to some sad news. It can also be some kind of official tension of pressure that you are dealing with. In this case, you can schedule a good massage session for yourself. Massage helps in stimulating your nerves and increasing the blood circulation in your whole body that also helps in reducing down the cortisol level of your body.
Spiritual activities
It is mentioned above before that meditation is an amazing way of staying away from stress. There cannot be a better way of meditation than taking part in spiritual activities. Whether you are in a temple, or a church or any other religious places, the environment is so much spiritual that you will automatically get relieved from all your stresses and your cortisol level will drop down.
Chewing gum
If you are very much tensed and at the very moment you are not in the situation to do any of the above-mentioned activities, then you can do one thing. You can chew a piece of chewing gum. As per a research it has been seen that people chewing gums have experience a loss of 16% in cortisol level than people who did nothing. This is because chewing gum is said to have increased the blood circulation and nerve activeness in many parts of the brain that decreases levels of cortisol.
