Stress Guide 101: March 2009

Monday, March 23, 2009

Tips for Reducing Stress

by: Trevor Dumbleton

With the hectic life that most people lead in today's world, reducing stress has become a vital skill. With work stress, school stress, family stress, teen stress, parent stress, and a whole host of other kinds of stress continually knocking on the door, it has become vital to manage stress in order to keep up with everything needs to be done. Though reducing stress is difficult, it can be done with a little effort and a little dedication to improving yourself.

The first thing to do when reducing stress is to get enough sleep at night. Yes, there is always something that needs to be done and there are projects that need to be taken care of and there is always something that should get done before you go to bed and there is still one more television show to watch, but that is exactly the problem. By spending too much of the evening worrying about everything that needs doing and trying too hard to get it all done right now, you are not helping yourself. Rather, you are increasing your stress to an alarming level. If you need to get things done, then do yourself a favor and just get them out of the way before you sit down in front of the television. When they are done, then you can relax and not worry about everything that needs to get done after the show is over.

The next things you need to do are to eat right and exercise. No, it doesn't seem like taking care of physical needs with help with a mental issue such as reducing stress, but there is a connection. After all, the brain is part of the body and when the body is working right, the brain will be more effective. By putting the right nutrients into your body, you will be feeding the brain as well as the muscles and you will be able to think clearly and concentrate more effectively. As well, when you are getting all your fruits and vegetables and whole grains, you will have more energy and be less susceptible to fatigue. After all, fatigue clouds the mind and a cloudy mind is a mind that tends to wander. And, when you mind wanders, you will not be getting things done. Thus, projects and tasks will pile up, giving you even more to be stressed about.

Additionally, exercising routinely will help you keep stress at bay. When you exercise routinely, you are more aware when you are awake and you sleep better at night, both of which are very good for reducing stress. This is because exercise helps you release hormones into your body that make you feel better, both mentally and physically. And this effect is not limited to the time when you are exercising. In fact, these hormones stay in your body even after you are done exercising, so that you will feel better all day. If you can, try to work out in the morning to get that hormonal burst before you begin your day. Or, if you cannot work out in the morning, at least exercise in the early evening so that you will at least have a body that will be ready for a good night's sleep and ready for the following day.

Another great technique for reducing stress is through proper time management. Let's face it, most people spend most of their day spinning their wheels as they move from one project or task to another, making them incapable of focusing on what they are doing. However, with a time management system in place, your day can be mapped out in the morning so that you are able to complete tasks one at a time. Then, with each little success, you will be able to feel the relief of knowing that there is one less thing to worry about.

Finally, you can help lower your stress levels by taking regular vacations. The best advice is to take one week off every year so that you can recharge your batteries and face the world again. By getting away and traveling, you can feel the relief of simply leaving it all behind. Getting out of the house, the city, or even the country is an excellent way of reducing stress and, when you get back, you will come back refreshed, rejuvenated, and ready to get back to the tasks of daily life.

By reducing stress, you can feel better, work better, be more sociable, and improve your health. Stress is very hard on the body and the mind, so managing it should be a priority. Thus, with a little effort, a little time, and the dedication to do the right things for yourself, you can keep your mind clear and keep yourself moving forward. Then, once you have mastered the art of reducing stress, you will also have the pleasure of not having to worry about stress.

About the author:
LowerYourStress.com: for everything to do with stress. Get a free ebook to help with your stress levels:

by: Trevor Dumbleton

Many people in this world need to take a stress test. These tests can take many forms and are designed to search for different things, but they all have one key goal: they want to see how you are doing. Merely taking a stress test can be a kind of stress all its own, but it does not have to be. And by understanding stress tests, you can understand more fully what they are designed to do.

The first kind of stress test is simply a pen and paper test. These tests will often ask you about certain things you do, where you are in your life, what you are concerned about, and what is going on around you. These stress tests are very easy to take, though the results can often be more than a little surprising. These tests are designed to root out stress in its many forms and are the most common form of stress test.

There are many stress tests out on the Internet, though many of them will not be particularly useful. Some are designed to be scientific but are not backed up by research, or some may simply be jokes. However, there are a few out there that can be very useful. Unfortunately, many are also very subjective and the answers you give may not be all that useful.

If you would like to take a stress test, your doctor can point you in the right direction. There are many valid and very useful stress tests out in the world and they can give you and your doctor the answers that you need to help you determine how you are stressed and how to manage it. Thus, your doctor is the best place to start and the best place to find answers to all that is troubling you.

Another type of stress test is the exercise stress test, also known as a cardiac stress test. These tests involve putting a person on a treadmill at a slow walking pace, then slowly increasing the speed until the person is at a jogging or running pace. In these tests, people are usually hooked up to electroencephalographs and usually breathe through a tube in order to study heart rate and breathing. These tests are effective for studying how well a person's heart and lungs are working in order to see if there are any coronary problems.

Exercise stress tests are usually akin to exercising hard, but not strenuously. The person on the treadmill is closely monitored and a doctor is on hand in case there are any problems. As well, the person can stop the test anytime if they do not feel right. However, it is best to let the test run until it is finished, as it gives the best idea of how well the body is working.

A final kind of stress test is the thallium test. These tests are usually administered in people who seem to have blockages in their circulatory system and the blockages need to be located. Thallium tests are usually run in conjunction with an exercise stress test and, after the person is done on the treadmill, the person is injected with a slightly radioactive thallium solution. Once the thallium get into the bloodstream, a special camera examines the person's body in order to look for places where the thallium, and thus the blood, is not flowing properly. Thallium tests are not given very often, as they are mostly used when doctors know there is a blockage, but are not sure where to look for it. Obviously, some people cannot be asked to run on a treadmill and they are usually given a drug as a substitute in order to locate the blockage.

There are a variety of stress tests available and your doctor is the best person to talk to if you are interested in taking one. These tests are very valuable to check your overall health level and they provide a great deal of information that can be used to diagnose any problems or prevent them before they start. So if you are feeling the effects of stress and you wonder if it is causing health problems, there are ways to find out what you or your doctor want to know.

About the author:
LowerYourStress.com is a categorized resource directory for everything to do with stress. Get a free ebook to help with your stress levels:

Stress Elimination

by: Trevor Dumbleton

Learning methods of stress elimination is a vital skill in the modern world. After all, there is no way to get away from stress these days, thanks to work, life, family, the economy, the state of the world, global warming, and an overabundance of people who are reminding you constantly about all of these. Not to mention the fact that you are stressed about everything and you know that stress can cause major health problems, so you are stressed about your own stress! Thus, you need some stress elimination strategies before you worry yourself silly.

The first stress elimination method is simply that of getting away. If you are feeling the heat from stress, you find yourself anxious, and you cannot concentrate, it is time for a break. That means that, if you are at work, get up from your desk and take a walk around. If you are at home, take a walk around the block. If homework is getting you stressed, go make a sandwich. Just walk away and take a break and come back in about five minutes.

As a matter of fact, when you are concentrating on something, you should breaks anyway in order to let your mind rest. After all, when you exercise your body, you take breaks to let it recover. Why should your mind be any different. By simply stretching in your seat every 15 minutes or so, then getting up and walking around for a couple of minutes every hour, you can ensure that your brain will stay sharp and stay focused. However, if you do not take these breaks, your mind will start wandering and you will find that you are stressed out because you cannot concentrate. Of course, you cannot concentrate because you are trying to force yourself to concentrate rather than giving yourself a quick break that would help you do that very thing.

However, sometimes it takes more than just a few minutes of walking to get rid of stress. After all, life is stressful in itself and you need to get away from it every once in a while. Thus, part of your stress elimination strategy should include some vacations. By getting away for a week or so every year, you can alleviate stress and prevent it from appearing very often. The simple act of being someplace else where you don't have to worry about anything other than relaxing will help you immeasurably and it will allow you to keep stress away. Just leave it all behind for a while and you will be able to deal with it better when you get back.

Another good method for stress elimination is through exercise. It has been shown that people who are fit tend to deal with stress much more effectively than people who are not, so it is necessary to get out to the gym every so often. Or, if you don't feel like going to the gym, you can do a few things from your home, such as running, walking or biking. Also, one very effective way to stay fit is to go out to your local swimming pool and get a few laps in. Swimming is not only a very good way to exercise your entire body, it is also a very low-impact method of exercise that does not strain the joints as much as something like running. Just remember to do something that will keep you in shape.

Also, yoga is a very popular way for people to stay fit when they do not enjoy exercising in such standard ways. In itself, yoga is a very effective method for relaxation and teachers often put a great deal of emphasis on relaxing while going through the various poses of yoga. Thus, you can learn methods of relaxation, stay fit, stay limber, and even have fun doing it. Likewise, studying martial arts such as karate, ju jitsu, judo, or even the relaxing forms of tai chi can provide substantial health benefits that will help you on the road toward stress elimination.

Finally, another good method for stress elimination is through meditation. Not only can you learn to eliminate stress generally, there are some methods of meditation that can be performed at a moment's notice. Just by sitting down, closing your eyes, and concentrating on taking deep breaths, you can push all that stress out of your body and ease your mind of all its concerns. In fact, simply meditating in this manner for about a minute can ease your stress levels almost instantly by clearing your mind of all its concerns and allowing it to start out fresh. In fact, with a little practice, you can meditate for a short period of time and feel as refreshed as though you just took a nap.

Stress elimination is a vital skill for people who want to stay healthy, stay productive, and keep their minds sharp. Though some of the methods take some practice and take some time to master, a little effort and a little dedication can go a long way. So learn a few methods, figure out what is right for you, and stress elimination will be possible for you now and in the future.

About the author:
LowerYourStress.com: for everything to do with stress. Get a free ebook to help with your stress levels:

by: Trevor Dumbleton

Those who are under stress, yet refuse to get help for it, need to understand the relationship between stress & concentration in order to understand why they need to relax. This is because, at first, it seems though stress is an aid to concentration. However, this is not the case in the long term.

Long-term stress & concentration do not go hand-in-hand. In fact, the more that one is stressed, the less able they are to concentrate. However, people often keep themselves under stress in order to help their concentration, despite the fact that it is doing them absolutely no good. Usually, this is because they believe that stress is helping their concentration.

In fact, stress does help concentration for a short period of time. This is because the body is dumping chemicals into the brain to help it focus and throwing adrenaline into the bloodstream in order to heighten the senses. This helps the body hone in on its tasks and helps it to focus. This is, in the beginning, a good thing. Short-term stress really does help your concentration at first, which is very useful when you need to hammer out last-minute paper for school, a report for your boss, or you need to quickly fix some computer problems that are keeping others from getting their work done. Unfortunately, the short-term effects do not last.

As you spend more and more time under stress, your ability to concentrate lessens. The brain will have fired off so many neurons that it cannot replenish its supply of chemicals that helps the neurons fire. As well, that boost of adrenaline that helps people focus will start to heighten the senses to the point where the brain notices every little thing around, causing you to be easily distracted. Thus, the relationship between stress & concentration becomes an inverse relationship.

The problem, of course, is that the more stress you are undergoing, the more you need to concentrate in order to relieve the causes of the stress. This means that your brain is fighting against itself when you need to get work done. This is what we like to refer to as a bad thing and it can seriously injure your ability to get work done. Needless to say, the biggest cause of stress around is the fact that work needs to get done, so stress becomes a self-defeating cycle.

What can you do to escape this damaging relationship between stress & concentration? Well, there are a few things you can do. The best is, of course, to walk away.

That’s right, just stop what you’re doing. Give yourself a break. Put work on hiatus and do something else. Take a walk, get some exercise, make a sandwich, watch an hour of television. Just as long as you are doing something other than work. This will distract your mind from whatever was causing it stress, which is exactly what you need to do. After all, your mind tends to get used to being stressed after a while, making it less able to let go of its concerns. This means that you need to make a conscious effort to clear your mind, and the best way to do that is to clear all the problems out of your head before you drown in them.

If you are not able to walk away for some reason -- let’s say that you are at work and the boss doesn’t like to see people leave their desks -- you can still relieve stress and help your concentration by performing a quick relaxation exercise. Simply close your eyes (this helps, but it can be done with your eyes open) and take deep breaths. Concentrate on each breath as it fills your lungs, then concentrate on the breath leaving as you exhale. Focus your attention on your breathing until you are paying attention to nothing else. Then, once you are done, you should feel much more relaxed and able to concentrate. If you do not feel better, repeat the exercise until your mind is clear and uncluttered.

The big problem with stress & concentration is the simple fact that stress helps concentration in the short run, but hurts it in the long-run. Unfortunately, most people do not notice this transition from helping to hindering and they simply stay under stress and unable to focus. So when you notice that your mind is racing too fast to allow your brain to focus on anything, walk away or take a few deep breaths in order to calm your mind. Then, you will be able to escape the negative relationship between stress & concentration.

About the author:
LowerYourStress.com: for everything to do with stress. Get a free ebook to help with your stress levels:

How To Cut Down On College Stress

by: Trevor Dumbleton

Probably the least appreciated form of stress is college stress. This is mostly due to the fact that adults simply see a lot of college students sitting on their rear ends playing video games and drinking, instead of seeing students who are under pressure to succeed all the time. In addition to classes, homework, research, reading, paper writing and problem solving, there are now the problems of how the heck to pay for college and whether there will be any jobs waiting after graduation. Thus, with all these forms of college stress weighing students down, it is no wonder that things tend to get ugly when they “blow off steam”.

Of course, there are better ways to deal with stress than to drink an entire case of beer in one day. In fact, abusing your body with any number of chemicals does not really help that much, aside from the fact that people generally relax when they do such things. However, they are usually relaxed before partaking of the latest work of ancient and modern chemistry, so the substances themselves really do not make much of a difference.

Unfortunately, college stress is often the first encounter that some students have with persistent stress, and it is hard for them to deal with it. However, it is also the first time that many of them have had experience with almost complete freedom, so college has a double threat. Complete freedom means the ability to simply ignore the cause of stress, which is usually the classes they need to stay in college. Thus, the problem of freshmen retention in many universities.

Unfortunately, most students don’t even attempt to find help for their stress problems. In fact, the most common effort to help students through their stress is to tell them to either just get their work done or to get used to it. Of course, this advice usually comes from their friends and, though there is a certain set that could use this advice, many other students are struggling to keep up simply because they are unable to cope with their stress. Thus, by relieving their own minds of their concerns, they could help their grades and help keep themselves in school.

The best place to start looking for relief from college stress is by talking to an advisor. They are more than happy to help students because they want to help them and, for the most part, nobody ever visits them. Thus, they are very eager to help, but very lonely, so they will be more than happy to give a hand to anyone who needs it. If you are a student under stress, they can help you deal with the classroom concerns and direct you to people who can help alleviate your stress concerns. It doesn’t matter how personal the problems might be, advisors are very private, very discreet, and they are more than happy to provide you with assistance.

For those who need more regular relief from college stress, there are other options to the usual cure of barley and hops. In fact, colleges are a wealth of opportunities to learn new stress-reduction methods. For instance, there are yoga clubs, meditation classes, and even courses in tai chi that can help you learn how to cope with stress and ease its effects on you. As well, many colleges will provide stress-relief seminars every so often, simply to help their students keep their stress at bay. By all means, look for these seminars and make use of them.

Another way to keep college stress at bay is to simply budget your time properly. Yes, that means that you should actually perform that time-honored and often-overlooked stress reduction method known as “getting work done early”. This not only means getting your homework polished off and done before the day it is due, you should also attempt to start long-term projects more than one day before they are due. By spreading out projects, you can actually relieve a lot of stress. This is because you will actually be giving yourself less work to do later and you will not have to freak out at the last minute because the work is not done. Yes, I know you’ve heard this all before, but if you want to avoid college stress, you need to actually do it for a change.

College stress is a major problem for university students, but it is mostly ignored by the students who are actually under stress. In fact, they usually just try to press through their stress without considering that it does not need to keep them under its thumb. However, that does not need to be the case. Students can help themselves by simply recognizing their own college stress and making a few efforts to alleviate it.

About the author:
LowerYourStress.com is a categorized resource directory for everything to do with stress. Get a free ebook to help with your stress levels:

Dealing With Emotional Stress

by: Trevor Dumbleton

One very difficult form of stress to cope with and manage is emotional stress. After all, it is often self-created, it can come out of nowhere and the stress caused by it only heightens the emotions felt. Thus, as the emotional stress increases, the emotions get worse, heightening the emotional stress. Thus, the problem recreates the cause and the problem only gets worse.

Emotional stress is often triggered by a dramatic event that puts a person's nervous system under severe strain. This could be an event such as losing a loved one, seeing someone die, or being put into a life-threatening situation. An event such as this can put severe strain on a person's mind and nerves and the incredible strain can cause changes in the way that the brain works. In fact, a severe emotional strain could even cause someone to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

However, emotional stress does not arise from a sudden shock. It can also arise from a total emotional strain that adds up to an overwhelming strain that prevents a person from thinking about anything other than the problems that seem to have no solution. Then, as the stress mounts, the mind is left in its own cocoon of stress that can only call attention to itself, cutting the person off from the world outside. Thus, emotional stress can lead to detachment, and inability to concentrate, fatigue, and even memory problems.

Unfortunately, emotional stress also increases moodiness, which can often make things worse. In fact, those attacks of emotional excess can turn emotional excess up to unbearable levels, leading to further attacks. Then, as these bouts of emotional stress keep adding up, it all becomes too much and the sufferer is left almost completely lost and alone in their own cycle of emotion that hammers incessantly at the brain.

In order to deal with emotional stress, the person who suffers from it needs to take a break from everything that is creating all the emotions. For instance, going on a vacation can be an excellent diversion, as it provides the brain with new inputs that are not charged with associations. By leaving the so-called "scene of the crime" the person who suffers from emotional stress will be able to remove some of the emotional stress by removing its triggers. Then, hopefully, the loop will be broken, allowing the person to start fresh.

Another effective means for dealing with emotional stress is to practice yoga or learn to meditate. Exercises such as these are designed to put the person's mind in the moment, so that they will not worry about anything other than what they are doing in the case of yoga or, in the case of meditation, by clearing the mind entirely, allowing it to shed its emotions and start again with a clean slate. Either method can be very effective for dealing with emotional stress, as they give the brain a chance to relax. Then, once it is relaxed, it will be able to shed the emotional stress and get back to the business of thinking clearly.

Likewise, having a hobby can be very good for emotional stress. An activity such as needlepoint, building model ships, playing a sport, or going fishing can help shed stress. This is because a person who is engaged in a hobby is enjoying him or herself while thinking only about what they are doing rather than everything that needs to get done. It is as though it is a cross between a vacation and meditation, in that the person is taking a break from life while putting the mind onto something else. Thus, the stress disappears and the person can feel like they are accomplishing something, even if it is only a minor, pointless success. After all, a pointless success is still a success, be it finishing an Afghan, building a small version of the Cutty Sark, or simply catching a nice trout. It's always nice to know that some sort of effort has been effective, and hobbies are an excellent way to suddenly become effective.

People should not be daunted by emotional stress. Rather, they should try to understand where it is coming from and what they can do to prevent it. Though the effort can sometimes be difficult, success is truly its own reward. After all, achieving an escape from emotional stress will provide instant benefits for the mind and long-term benefits for the body. As well, by understanding emotional stress, people can see what causes it and, hopefully, discover what they need to do to either cope with it or eliminate it entirely. So if you or someone you know is suffering from emotional stress, find some solutions that will work. And by continuing to implement those solutions, emotional stress can be turned into a thing of the past.

About the author:
LowerYourStress.com: for everything to do with stress. Get a free ebook to help with your stress levels: