“Stressed” seems to be the baseline state for many modern adults. It’s no wonder. Lives have become more stressful in the last couple years. Seemingly normal everyday decisions and life, from healthcare to kids’ schooling to taking care of aging parents weigh heavy. It is vital that we proactively combat daily stress throughout each day.
Why?
Stress isn’t just an uncomfortable feeling. It’s actually a progression of reactions in your body that can have devastating health consequences both directly and indirectly.
Directly, chronic elevated cortisol (the “stress hormone”) wreaks havoc on body systems. Indirectly, stress can lead us to long lasting feelings of depression, unhealthy eating, isolation, reduced motivation and more.
How Stress Affects Your Health
High levels of mental stress can be devastating to your brain, your health, your relationships, and your immune system. Chronically elevated cortisol levels can affect all our body’s systems.
Cortisol is a hormone that’s released by the adrenal glands when the body faces stress. In modern times, this stress is often more mental than physical and usually has no outlet. For many, it’s chronic. It builds. And, it does damage.
High blood cortisol levels are correlated with weight gain and impaired loss, altered blood pressure, negative impacts on mood, sleep and energy, an increased incidence of blood sugar and heart health issues, and potentially lower brain volume and memory challenges (1).
What can you do? Try our 10 Effective Tools to Combat Daily Stress!
11 Surprising Tools to Combat Daily Stress
1. Add Nature’s Best Stress Relief Each Day
Did you know there’s an all-natural oil that is effective against stress? Hemp oil, specifically nano-particle oils like those in Dr. Colbert’s Nano-Science Hemp Oil, promotes health across the body’s systems.
It is a broad-spectrum hemp oil that is organically grown, vegan, and GMO-free. In terms of health, it have been shown to:
- Support healthy, stable moods (2)
- Promote stress relief and normalized cortisol levels
- Support comfortable, healthy joints (3)
- Encourage healthy sleep habits (4)
- Promote healthy skin with fewer irregularities and blemishes (5)
- Support healthy brain and nervous system functions (6)
- Encourage healthy cardiovascular functions and normalized inflammatory actions (7)
Why it’s surprising: Hemp oil is more effective than most plant compounds at combating stress!
2. Calmly Breathe In and Out
Did you know you can combat stress with your lungs?
It’s true. You can calm your heart, your brain, and your body by breathing calmly. Try this:
While pressing your tongue strongly against the roof of your mouth, breathe in slowly. Then, allow your tongue to completely relax and lower, even allowing your mouth to hang open if you want, and slowly breathe out. Do this for an entire minute.
Why it’s surprising: Breathing is one of the most simple human function. Controlling it can help you control your stress.
3. Exercise, Outdoors if Possible
When you exercise, you release your body’s own ability to combat stress. In fact, studies suggest that exercise can improve anxiety symptoms or stressed moods especially in those who have a history of dealing with chronic stress (15).
It’s interesting. Exercise can actually increase stress hormones acutely. However, these hormones quickly decrease back to healthy levels and long-term stress outcomes improve (8).
What’s more, moods improve when you get outside. If you don’t know where to start, start walking. Here are 10 Amazing Benefits of Walking!
Why it’s surprising: We all know exercise is good for you. You can double your stress reduction by getting outside while exercising!
4. Laugh Any Chance You Get, Especially with Friends & Loved Ones
If life doesn’t seem pleasant, fun, or funny at the moment, you’ll have to go out of your way to proactively laugh.
It may seem silly.
But, if you prioritize laughter, you will reduce stress. Start by reading your favorite funny author, spending time with a great friend, listening or watching a favorite comedian or show, or hanging out with children.
Amazingly, laughter is considered a scientific, effective, non-invasive therapy for improved mental health and mood. In fact, it’s been found that laughter alters dopamine and serotonin activity, and causes an increase in endorphins. These chemicals decrease discomfort, cortisol (9), and depressed moods (10).
Why it’s surprising: Laughter is such a gift in the human experience. Indulge in it for a free stress-buster.
5. Stay Hydrated with a Stress-Busting Tea
Did you know that dehydration can increase cortisol? Dehydration is linked to increased saliva and blood cortisol. Amazingly, multiple studies have found that dehydrated athletes have more circulating cortisol than hydrated ones (11).
Of course, water is a great choice for hydration.
But, you can take it a step further and drink cortisol-reducing black and/or green tea.
Tea is a health-promoting drink that you can use as a tool to combat stress daily. In studies, tea consumers reported a higher “sense of relaxation,” lower blood platelet activation, better heart health indicators, brain health, oral health, and a fiery metabolism (14).
Take it one step further and flavor your tea with Organic Fermented Green Supremefood®.
Why it’s surprising:Many think tea itself is dehydrating. It’s only a very gentle diuretic and can be used for stress-busting hydration.
6. Get Into the Keto Zone® to Eat Healthy Foods Throughout the Day
You can also combat daily stress by improving your diet. A haphazard diet, a high-sugar diet, or an ultra-processed diet can be detrimental to your health and stress levels.
Here’s how to improve your diet :
- Ditch the low-calorie, high-carb diets. Often, dieters following these strategies are left feeling hungry. Hunger promotes feelings of overwhelm and stress.
- Increase foods that promote satiety and satisfaction like healthy fats.
- Remove processed sugars and carbohydrates from your diet as much as possible. Sugars lead to energy crashes and increased feelings of stress.
How? The best way to get started is to get the book: Dr. Colbert’s Keto Zone Diet Book. You will find how to cut carbs and get into ketosis. Then, continue to follow our posts, recipes, Facebook groups, and more to keep going. You can also join our FREE 21-Day Keto Zone Challenge!
Why it’s surprising: Many people eat without thinking it affects their mental health. What you eat matters when it comes to stress.
7. Pray with Gratitude
No matter the conflicts you’re facing, the practice of daily gratitude and prayer can change everything. In fact, practicing gratitude has been proven to support decreased cortisol and stress levels.
Moreover, prayer is a wonderful gift for spiritual health. Prayer is thought to increase the secretion of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine. These compounds decrease cortisol while promoting relaxation, focus, and motivation.
Of course, for believers, prayer and gratitude to God goes beyond mental health. Our spiritual health is the foundation of everything else!
Why it’s surprising: Gratitude and prayer are available to you all day, every day. You can choose them and thereby choose to reduce your stress.
8. Clear the Calendar
Some stress is self-induced. Sometimes, we say “yes” to too many activities. Sometimes, we are required to live within a busy schedule.
As much as it’s dependent on you, clear your schedule to combat daily stress. It’s okay to spend time at home with little to do. It’s okay to allow kids to play without a “formal class or structure.” Give yourself a break.
Why it’s surprising: While we often feel like stress is heaped onto us, many times we simply over-schedule ourselves and our families. It’s okay to do less. Slow and simple lives have a lot of health benefits.
9. Use Positive Language and Thoughts to Soothe Stress
Your words can shape your world. In fact, you have a lot of power to combat daily stress with your language. In fact, even when patients are recovering from chronic illness, optimistic language and optimism have been shown to improve outcomes (12).
How? Use the word “challenges” rather than “problems.” Talk about difficult or new situations as opportunities to grow and learn. Acknowledge stressful situations and discuss helpful actions such as prayer, talking, and habits to address them. Avoid using absolute terms like “always” and “never,” and acknowledge difficult seasons with hopefulness. Talk to yourself with love and care, just as you would to a friend. Capture and replace negative self-talk with positive.
What’s more, optimism is thought by some to be a fountain of youth! That’s some great news. Something that won’t cost you a dime can help you reduce stress while increasing youthfulness!
Why it’s surprising: You can change your entire day by changing the way you talk to yourself and think. Start “capturing” the negative and flipping it to the positive.
10. Put Down the Phone and the Remote
Sure, we all need to “tune in” to know what is happening in the world. However, increasingly, we’re tuning in too much. We are now inindated with news nonstop. We see struggles from every corner of the world, sometimes truthfully and sometimes grossly exaggerated.
What’s this doing to our stress levels? Recent studies suggest more media consumption means more feelings of stress, depression, and anxiety (15). Instead of tuning into a device for countless hours, get your news in small doses from a trusted source. Then, proactively put it down and tune into your physical world and the people present in your life.
Why is this surprising? For many, stress actually increases media consumption, which can then exacerbate stress. It takes proactive action to stop this negative cycle.
11. Prioritize Sleep
No matter the situation, you can combat daily stress and improve mental health with adequate sleep. In fact, adults should all aim to get 7-9 hours of good quality sleep each night.
While adequate sleep is not always easy or even feasible, it’s a crucial health habit. The alternative, lack of sleep, can impair melatonin levels and cortisol, increase the risk of metabolic issues and weight gain, and generally deteriorate well-being.
What’s more, an overload of stress can be the cause of poor sleep (13), making the sleep-stress cycle a potential threat to health.
Aim for more sleep and less stress this week!
Why it’s surprising: Sleep is not a waste of time. In fact, it may be the most important activity when it comes to mental health.
Bottom Line
Life is not easy, and it feels like it’s getting tougher in many ways. Decide today that your health is priceless to you. Combat daily stress with our tools. Every other part of your life will benefit from less cortisol. Take action today!
