5 Ways to Relieve Stress and Help Your Health

February 27, 2023•8 min read

Have you felt stressed out recently? You’re not alone. Many of us experience too much stress in our lives, but the good news is that there are steps we can take to alleviate it.

There are different ways to define stress, but to put it simply, it is a physical or emotional tension, and whatever causes it is known as a stressor. There are physical stressors as well as mental ones.

Examples of physical stressors are injury, illness, physical exertion, and fatigue, among others. A mental or emotional stressor might be a looming work deadline, a nerve-wracking presentation, or a negative interaction with another person. A positive event, such as starting a new job or having a baby, can also cause stress.

Stress has many effects on our physical and mental health, both in the short and long term. It’s also connected with blood sugar levels, so stress is something to be especially aware of if you have diabetes or prediabetes.

Keep reading to learn more about stress and your body, plus five solutions you can use to reduce the negative effects of stress.

How Your Body Responds to Stress

When you encounter a stressor, either physical or mental, your body has a specific response.

When your brain perceives a potential threat or challenge, the body responds in a way that is meant to help you survive in a potentially harmful situation – often called the “fight or flight” response. During this, specific hormones are released, like cortisol and epinephrine (also known as adrenaline).

These hormones and others cause various physical effects, including an increased heart rate and breathing rate, which allows the body to transport more oxygen to the muscles. The liver also releases its stored form of glucose into the bloodstream to provide more energy to the body’s cells, which means blood sugar levels are now elevated.

These processes and many others are meant to help the body respond physically to the threat or challenge. Once the stressor has passed, the body’s systems should return to baseline.

How Stress Affects Your Health

Many of us run into short-term, or acute, stressors every day. These typically pass and we move on from them fairly quickly – for example, running into a traffic jam on our commute.

But many of us also deal with long-term or chronic stress, which lingers for weeks, months, or longer. Examples could include a draining job, a difficult relationship, chronic illness, or financial issues.

Though stress is a normal and unavoidable part of life to some extent, too much of it, whether acute or chronic, has negative effects on physical and mental health.

Everyone is affected differently, but for some, stress may cause feelings of hopelessness, irritability, anxiety, depression, being overwhelmed or a lack of motivation.

Physically, potential effects of stress can show up as headaches, digestive issues, lack of energy or focus, sleeping issues, and unintentional weight loss or gain. Excessive stress can also contribute to the development of chronic health issues such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Stress and Blood Sugar

What is the connection between stress and blood sugar?

During the stress response, hormones such as cortisol and glucagon cause the liver to release stored energy into the blood so that the body’s cells have access to more energy. This causes an increase in blood sugar.

For someone with diabetes, the body is not able to utilize the excess glucose adequately, which can make it harder to manage blood sugar and lead to issues with hyperglycemia.

High cortisol levels can also affect appetite and eating habits. Many of us tend to eat more or choose sugary “junk” foods when stressed, which can wreak havoc on blood sugar.

This means that having lots of stress in your life can make your diabetes harder to control, so it’s especially important to be mindful of stress and take steps to manage it.

5 Science-Backed Methods for Stress Relief

Now that you know more about how stress can affect your health, you may feel motivated to try some new techniques to combat its negative effects. Read on for five science-backed ideas you can incorporate into your life.

1. Get Moving

Physical activity has nearly countless benefits, and its ability to protect the body from negative effects of stress is a major one.

Exercise itself is a form of physical stress, but it also helps the body handle stress better in the long run. One possible reason for this is that exercising requires many of the body’s systems, like the cardiovascular and muscular systems, to work together, so regular exercise helps those systems work more efficiently together and the body gets better at dealing with that physical stress.1

Research has shown that regular exercise helps limit the nervous system’s response to stress, contributing to lower levels of stress hormones after physical activity.2,3 Exercise also boosts neurotransmitters in the brain that positively affect mood and behavior and has been found to help reduce stress-related mental disorders such as anxiety and depression.2,3

If you’re wondering what type of exercise is best for stress reduction and how much you should be getting, the most research has been done on aerobic exercise in particular.2 This is any exercise that makes your heart and lungs work harder than usual.

For maximum health benefits, including stress reduction, it’s recommended that adults get at least 150 minutes weekly of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (like brisk walking or riding a bike on level ground) or at least 75 minutes weekly of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise (like running or swimming laps).4

2. Meditate

There are different forms of meditation, each slightly different in practice. One particular type that has been shown to provide measurable benefits is mindfulness meditation.

It involves setting aside time to sit quietly, calm your mind and body, and pay attention to your senses and breathing.

Research studies of mindfulness meditation practices found that participants had reductions in negative factors like anxiety, stress, depression, and pain and noted improved overall mental well-being and an increased ability to cope with stress.5,6 One study found that participants also had a decreased post-stress inflammatory response, suggesting this may be of benefit in chronic inflammatory health conditions.7

Just doing even five minutes of meditation per day will allow you to start experiencing its benefits. If you want to try it out for yourself, there are many virtual resources like meditation apps or free videos on YouTube that make it easy to get started.

3. Practice Gratitude

Making a point to take note of the things, experiences, or memories in your life that you’re grateful for can also have a beneficial effect on stress levels.

A review of multiple research studies concluded that practicing gratitude had a positive effect on subjective feelings of well-being in participants and was also linked to lower levels of stress and negative emotions.8,9,10

Several of these studies looked specifically at the practice of gratitude writing. To try this for yourself, start by writing about an experience that you’re grateful for or writing a letter to someone in your life thanking them for something they did for you. Another option is to make a simple written or mental list of a few things you are grateful for each day. Now, take a breath in and feel the gratitude!

4. Prioritize Sleep

If you’re feeling stressed, sleep might not always feel like the highest priority, but the importance of getting enough sleep shouldn’t be underestimated.

Sleep deficiency is linked with chronic health issues including diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.11 Lack of sleep can also cause abnormal cortisol levels,12 which as previously discussed can disrupt different body systems.

One poll of over 7,000 Americans found that higher well-being was associated with higher amounts of sleep. This relationship peaked at eight hours of sleep for adults under age 65.13

How much sleep should you be getting? Although this varies by individual, the CDC recommends that adults 18-60 years old get seven or more hours of sleep per night.14

Two tips to help improve your sleep quality and quantity include sticking to a regular sleep schedule and making your bedroom a more calm, relaxing environment. For more ideas, stay tuned for a blog post about sleep hygiene coming soon!

5. Control Your Breathing

Your breathing is closely tied with stress. When you are stressed, your breathing can become shallow and rapid. However, research has shown that controlling and slowing down your breath can improve both mental and physical stress-related symptoms.

Benefits may include lowered blood pressure and heart rate, reduced levels of stress hormones in the blood, decreased feelings of stress, increased physical energy and concentration, increased feelings of calm, and overall improved mood.15,16

When practicing breathing exercises, it’s most beneficial if you are breathing deeply into your abdomen, making sure that your stomach, not just your chest, is rising and falling as you breathe in and out.

One popular method of deep breathing is called box breathing, also known as square or 4x4 breathing. It involves breathing in for four slow counts, holding the breath for four counts, releasing it slowly for four counts, and then pausing for four more counts before repeating the process a few more times.17 Try it out and exhale that stress away!

I hope this post has given you some inspiration if too much stress has been getting you down lately. All of these ideas are relatively simple to try, so choose one and see how it goes!

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