Body and psyche as tight as strings - this is how stress acts on our body. In small doses, stress is essential to the performance of the brain. But stress also has enormous destructive power, it can even kill you. Learn to deal with stress so that it helps, not harm.

The great Polish thinker Tadeusz Kotarbiński said that people are like deep-sea fish - when they are not subjected to the appropriatepressure , they die. Indeed, in order for our mind to work effectively, it needs optimal stimulation (called eustress). When it is missing, brain cells stop working. Ba! Experiments on rats have shown thatstressin the right dose causes a significant improvement in brain function, increases intelligence and increases the number of connections between neurons. Those people, whose work is not monotonous, forces them to solve new problems and to effort, i.e. it is stressful, they live longer!

A controlled dose of stress does good

Older people extend their lives and improve its quality if they do not give up their own activities, meetings with friends, working in the garden, etc. When they trainbrain , setting tasks for them, For example, when playing chess or solving crosswords, they are exposed to a certain amount of stress. But it becomes a driving force for gray cells, gives energy. Makes life more colorful.

See what helps you fight stress

Important

Voltage lowers immunity

Everything indicates that unloaded stress is a factor that significantly reduces the body's immunity. People subjected to prolonged or very strong pressures become ill, feel unwell, and slowly recover if they fall ill. In one experiment performed in the 1990s, people had little wounds in their mouths and looked at how quickly they healed. If these people were under stress, healing time was extended by up to 40%! The list of diseases caused by long-term stress also includes heart diseases (ischemic disease, heart attack, arrhythmias), arterial hypertension, gastric and duodenal ulcer disease, high blood cholesterol, neurosis, insomnia, menstrual disorders, and erectile dysfunction.

So it turns out that it's not about avoiding stress entirely. Let us rather avoid monotony, because too much tension resulting from e.g.a few hours of mental work is no longer so invigorating for the brain. The negative effects of such an effort begin to manifest themselves: stress and fatigue appear. Therefore, after a long study, exhausting office work, let's go to the swimming pool, and after digging flower beds in the garden, let's watch TV, read a book or play, for example, cards. Because stress is essential to life, provided that its excess is discharged, that stress is not chronic and not too strong. The devastating power of stress has only been talked about for half a century. The concept was introduced in 1956 by Hans Selye, an Austrian doctor working in Canada, but of course it has always existed. We've always had to deal with it somehow. Here are the ways people take hold of to overcome stress. Some of them are he althy, others are harmful.

Stress requires physical exertion

When a dog suddenly barks at us or honks a car, there are many physiological changes in the human body that prepare the body to fight or flee. Hormones (e.g. adrenaline) are released, blood clotting increases, blood pressure rises, heart rate and breathing are increased, and sugar from the liver is released into the blood. These are adaptations inherited from prehumans, for whom stress most often meant the need for a physical reaction (e.g. fighting or running away from a predator). This was sometimes associated with very high physical effort, during which the body burns hormones, sugar and other substances. When there is no physical exertion, the secreted chemicals continue to circulate in the blood and begin to act as toxins, damaging blood vessels and other organs. It is for this reason that unloaded stress can cause many psychosomatic diseases, hypertension, heart attack, asthma, gastrointestinal ulceration, skin diseases, and can also contribute to the development of neoplasms. In today's world, stress is primarily psychological - increasing loan installments, traffic jam or insomnia . However, the body still reacts to them with physiological changes. Therefore, people who are under stress should also exercise regularly. They allow the body to tire out and use up the reserves of substances produced in response to stress. Then adrenaline and other stress hormones will not wreak havoc on the body.

Fixations don't help with stress

If you conduct a survey and ask people what they are doing when they are under stress, you will find that the most common instinct is to make yourself a cup of coffee or tea. You don't drink the fourth coffee a day because you are thirsty, but to relieve mental tension. There isit is usually caused by trivial reasons, such as boredom, which psychologists treat as a destructive form of stress. The reflex to make another cup of something to drink belongs to the fixation of a broad category of routinized, thoughtlessly repeated activities caused by stress that has not been discharged. in the kitchen. If there are no keys there, she looks in the drawer again and sometimes does it repeatedly (this is what fixation is), as if the keys were to magically materialize there. Another example of fixation is the behavior of a student stressed out by a session, sitting in front of the computer and playing for hours, instead of learning. His father works similarly: he comes back from a stressful job, picks up the remote and flies through all 156 TV channels while drinking a fourth beer, though he doesn't really want it anymore, but somehow can't put it down. The purpose of these behaviors is to distract you from the reality that causes stress. Similarly, it works in the same way that you repeatedly check that the doors and windows have been closed, that the gas and water are turned off before you go out. People can check their e-mail inbox every half hour or see if they got a new SMS. Also, more complex behaviors such as workaholism, alcoholism, excessive eating and other addictions can be a stress reliever. Fixation is not a beneficial method of reducing tension as it only helps in the short term. It calms down for a short time, but in the long run it increases the amount of stress, e.g. a boy will fail the exam if he does not study.

How to relieve stress?

What are the beneficial ways to relieve stress then? One of them is seeking social support. Talking to a close person alleviates both the effects of long-term stress (e.g. when you have a pig boss, when a person is involved in a failed marriage or suffers from a terminal illness), it also helps in relieving short-term stress (e.g. when we are nervous about an exam, we had a bump or we had a fight at the office). At the same time, such a conversation does not have to be conducted professionally, it is enough if someone simply listens to us kindly. Speeching helps to share your trouble with someone - "now it is carried by two people" - which makes it less personal, and therefore also less strenuous. The conversation also gives the opportunity to see the problem from a new perspective, draw conclusions from it, give it meaning, get used to it and reconcile with it. Additionally, friendly reactions from other people ease the tension. So contact with your soul mate is simply healing. This is confirmed by researchcarried out in America in the late 1970s: in the group of people who isolate themselves from others, the mortality rate is almost twice as high. Similarly, the suppression of emotions has a negative effect on the human body. Expressing anger, regret, even despair out loud is better than hiding these feelings. It increases the body's resistance and contributes to the improvement of he alth. This seems to contradict common observations, as people who talk about their problems cry and seem unhappy. True, this is how talking about a problem works in the short term. However, in the long run, these people gain: they have a much better physical condition, a better mood.

The diary will help to relieve stress

The benevolent power of "getting out" works even when our confidant is a piece of paper. In one experiment, students were asked to write for several days about the most traumatic and saddening events in their lives. Preferably those that have not been told to anyone yet. The second (comparative) group was asked to write about minor topics during this time. It turned out that people who "confided in" a piece of paper had a worse mood right after the end of writing, but after a year it was noticed that they were less ill and reported to a doctor and were more cheerful than the people in the control group (they had better overall mood). When these experiments were repeated on people suffering from psychosomatic diseases (patients with rheumatoid arthritis and asthma were studied), it turned out that describing difficult events improved their he alth. and precise description of difficult events or experiences. If people typed superficially (for example, for 3 minutes instead of 20), their he alth did not improve. This means that expressing unpleasant states can relieve stress, as long as it is detailed and honest. This is also evidenced by the fact that people who write diaries regularly live (statistically) longer than those who have never done it.

Pleasant "psychological drugs"

A good way to reduce stress is relaxation. Schultz Autogenic Training is about imagining a point of light that travels inside the body and spreads a feeling of heaviness and warmth. Even a few minutes of this type of exercise reduces blood pressure, relaxes muscles, and slows down breathing. Similar effects are achieved by alternating muscle contraction and relaxation. Visualization is another way to relieve tension, which consists in creating pleasant images. You can, for example, imagine rocking in a hammock in a quiet onecorner of the garden on a sunny day. The more plastic such an image is, the more details of colors, sounds, smells it contains, the easier the body reacts as if someone is actually in a hammock. It is also worth meditating to focus your thoughts on the only stimulus (e.g. a point on a wall or a sound repeated over and over) . The mind then becomes free from all images and the body rests.

Problem

Women do better

Introverted, reticent, introverted people are less able to relieve stress. It is better for those who are willing to share their problems, need to talk. Women more often use the benefits of conversation, perhaps because the culture does not impose them, like men, to play the role of a tough guy who can deal with everything on his own, because boys do not cry … Men more often try to hide their problems from their relatives and pretend that nothing happened. The ability to express your emotions is one of the reasons why women live longer than men.

Breathing with the belly soothes the nerves

Since antiquity, people believe that "there is a soul in the breath." Yogis have mastered the breathing techniques of breathing. This supposedly simple activity actually has a great influence on the state of the body and well-being. People in stress begin to breathe very shallowly, the so-called clavicle breathing in which primarily the arms move. This type of breathing is related to experiencing anxiety. Meanwhile, the level of stress decreases significantly due to diaphragmatic breathing of deep, calm breaths in which primarily the abdomen is moving. Sometimes only 3-4 such breaths are needed for a trained person to relieve tension. This is a very good way to relax, e.g. before speaking in public or talking to an important person. As an aside, it is worth noting that smokers are right to say that smoking cigarettes calms them down, after all, it consists in deep breathing. Unfortunately, the inhaled dose of nicotine and tar poisons the body and over time leads to deep hypoxia.

Important magnesium and vitamin B6

People undergoing long-term stress usually have too little vitamin B6 and magnesium. The high level of adrenaline means that these compounds are excessively used as a backup source of energy. In turn, a magnesium deficiency increases stress. A vicious circle therefore arises: stress worsens and the deficiency of valuable elements grows. To prevent this from happening, you need to eat foods rich in these compounds in times of increased tension. These include: liver, nuts, dark green vegetables (e.g. spinach), grains, shellfish, cocoa.The release of tension is swimming, tai-chi and yoga, as they deepen breathing and clear the mind of unwanted thoughts. Walks, contact with nature or cycling have a similar effect.

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Psychology