One Snarky Chica with Issues

In today’s busy society, stress is something that everyone probably experiences. And it is no secret that stress is not good for your body. In fact, it’s downright harmful. As someone that feels stressed more often than not, I’m always looking for ways to calm down and de-stress. On Yahoo today, there is an article by Dr. Mao for being stress-free for a longer life that is being highlighted.

The article gives 6 tips on getting stress-free.

Apparently when you are stressed out, your body pumps up its production and release of adrenaline, and caffeine stimulates that. As if getting stressed isn’t bad enough, that morning cup of coffee is making it even worse for us!

Meditation at the end of the day is suggested to help de-stress you. When I was typing that sentence I accidentally typed ‘medication’ at first instead of ‘meditation.’ Freudian slip?

The most interesting tip mentioned in the article is breathing. Apparently you can do some breathing exercises and exhale away your stress. This is not something that I have heard of before and I admit I am a bit skeptical of its effectiveness. Although, I suppose in theory it is similar to the whole counting to 10 when you are angry exercise.

Clutter = stress. I definitely believe this. As someone that has moved around a lot, clutter can be super stressful come moving day. And if you have children, then you end up stressing about them breaking something or if they are small, choking on something.

Leave time for yourself seems to go without saying; at least I would think so. I would think if you have a full schedule and feel stressed that it would not take a lot to realize that lightening your load would also lighten the stress load.

Changing your perspective help you to see through any illusions. This makes a lot of sense, however I suspect it is not as easy to implement as it seems. Kind of like Communism – it looks great on paper, but in practice it’s not so great.

Those are the 6 tips that are listed in the article, but I think he left out some obvious ones here that are worth mentioning.

1. Sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep then you’ll get stressed out more easily. And you’ll probably be stressed about the fact that you didn’t get enough sleep. It’s a no-win.
2. Diet. Caffeine was mentioned, but eating healthy in general should help keep your stress levels lower as well. Not to mention the fact that if you are eating healthy then you are less likely to gain weight, and gaining weight is always stressful, at least for us chicas.
3. Exercise. Studies have proven that regular exercise helps keep stress and depression at bay. In fact, if I’m feeling stressed I try to go to the gym and work out all of my frustrations. And guess what, it works!