Stress gives you immediate signs that it is around.
It can cause emotional distress through depression and anxiety. It can also spread throughout your body and far past your emotions.
In fact, you may start feeling different issues in your body. You may even notice certain issues that are more long-term problems from ongoing stress in your life. Here are some ways that stress affects your entire body and what to do to reduce these issues.
Tension and Pain
One of the most common ways that stress can affect your entire body is by causing tension.
This tension can be in your muscles, your neck, and even in your nasal passages.
The tension can lead to pain as well. This pain can be in the form of severe headaches or body aches that require medication to heal. If you have ongoing stress and tension, you may find yourself experiencing issues related to inflammation and even serious body issues.
Eating Disorders
When some people are stressed they may experience eating issues that lead to severe disorders. You may find yourself eating too much or too little. You may even find yourself experiencing so much stress that you can't keep food down. This can lead to an emotional and mental connection that drives you towards anorexia or other related issues. Ideally, you want to find an outlet for your eating when stress is concerned. Getting the stress out in some other way is the ideal option to avoid the two extremes of eating disorders.
Heart Issues
You may think that the eating disorder issue or tension and pain is not something to worry about it because of how you deal with stress. One thing that you may not think of though is how stress affects your heart. You can find yourself screaming or so frustrated that your blood pressure rises. When this happens you can experience shortness of breath and even stroke or heart attack if it is ongoing and happens often. This is a severe stress related issue that should be held above the others as a focus and important cause to reduce your stress.
You will find that as you remove stress from your daily life, you will start to find the long term effects will reduce. To remove them completely, you will need to focus on each aspect and work to make sure that your stress does not get to a level that the long term issues raise again. Regular exercise routine, meditation, and healthy eating can all help with this.
Eating tips to help manage your stress naturally
Managing stress naturally often begins with your eating habits. There are certain foods you should be avoiding, such as caffeine and high amounts of sugar, because they tend to make stress worse over time. However, there are also a lot of diet recommendations for stress relief, including the following foods.
Eat More Complex Carbs
The good thing about this diet tip is that not only will it help with stress, but it is a good healthy dieting guideline to keep for overall health and even weight loss. Complex carbs take longer to digest, which can help you maintain your energy and stabilize blood sugar levels. They include whole grain and whole wheat bread, pasta, cereal, and rice. Having some oatmeal or overnight oats can also be great if you are trying to eat more complex carbs. You want to try and avoid refined carbs, like white bread, white rice, and regular pasta.
Load Up on Veggies
Yes, you are going to hear it again: you need to eat your veggies! Vegetables are so important for all the nutrients they provide, which can also help to reduce your stress levels. For example, asparagus has a lot of folate, also known as folic acid, which can be wonderful for helping to relieve stress. Avocadoes are also recommended due to the vitamin E, folate, beta-carotene, and lutein, all of which are food for blocking fats that can increase your stress. Both of these healthy foods are easy to add to meals, from having sliced avocado on your salad, to eating asparagus on the side of your fish or chicken for a nutritious dinner.
Have Some Dark Chocolate
Believe it or not, there are some sweet treats you can have if you want to reduce your stress, but you should go for the dark chocolate varieties. Dark chocolate tends to be lower in fat and calories, and also has tons of antioxidants. These antioxidants will help to balance out the stress hormones in your body, thus reducing those stress levels.
Choose Fatty Fish
For lunch or dinner, try to add some fatty fish at least 2-3 days a week. It is low in fat and high in protein, plus it is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids. These are also high up on the list of nutrients that help with excessive amounts of stress. Try fatty fish like tuna, salmon, and mackerel.