Stress Relief: Fight that Stress for Good – How healthy life style helps decreasing stress!!

Charlotte Adam is 33, yet just one year after her marriage she started feeling as if she was 63. “It felt so unreal, as if life was just passing by me. I was stuck in the cycle of over-thinking, over-analyzing and worrying. What Jim was up to, what was he thinking, every little argument that we would have I would sit for hours and think about it. My work, the morning alarm would make me stress as I would be there in bed thinking all the conversations in my head and worrying about how the day at office will proceed. It was getting really difficult to manage all of that, so difficult that I was almost reaching a breaking point”.

The combined stress of a new marriage, an exhausting job and juggling the financial responsibilities is overwhelming task – and more often than not a trap that leads many people to stress. Stress is sneaky, one moment you are there on your own, happy and contented and the next moment you are worrying about future possibilities without even realizing that they are hampering your ability to enjoy the present. Research has shown that stress is a medical condition faced by almost 75% of people living in the UK and US. The worrying statistics do not just end here, out of these 75%, 47% people turn to overeating for stress relief – a whopping number of 37 people from a sample of hundred; no wonder obesity is an increasing problem!!!

American Psychological Association goes on to tell us that 47% of the people have sleep problems related to stress, 42% of people get depressed and the problem continues to rise. Not only stress is slowly eating away at the fabric of the society, it is spreading its wings and increasing the damage caused to it. Talk about increased waist lines, increased medical assistance requirement, higher failed relationships and less happy people just to talk about the major drawbacks of stress.

Stress hence is an immense problem in face of such statistics and the sad part is, it continues to grow!!

Is there any simple solution that can effectively beat the stress which I can use?
  To simply put, the answer of this complicated and complex question is, a simple and realistic YES. It is even emphatic, for all of its heinous nature and attributes, stress is pretty easy to beat through an active and healthy lifestyle.

For avoiding stress completely, you have to understand the underlying nature of the stress – the cause analysis. Say for example, you are having severe stress because of financial constraints, you will have to create a long term plan to do well in life but you also need to stop the stress from pushing you in to depression – the problem with depression is that once you are depressed, it only gets worse. There is no effective short term medication solution present, a fact that even the best of psychologists and doctors realize and putting people on medication is only the last resort. Medicine overdose and over reliance as studies have shown are equally dangerous as stress – and hence doctors have been really careful.

The best way to eliminate and lessen stress is to start realizing the true potential of our own body. Human body at its current form is the result of years of evolution, thousands if not millions, but despite the changes it still maintains its basic desire to stay healthy and strong. Face it, our ancestors were used to walking, running, hunting and doing manual labor, all activities that require tremendous amount of physical labor. The human muscles also get better and stronger the more they are used, unlike many metals that rust and deteriorate overtime, muscles become stronger and better when they are regularly used and have problems if they are used less. A stark contrast!!!

Exercise for us is not just a modern posh activity which is fashionable; it is an essential activity that our body requires!!!

For Charlotte Adam, it was the realization that she needed to have some exercise time in the morning to relieve her mind from the stress that worked like a charm. All that was required from her was to putting that alarm clock an hour earlier, getting up, finding her track suit and having an early morning run followed by a hot shower. The result was astonishing even for herself, “For me, it was almost like a second life”, she smiles. “It was the perfect moment for me when I made this decision, that extra hour gave me time to think and the exercise helped me have energy all through the day. Even Jim who was apprehensive of the idea at first had to buy in when he would see me fresh at the breakfast. He was like wow, you look so happy, there must be something nice about it”. A couple of months in her routine, Charlotte is much happier, able to fight stress and does not feel that her waistline is still growing.

“For me, this has changed everything, from the increasing fear or losing my attraction and worrying about things that actually do not matter to a more confident and healthy person. Heck it even has improved our sex life”, she chuckles a bit shyly.

Stress can result in to a massive debacle if it is not managed at the right time, and if it is, it never becomes a problem of any sort. All you need to do is to start a little exercise and hopefully you will begin to see the improvement!!!

So, are you ready??













Photo credit: SOMBILON ART, MEDIA and PHOTOGRAPHY / Foter / CC BY-ND