What is stress?
What is stress? It’s not just meeting a deadline or being busy. It’s much more than that much more damage to your body than you might think. Think of tension, anxiety, not being able to say no, wanting to conform too much to the expectations of others, not setting boundaries, but also poor nutrition creates stress in the body. Poor nutrition makes the body work very hard by consuming hard-to-digest proteins, think dairy and gluten, or to get rid of toxins, think sugar and artificial flavours and dyes.
Stress hormones
The most common stress hormones are cortisol, adrenaline, and cathecholamine. Cortisol is one of the most important stress hormones. An excess of cortisol can make you a wreck. However, a shortage of this hormone is not recommended either. Cortisol is produced in the adrenal glands. Your body makes cortisol throughout the day, following the day and night rhythms.
In the morning the cortisol level is highest. During the day less and less cortisol is produced and around 10 o’clock in the evening your cortisol level has reached a low point. Your body and mind have then come to rest and are preparing to go to sleep.
Acute stress
However, cortisol also has peaks. When danger threatens that you have to flee from or fight against, cortisol, together with an activated sympathetic nervous system, ensures that extra sugar and oxygen go straight to your brain and that more of the stimulating neurotransmitter dopamine is released. So you get a jolt of energy and become sharp. And that’s handy if you have to give an important presentation and crucial if you have to jump aside for an approaching streetcar. Cortisol therefore also has a positive side and it is certainly not the intention to try to avoid every form of stress. A problem only arises when your cortisol level remains permanently high. Then there is no longer acute stress, but chronic stress.
Chronic stress
Chronic stress can be caused by anything and everything. Think of an unhealthy diet, a demanding job, relationship problems, excessive exercise, a fight with a friend … Whenever you experience stress, your adrenal glands produce cortisol. An overdose of cortisol makes you feel agitated and unable to sleep well. And that often leads to even more stress or even adrenal exhaustion. Too much cortisol in your blood also suppresses your immune system. Scientists also speak of ‘the open window effect’: your immune system is so low that infections can easily ‘blow in’.
How to reduce stress?
Fortunately, we do not have to stand idly by while cortisol undermines our health. There are ways to deal with our skyrocketing cortisol levels. Here are some ways to reduce stress or at least become aware of it. Being aware is already a first step toward recognition.
Lifestyle
Take a look at your current lifestyle, what do you eat, how do you sleep, do you exercise? Put it in order and think about what it would take to make you feel better.
Accept what we cannot change
We can accept what we cannot change by changing what we can. Make choices that are realistic, not out of reach.
Create environments that reduce stress
Colors of the walls, floor coverings and furniture can reduce stress. Hues such as cooling greens and clues are positive colors that an reduce stress and create a sense of well being.
Choose your friends carefully
Your choice of friends can be the key to stress reduction. Friends should be the people who help us to increase our strengths and create innovative solutions to stressful situations. They support us and reaffirm that we are not alone.
Stop and look at yourself
Take time to recognize signs of stress such as anger, poor diet, exhaustion, and poor quality sleep. As you become aware of these signs you are beginning to identify how to make stress work. You are being proactive, not reactive to situations.
Use stress as a teacher
As a crisis occurs stop and think of how to use it to make things better. Try to think about creative solutions. When it doesn’t go right, try to go left. Make lemonade out of the lemons in life.
Maintain a sense of humor
Laughing at oneself can release potential stress from the inside. Laughing reates less wrinkles than worrying.
Organize
Disorganisation creates stress. Taking the ‘dis’ out of the disorganisation can produce a aense of control in knowing what will happen, that in turn reduces stress.
Make decisions
Indecision increases stress. Good leaders make decisions and act on them. If a bad decision is made, reevaluate.
Don’t say yes to everything
Recognize what your strengths are and focus on taking the time to do a project built on them. Taking on too many projects results in loss of controls and creates stress.
Leave time for the unexpected
Look for the natural coping ability to deal with the unexpected. Coping requires time. Time is needed to perceive a crisis and rally our internal and external resources.
