When most people think about fitness, health and nutrition, stress is sometimes overlooked. Stress can affect many things towards having good health. Stress not only affects our body internally. It can influence our feelings, our thoughts and our behaviors.
Anxiety caused by stress affects the body in different ways for different people depending upon how they handle the stress. When not properly dealt with, we can lead to headaches, muscle tension, fatigue and sleep problems, chest pains, upset stomach or ulcers and can even cause changes in our sex drive. Mood changes will occur like anxiety, lack of motivation, anger, depression, memory problems or inability to focus, restlessness, and a feeling of being overwhelmed.
The symptoms that affect your health can begin subtly and slowly increase to where you may not even know it has been affecting your health. You might just believe the symptoms are related to catching a cold or illness or just not getting a good night’s rest.
Unfortunately, there is no way to completely remove stress from our lives, whether it comes from work, school, family, or friends. There are however ways to take steps to manage your stress.
You can reduce your stress by:
• Begin a regular physical activity or workout throughout the week
• Eat a healthy diet and reduce carbohydrates. Carbohydrates will spike insulin and give an energy boost but there is always a drop which follows the rise.
• Reduce your caffeine intake.
• Spend time with friends and family (the ones that don’t cause you stress).
• Find a hobby like photography or hiking.
• Practice relaxation techniques like deep breathing or mediation.
• Go to bed early to insure a good night’s sleep
• Read a book or spend time listening to music
• Avoid tobacco, alcohol and illegal substances
• Spend time in a sauna
• Find humor in things like a comedy show
• Avoid procrastination
• Spend time with your pets
One of the best ways that I found to relieve stress is to get back in touch with nature. Have you heard the term “Go touch grass!”. It started as an internet idiom that referred to getting off the computer, handhelds, laptops and phones and “go outside”. We, as a society, spend too much time focusing on social media (unless you are checking out, reading, commenting and sharing my blog post, in that case it’s ok). This expression of “Go touch grass!” implied that this person spent too much time inside and seemed to be out of touch with reality.
You might be surprised how relaxing the outdoors can be. Sometimes we forget about driving along the coast and watching the waves of the ocean (for us that live near the ocean or lakes). Even taking walks and observing the sway of the trees in the wind can put us at ease.
As most of you might know, I started a new job back in April 2024. This job was flying helicopter tours at the west rim of the Grand Canyon. I am not sure what was more exciting for me, to get back into doing helicopter tours again or seeing the Grand Canyon, which I had never seen before. What I found at this new job, since we fly out of a glamping ranch, was not only the horses, buffalo, goats, chickens and llamas that they have at the ranch but the other wildlife. I have seen coyotes, white-tailed deer, elk, eagles, vultures, hares, quails, owls, bats and road runners. As the monsoon season progresses, you can see thunderstorms and lightning in the distance. Even possibly a rainbow. I think the most impressive view is at night. Without the light pollution (background lights mostly from populated areas or cities), there is a really clear view of the vast amount of stars in the night sky, which make up the Milky Way galaxy.
Maybe this is sounding more like an ad for the ranch and yes, it possible can be:
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