How Stress May be Impacting Your Life: Ways to Get Back on Track, Naturally
Stress in small doses can be a great thing. Moderate and manageable levels of stress, like starting a new job, can get our wheels turning, build resilience and enhance motivation.
Chronic stress, or ‘distress’, is where it begins to become harmful for our minds and bodies. Excessive job demands, unrealistic perfectionist expectations, rumination or relationship issues can all be a source of negative stress, draining our motivation and wearing us thin.
Here are three different ways negative stress may be impacting your day to day (and some tips on what to do about it!)
Issues with Sleep
If you’re over forty and experiencing stress, then you know that it can be a real struggle to get a good night’s sleep. Stress and sleep issues tend to go hand in hand. This is because hormones like cortisol increase during states of high stress and create an environment in your body that makes it difficult to sleep soundly.
Unfortunately, a lack of sleep may also be a contributing factor to your stress, leading to a positive feedback loop of less sleep and more stress. Recent research shows how poor sleeping patterns may impact your mood, triggering, you guessed it, anxiety and stress responses.
Calming your thoughts and relaxing your body at night can be difficult for many, but there are a few ways you can help your body to wind down before heading to bed. Perfecting your sleep routine is a great place to start as well as staying away from caffeine in the afternoon and evening. You can also invest in herbal remedies that contain Passionflower such as Sedasleep. Passionflower is traditionally used to relieve sleeplessness and reduce disturbed or restless sleep.
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Sedasleep contains a herbal combination of Passion flower and Hops. Passion flower is traditionally used in Western herbal medicine to relieve sleeplessness and reduce disturbed or restless sleep. |
Stress can make it difficult for you to focus
Excessive stress tends to sap up our mental energy and impact our ability to concentrate. When you feel anxious, your brain is in a state of fight or flight and it can be hard to focus on anything else. It’s almost impossible to stay in the present and concentrate while our minds are ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.
While a short-term rise in stress may be beneficial for motivation, prolonged elevation of adrenaline and cortisol wreaks havoc on our nervous system, leading to brain fog and impacting our cognitive function and short-term memory.
Natural supplements can help to alleviate some of the stress you’re feeling on a day-to-day basis. Bioplus Sedacalm helps to relieve nervous tension and restlessness. Alternatively, mindfulness and medication have been shown to decrease stress and improve concentration and if you have a more get up and go attitude, endurance training increases the production of endorphins.
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Sedacalm contains Passion flower, a calmative herb in traditional Western herbal medicine that is used to relieve nervous tension and restlessness and as a nervine to support the nervous system. |
Stress can impact your immune system
You’re probably aware that excessive stress and anxiety isn’t great for you, but you may not realise how much of a toll they take on your immune system.
Prolonged stress can suppress the production of white blood cells which fight off infections and can reduce the number of T-cells in your bloodstream, which are responsible for fighting viruses. When these two factors combine with increased cortisol levels, it’s easy to see why chronic stress makes you more susceptible to illness.
By investing in a high-quality diet, specifically rich in vitamin C you can make sure your immune system is on its A-game. Next time you’re at the grocery store, make sure to pack your trolly full of citrus fruits, broccoli and spinach.
While stress and your reaction to it can seem out of your control at times, there are some things you can do day-to-day to prevent it from becoming too much. Learning what works for you will help you to keep your inner peace levels in check.
