Anxiety and Stress: Easy Tips to Manage

Anxiety and stress increase negative hormones in your body. These negative hormones hurt body systems, such as low mood, agitation, loss of concentration, and gastrointestinal problems such as diarrhea, constipation, headache, and many other disorders. However, to overcome this anxiety one has to increase positive hormones which balance the negative hormones. The positive hormones are serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. These hormones improve positive feelings and reduce anxiety.

Positive Hormones Help Reduce Anxiety and Stress:

How to Increase the oxytocin hormone (love hormone) in your body?

The positive hormone oxytocin is increased by following tips.

Call or talk to your loved one:

If you are sad, call any of your loved ones, with whom you share all your worries and can take help. This small talk with a loved one will increase oxytocin levels in your body and your anxiety will reduce and you will feel better. Oxytocin is a hormone that is responsible for happiness. Moreover, oxytocin is also called a love hormone because this hormone works many functions such as sexual arousal, mother-to-baby attachment, and romantic attachments. Thus oxytocin increases positive feelings and your anxiety will be reduced.

Play with children at home:

Playing with children also reduces anxiety levels by the secretion of oxytocin. So, if you are sad or anxious to play with children you will feel better.

Increase Endorphins level in your body:

Endorphins are other hormones in the body, which help by reducing stress.

How do you trigger endorphins to be released into your body?

 You can increase its level by following.

Do an exercise or a fast walk:

By exercising or taking a fast walk, your body releases a hormone called endorphins. Endorphin is again a hormone that causes happiness in your body. These hormones are released in response to pain or stress, to trigger endorphins release do a walk, have sex with your partner, eat your favorite food, or have a body massage. These activities will trigger endorphin release, which further will reduce your stress level and you will feel better.

Dancing, going for a hike and Swimming also helps in the release of endorphins in the body.

Meditation: Close your eyes take deep breaths and focus your mind on relaxation Exercise can calm your mind and help in releasing endorphins.

Release Dopamine in your body to reduce anxiety and stress:

Dopamine is another chemical in your body released from brain cells, which causes happiness. This hormone motivates and keeps a person goal-oriented. A low level of dopamine makes a person depressed and demotivated.

You may increase dopamine levels in your body by following tips.

   Have a good sleep to reduce stress:

Researchers found that dopamine levels increase in the morning at wakeup time and their levels fall in the evening at the time of sleeping.so, maintaining a healthy sleep pattern each day maintains a good dopamine level in your body.

Listen to your favorite song/music:

 Researchers found that listening to music boosts dopamine levels in the brain. Therefore listening to your favorite music can reduce your anxiety /stress level by boosting your dopamine levels.

Exercise Regularly:

Dopamine is released in response to stress, By doing exercise when body muscles come under stress, the body sends a message to the brain to produce dopamine.

Eat proteins in your diet. Having a diet rich in proteins helps in maintaining dopamine levels.

Have a sunbath: Dopamine is released when the body is exposed to sunlight. Sun exposure should be avoided in strong sunlight, especially between 10 AM to 4 PM. You must cover yourself with sunscreens

Go For Shopping: Going shopping will divert your mind and release dopamine which will reduce stress.

  Keep your gut healthy.

Researchers have found that there is a strong relationship between gut health and the brain. Some bacteria species found in the gut produce dopamine. However, a healthy gut is important for dopamine release.   

How to improve serotonin levels?

 Another chemical in our body is serotonin. Serotonin plays a vital role in levels of the body’s major functions, such as feeling happy, and motivated, helps in bone health, and digestion, and even helps in healing wounds.

 Lower levels of serotonin are linked with depression and low mood, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety.

How you can increase serotonin levels in your body?

 Serotonin can be improved by having some medications but it is better to improve it naturally by following tips.

Have a Better Sleep: Having a better sleep around at least 7 hours /24 hours helps in an increase in serotonin levels.

 Exercise: Daily exercise for at least 30 minutes helps in increasing serotonin levels.

Sun Exposure: Exposure to the sun at safe times also increases serotonin levels.

Nutrition: A diet rich in Tryptophan increases serotonin levels. Food containing tryptophan in eggs, fish, chees, peanuts, milk, pumpkin seeds, turkey, etc.

Hence stress is caused due to bad chemicals in the body. Bad chemicals worsen stress and anxiety and good chemicals as discussed above help in managing and reducing stress. Try your good chemicals in balance by using the tips in the article.