If you have been told that being stressed is good for you because it gives you an adrenalin rush and helps you to get through the day, hitting deadlines and staying focused, you might wonder whether there is any point in trying to relax at all. However, the truth is that not all stress is good for you; too much for too long can actually cause you physical and mental damage. Therefore, taking time to relax is all-important for your health. Here are some more benefits of taking time to relax when you need to.
Keep Your Heart Healthy
When you are chronically stressed, your heart is the organ that is likely to suffer the most. Stress causes heart attacks, heart disease, and high blood pressure, and all of that can be a dangerous combination. Although studies aren’t conclusive as to exactly what it is about stress that affects the heart so badly, it could be the adrenaline that floods the heart when there are intense periods of stressor sudden shocks such as a death or the breakdown of a relationship. If you are already stressed, then this boost of adrenalin can cause even more damage than it would if you hadn’t been.
Taking the time to relax every now and then will lower your stress levels so that if you do experience some painful episode of life, the impact won’t be so bad on your heart.
Your Immune System
If you take the time to regularly relax and you aren’t running around stressed and overwhelmed in life, your immune system will work better, and you will catch fewer colds and other illnesses. This is mainly down to the inflammation that occurs when your body is overly stressed. When stressed, you simply can’t fight inflammation as you would be able to if you were more relaxed and when your immune system’s cells are inflamed, they can’t fight off diseases effectively because they are tackling the inflammation instead.
It doesn’t take much to lower the stress levels in your body when you are relaxing. Just ten minutes a day can be enough to start with if you don’t have time for anymore. The key to relaxing is not what you do, but the fact that you are able to ‘switch off’ from everyday life when you are doing it. You might, for example, take the time to search for new JUUL flavors online, or read a book, or you might go for a run, or paint, or meditate, or even have a nap. There are hundreds of relaxation techniques you can adopt, so finding something that will suit you and help your lifestyle, in general, shouldn’t be too hard.
Better Memory
When chronic stress occurs, the prefrontal cortex of the brain is impaired. This is the part of the brain thatis involved in cognitive analysis and behavior. It also allows for creative, abstract thought. It also impacts memory, and if the prefrontal cortex is impaired, simple tasks become difficult to deal with because the standard muscle memory systems within the body just don’t work properly.
This is why relaxing before an exam or test is crucial for success. The more stressed you become, the less you will be able torecall when you get into the classroom. If you are able to relax, you will do much better. This can be difficult, which is why it is important to practice relaxation as much as possible.
Less Chance Of A Stroke
When you are more relaxed in general, you will be at less risk of having a stroke. Strokes occur when blood pressure is too high for too long, and bleeding in the brain then affects your ability to function. When you are more relaxed, your blood pressure is lower, which will naturally, therefore, reduce your chance of having a stroke.
As well as this, studies have shown that people who are less stressed in general – the ones who are more easily able to relax – are usually healthier in other aspects of life such as their diet and the fact that they exercise regularly. These also reduce the chances of stroke, so relaxing definitely has a positive impact on health and lifestyle.
Less Chance Of Depression
Although it is true that anyone can experience depression at any time, and the reasons are not yet entirely understood, something that is often linked to depression is being chronically stressed. Chronic stress can kill brain cells in the hippocampus, and in extreme cases, it can also prevent new ones being created. The hippocampus is the area of the brain that is responsible for dealing with stress, and if it is damaged then stress can become long-term and dangerous.
Stress also causes more cortisol hormone to be released. This is known as the stress hormone, and it is what it so useful in small doses when it comes to productivity and being focused on a task. When there is too much of it, it can affect the production of dopamine and serotonin, hormones that make you feel happy and produce symptoms of depression instead. All in all, being able to relax can help you immensely when it comes to staving off depression.
Helps Weight Loss
If you thought that relaxing was about lying around doing nothing, and therefore not so great for your overall health, you would be partly right. Doing nothing can sometimes be the best way to relax, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad for you. When you are less stressed, you are less likely to crave foods that have high sugar and fat content – you won’t need the comfort foods to feel better, unlike when you are stressed and overwhelmed. Therefore, you can more easily keep your weight in check, even if you are choosing to relax by sitting still and doing absolutely nothing.
Better Skin
You may have noticed that when you have something important to do such as take an exam, give a presentation at work, go out on a date, and so on, that you suddenly have an acne breakout, even if you hadn’t had one in years or even decades. This is all down to being over-stressed. When you are stressed, your hormones go out of balance and this means that too much oil is produced by the skin, clogging your pores and erupting into acne.
Taking the time to relax in the lead up to something important will reduce the chances of an acne breakout just in time for the big day.
