It is impossible to go through your life without ever once experiencing stress. Regardless of the cause, or the severity, stress is inescapable. Your job, family, relationships, can all contribute to everyday anxieties, and if left unchecked, it won’t take long for this constant stress to take a toll on your health.
The only sure-fire way to reduce or eliminate stress in your life is to remove yourself from stressful situations, even if it’s only temporary. Allowing yourself to take a break, and finding time to relax is crucial to maintaining a healthy life. Let’s take a look at how relaxation benefits your mental, physical, and emotional health.
Mental Health
- Experiencing one source of stress can often trigger a mental domino effect; making you feel stressed about other, smaller issues. This can cause a sense of being overwhelmed when faced with the slightest questions or problems.
- It is theorized that stress hormones, known as cortisol, will actually limit the number of functioning neurons in the brain; making it more difficult for you to learn new things, focus, and even solve problems.
- Relaxation reduces fatigue, which in turn reduces irritability and anger.
- A rested and relaxed mind will experience better focus, concentration, and ability to think positively.
- Focusing on your own self-care can put you back on a path to better mental health.
Physical Health
- Of all the physical health issues that can be caused by an abundance of stress, heart disease is the most serious.
- In the US, every 1 in 4 deaths is related to heart disease. It is the leading cause of death for both women and men in the US.
- Stress often causes us to make choices that can lead to poor heart health. Whether it’s eating unhealthy foods, drinking too much alcohol, or skipping your daily exercise routine, these reactions can put additional strain on your heart health.
- Prioritizing relaxation helps lower your blood pressure, and slows your heart rate, and reduces inflammation; thereby decreasing your risk of heart disease.
- Discover more about heart health with this helpful graphic as well as checking out Health Net’s facebook page for more information on how you can take care of your heart health.
Emotional Health
- We’ve already mentioned how the stress hormone can affect your cognitive functions, but cortisol can also reduce your dopamine and serotonin levels. This sort of deficiency has often been linked to depression.
- Serotonin and dopamine are responsible for controlling your body’s emotions, energy levels, and sleep, among other things.
- Over 16 million US adults have experienced at least one depressive episode in a given year.
- Relaxation allows for your body to recover your levels of these neurotransmitters, making it possible for you to avoid triggering a depressive episode.
In our fast-paced world, relaxation is too-often sidelined in favor of what we perceive to be increased productivity. But no amount of productivity is worth your health. If you find yourself experiencing constant stress, consider taking some time to focus on relaxation. Whether that means going for a run, sleeping in, enjoying a hobby, or getting a spa treatment, you will find the outcome to be much better than the alternative.
