Reviews, links, and resources about stress, stress relief, how to beat stress, stress cures and stress reduction.

M & M & M's for Stress Relief

For many people, stress is accepted as part of the ritual, and people do little to cope with it consciously.

Although it is impossible to eliminate stress completely and you need a certain amount of stress to be active and productive, there are 3 ways to reduce unwanted stress or manage it productively:

* Manage your physical and psychological well-being so you can resist harmful effects of stressful events.

* Monitor your present level of stress so that you can recognize early warning signs of stress and do something about the problems causing it.

* Maneuver to avoid extremely stressful situations by eliminating the causes of stress and changing your reactions to stressful events.

Keys to Reducing Stress

1. Manage Your Psychological and Physical Well-being 

One way to manage your psychological and physical well-being is to have people you can turn to for emotional support. This support might come from family, church members, friends, or others who have experienced the kind of stress you are experiencing. Emotional support involves give-and-take. You must be willing to support other people in addition to receiving support from them.

2. Diet also appears to influence a person's ability to cope with stress.

Elevated blood cholesterol levels combined with hypertension or high blood pressure increase your chances of stroke and heart attack.

3. Be moderate in your consumption of coffee, tea, soft drinks, and drugs containing caffeine.

Caffeine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and may promote even more nervousness and tension.

4. Although alcohol and drugs are common ways of dealing with stress, they can be addictive and tend to deal only with the symptoms of the problems. They mask the cause of stress without eliminating it. Eat an adequate and nutritious breakfast each day.

5. Most authorities suggest you consume at least one-fourth of your daily calories and nutrients at breakfast. Hunger can leave you less able to cope with stress. All in all, it just makes good sense to eat moderately and regularly, especially when you're under stress.

6. A basic exercise program also is likely to improve your ability to manage stress. Stretching and flexing the muscles of the neck, arms, shoulders,

back, thighs, and midsection reduce the chance that these muscles will tighten up and produce common indica-tors of stress-headache, neckache, and backache.

7. A more advanced exercise program that is likely to help manage stress involves cardiovascular fitness. Over a period of time, cardiovascular exercise will benefit the heart, lungs, and arteries and result in biochemical changes that elevate your mood and encourage a healthy self-concept. You can do more work or do your regular work with less fatigue.

8. Although many people may be "on the go" during the day, their activity is most often sporadic and does not necessarily improve the strength and endurance of the cardiovascular system.