3. Turn your gaze outwards.
Stress is that feeling you get when you are nervous or anxious. Experiencing stress is normal, and some stress is even good for you. When you need to get things done, stress can help motivate you to stay on task. That’s the good kind of stress — the kind that helps you deal quickly and effectively with tough situations. But too much stress affects more than your mood.
“If left unchecked, stress can contribute to larger health concerns like high blood pressure, heart disease, a weakened immune system, obesity and diabetes,” says Kettering Physician Network cardiologist Sateesh Kesari, MD, with Kettering Cardiovascular Consultants in Hamilton.
Since it isn’t possible to completely check out and take an actual vacation every time stress sneaks into our lives, try these five stress-reducing techniques the next time you’re on a deadline at work, busy taking care of children or stuck in traffic.
Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and imagine a relaxing scene like sitting on a beach, feeling the sun on your skin and listening to the waves. Or imagine walking through a meadow or woods while birds sing. Focusing on the sights, sounds and smells will help immerse your body in relaxation.
Take deep, controlled breaths. Practice breathing from your diaphragm: You should feel your abdomen expanding rather than your shoulders lifting. “Breathing from your diaphragm oxygenates your blood, which can help you to relax almost instantly. It also helps slow down your heart rate.
1. Visualize relaxation. 2. Breathe deep.
Instead of focusing on everything you have to do and the things that are causing you stress, cast your gaze outwards. Look out a window, people watch, notice any birds or clouds within view. Allow yourself to daydream for a few minutes.
4. Remember 10.
Before responding in a stressful situation when you may be angry or flustered, pause and count to 10. Allow yourself the time to process the information and form an appropriate response. Also ask yourself, “On a scale of 1-10, how big of an issue is this?” By taking a step back and giving a situation some perspective, you can help control your response and stress level.
5. Turn on the tunes.
Music is proven to have a soothing effect on emotions. If you are unsure what kind of music helps calm you down, try some instrumental and classical music. Play the radio in the car, turn on a playlist when you’re in the shower or getting ready to go somewhere or pop in some earbuds while you’re prepping for a presentation.
By making time for mental vacations that only take a few minutes every day, you can train yourself to relax, reduce stress, and improve your overall health.
The Bridge is known for being a gentle yet effective exercise that can be incorporated into nearly any fitness routine, including Pilates, Yoga or a formal strength training program. Muscles worked include the low back, abdominals, hips/glutes and legs. When the Bridge is performed correctly and consistently, the conditioning effect translates into making everyday movements such as going up stairs, squatting down or rising from a seated position easier. In addition — because it targets muscles important to posture — balance is improved.
Starting position: Lie on the floor face up, with feet no wider than shoulder-width. Relax the shoulders and arms and place them at your sides.
Strengthening phase: Slowly lift the hips from the floor as far as comfortably possible, pause and tighten the gluteal (rear) muscles. Ideally at its highest point, the body will be in a straight line from the shoulders to the knees, without the back rounding. If unable to come up this far, lift to your current strength level, as benefit can still be gained.
If strong enough to keep proper form, you can try a Single Leg Bridge. In this case, you would push up with only one foot on the floor. The leg that is not in contact with the floor can be bent or straight.
To add inner thigh strengthening to the Bridge, place a firm pillow or Yoga block between the knees and press against it at the top of the repetition for several seconds. Pushing body weight through the heels of the feet as the hips are raised places emphasis on the glutes to a slightly greater degree and can help diminish stress on the knees.
Depending on goals and strength, you can hold at the
“Her death was senseless. CHICAGO — If I could have videotaped her last moments, traveled back in time and showed her how horrible her death would be, I think she would’ve quit,” Joe Konrath said of his mother, Laura.
As it was, Laura Konrath had four strokes, two heart attacks and coronary artery blockages and was in constant pain from plaque in her body and brain. She died in January at 71 after smoking four to five packs a day since her teens.
Joe Konrath, a novelist from Schaumburg, Ill., bluntly blamed cigarettes in her obituary and suggested hers be a cautionary tale.
“Her family is angry that she suffered so much and died so young. They’re especially angry that she chose cigarettes over living a longer, healthier life,” he wrote.
“What my mother had to endure, what her family had to endure watching her die, was entirely preventable.”
Smoking cessation efforts show progress — there are now more ex-smokers than smokers, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, even though the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports cessation saved 8 million lives from 1964 to 2013, 17 top of each repetition for the desired number of seconds. Number of repetitions will vary from person to person. The Bridge typically can be performed every day.
The Bridge is considered by most physical therapists as safe for those who have a weak or injured back. However, as with all exercises, check with your doctor for guidelines if you have preexisting million people died during that period of tobacco-linked problems. The CDC predicts that if smoking continues at the current rate among U.S. youths, 1 in every 13 who are 17 or younger now will die prematurely from a smoking-related illness.
Of the almost 37 million people in the U.S. who smoke, 70 percent want to quit, said Dr. Steven Schroeder, director of the California-based Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the 1998 settlement between the conditions or are not accustomed to physical activity.
Some people find that the hamstrings tend to cramp once hips are raised. If this happens during the Bridge, stop and extend the leg fully and lift it toward you, which will help to give an immediate stretch. If cramping returns once the exercise is resumed, make a point to stretch the four largest tobacco companies and states seeking to recoup costs for treating smokers.
But only a tiny percentage of smokers succeed in quitting without assistance, which is why the center is working on a number of fronts — pursuing policy changes and tobacco taxes to discourage sales; pressing college campuses and the military to keep younger people from starting; getting pharmacies to stop selling cigarettes; encouraging hospitals and medical professionals to step up efforts to persuade patients to quit. A hamstrings before doing the first repetition and/or placing the feet somewhat further away from the body to slightly extend the legs. recent focus is on those with mental disorders and substance abuse problems who consume 40 percent of all cigarettes sold in the U.S.
“My mantra is, hate the smoke, love the smoker,” Schroeder said. Various approaches are necessary because “there’s no one way to get people to stop smoking.”
The graphic TV ads featuring people ravaged by smoking cause a spike in calls to quit lines each time they air, he said. But that tack doesn’t work with youths, who don’t think they’re ever going to get sick, leading to campaigns focusing on the bad behavior of the tobacco industry and how it’s not cool to date a smoker, he said.
The lead researcher in a study released in March by AARP and the National Institutes of Health hopes the main takeaway — that it’s better to quit at any age than to keep smoking — will aid cessation efforts.
The study, said to be the first to look at the effects of quitting on mortality rates of those in their 70s, was needed to see if the benefits already documented for those who quit earlier in life held true for those giving up smoking in their 60s, said Sarah Nash, a cancer epidemiologist in Anchorage, Alaska.
“We now have data that shows even those who quit in their 60s have reduced risk of death into their 70s and 80s,” she said. “We have evidence that clinicians should try to get people to quit even if they’re in their 60s.”