Why Do I Need To Track Stress
Chronic stress and stress-related ailments are common throughout the world.
Stress has been proven to lead to illness and chronic disease. It increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes. Stress also alters your bodys endocrine function. It can impair your brain and cellular function.
There is an undeniable link between long-term stress and depression. Our brains respond to any demand with stress. In short-term situations, like during a demanding work project, this is not health-threatening.
However, consistently having high stress levels that are not managed can burden your body. They exponentially increase your chance of having to manage anxiety or depression down the line.
Unfortunately, stress and depression appear to create a catch-22 situation for many people.
Those who are chronically stressed often engage in unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. This includes sleeping less, drinking too much alcohol, and overlooking the connection between nutrition and mental health.
These actions can increase systemic inflammation and trigger anxiety. They can also lead to depression, which can cause more unhealthy behaviors.
Stress has immediate, day-to-day symptoms as well. If youve been under stress for long enough, you may experience ongoing symptoms like:
- Sleep issues, such as insomnia or hypersomnia
- Turning to nicotine, alcohol, and other substances to cope
- Trouble maintaining your daily routine
So How Stressed Are You
If you suffer from high levels of stress then you should notice the picture moving considerably.
If you are stressed you may want to have a look at trying some of our Relaxation CDs or MP3s.
These are proven to reduce stress by allowing your mind to enter into deep relaxation on a consistent basis. This is absolutely paramount to living a stress free life, and surprisingly, is something that many people simply overlook.
For more detailed information on how relaxation music and spoken techniques effect your mind, please read our free article on the Different States of Mind. The information on achieving Alpha, Theta and even Delta brainwave patterns in this article is paramount to understanding how you can reduce your stress through relaxation music.
The Effects Of Chronic Stress
Your nervous system isnt very good at distinguishing between emotional and physical threats. If youre super stressed over an argument with a friend, a work deadline, or a mountain of bills, your body can react just as strongly as if youre facing a true life-or-death situation. And the more your emergency stress system is activated, the easier it becomes to trigger, making it harder to shut off.
If you tend to get stressed out frequently, like many of us in todays demanding world, your body may exist in a heightened state of stress most of the time. And that can lead to serious health problems. Chronic stress disrupts nearly every system in your body. It can suppress your immune system, upset your digestive and reproductive systems, increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, and speed up the aging process. It can even rewire the brain, leaving you more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
Health problems caused or exacerbated by stress include:
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Also Check: What Causes Stress And Anxiety
Appetite Changes And Weight Gain
Changes in appetite are common during times of stress.
When you feel stressed out, you may find yourself with no appetite at all or overeating without noticing.
One small 2006 study of 272 female college students found that 81 percent reported that they experienced changes in appetite when they were stressed out, with 62 percent stating they had an increase in appetite .
Changes in appetite may also cause fluctuations in weight during stressful periods. For example, a study involving 1,355 people in the United States found that stress was associated with weight gain in adults already living with extra weight .
A third study from 2017 found that individuals with higher cortisol and insulin levels and higher levels of chronic stress were more likely to gain weight in the future . However, the study was limited in the scope of research in that participants were predominantly white females.
While these studies show an association between stress and changes in appetite or weight, more studies are needed to understand other possible factors are involved and how stress impacts different people.
How Can Your Doctor Test Your Stress Level
There is no standardized test to formally diagnose stress because stress is subjectivewhat feels very stressful for one person may not cause high levels of stress for another. Only the person experiencing stress can determine how severe it feels. A healthcare provider may use questionnaires to understand your stress and how it affects your life.
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Measure Your Stress Level With Samsung Health
With the Samsung Health app and a supported phone or smart watch, you can measure your stress levels by checking your heart rate and some other factors. If you’re feeling stressed, use the guided deep breathing function to help you relax.
Note: To use this feature, your phone must have a heart rate sensor. This sensor is not available on all phones, but you can connect a wearable device with a heart rate sensor to measure your stress. This feature may also not be available on iOS devices.
How To Manage Your Stress With Samsung Health
Lets imagine you have used Samsung Health to measure your stress and you have noticed it is very high.
However, what can you do with this measure? How can you manage your stress levels?
We have the answer for you, or well, Samsung does. Samsung Health can help keep away the post-vacation blues with a suite of meditation and mindfulness features that are designed to help you manage your body and mind in collaboration with Calm .
As mentioned, in collaboration with Calm , Samsung Health offers a Mindfulness Service to make sure you stay relaxed this season, here are some helpful tips for using Samsung Health to manage your stress .
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Stress Monitor And Stress Prevention
With the global economic recession in our midst, stress levels are at their highest. As more and more people lose their jobs and livelihood, controlling stress has become even more difficult.
Monitoring stress. And yet, what we fail to realize is that without the proper monitoring and management of stress, the situation becomes even more difficult to contain. People today are so easily angered, while others have become depressed, they start to withdraw to themselves, and lose the drive to function well. With stress becoming one of the movers in todays world, performance has steadily declined and people feel that the economic recession is here to stay and theres no sense in fighting it. Needless to say, these situations could have been avoided if people knew how to fight the effects of stress.
Recognizing stress. Recognizing that your stress levels are getting too high is important especially if you wish to take control of it before it controls you. Knowing the physiological manifestations of stress are just some ways to monitor stress. Unfortunately, there are people who are unable to control their stress levels may have trouble identifying its physical symptoms. In this case, they can use stress monitors which informs individuals the state they are in by changing its colors .
Aside from this, individuals should also realize that their own lifestyle may be a stressor. Here are some of the lifestyle changes that needs to be done in order to keep stress in check:
Muse Brain Sensing Headband
This lightweight device uses EEG sensors to measure a wearers brain activity. It connects to an app loaded with guided meditations and breathing exercises.
This high-tech solution can detect high stress levels and chart brain activity. It then categorizes it into groups such as Active, Neutral, and Calm.
The sleek design makes it suitable for people of all ages and levels of activity. This includes children, who can benefit from its meditation-promoting design.
However, some wearers say the device only works effectively when it fits very tightly around the forehead. Others have observed that minor head movements can impact the trackers functionality.
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Buy Yourself Time And Space
Allowing your brain time to adjust and “come down” from stressful activities helps your system to regulate in a healthy way. If you’ve been jumping from virtual meeting to lunch prep and immediately into a stressful family phone call, remember to add a little space. Pause before answering your phone, give yourself a five-minute breather between work and family time, set an alarm to remind you to stretch a few times a day, and find ways to delegate some tasks. Each little bit helps.
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How Tech Can Help Track Stress Levels
First, it was step trackers. Then, it was heart rate monitors. Now, stress monitoring is the latest evolution of wearable technology in the world of health and wellness and you can conveniently track it all on your phone.
Having a bad day? Your fitness tracker can now recognize that. Feeling ecstatic about personal news? Your fitness tracker can identify that, too. Well explore what makes this possible and how companies have tapped into new and existing technology to track stress levels.
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Getting A Handle On Stress
The good news is that we can learn to control some of the reflexes weve evolved to have and to avoid the situations that cause them.
Many people don’t realize the extent to which they can manage and even prevent stress.
Normand who runs a mindfulness-based stress reduction class at the Rush University Prevention Center to help people do just that offers the following advice for getting a handle on stress:
When To Get Help
If youâre struggling with stress and donât know how to cope, you may want to seek help from a specialist. Your primary care doctor can be a good starting point. They can help you figure out if the signs and symptoms youâre experiencing are from a medical issue or an anxiety disorder.
They can also refer you to a mental health expert and provide you with additional resources and tools.
Some of the signs itâs time to get help:
- Your work or school performance is suffering
- Youâre using alcohol, drugs, or tobacco to deal with your stress
- Your eating or sleeping habits change significantly
- Youâre behaving in ways that are dangerous to yourself, including self-mutilation
- You have irrational fears and anxiety
- You have trouble getting through your daily responsibilities
- Youâre withdrawing from friends and family
- You think about suicide or hurting other people
If your stress has gotten to the point that youâre thinking of hurting yourself or someone else, go to the nearest emergency room or call 911. You can also call one of the free suicide prevention helplines, including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You donât need to give your name.
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Stress Test Without Exercise
If a person cannot exercise, the doctor may use a certain medication to trigger the same process.
In this case, they will attach electrodes to the persons chest and deliver the medication into their arm through an IV line. The medication will take 1520 minutes to deliver.
The medication will stimulate the heart. It may cause effects similar to those that occur during exercise, such as flushing or shortness of breath.
Signs And Symptoms Of Stress Overload
The most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feel familiar, even normal. You dont notice how much its affecting you, even as it takes a heavy toll. Thats why its important to be aware of the common warning signs and symptoms of stress overload.
Cognitive symptoms:
- Other mental or emotional health problems
Physical symptoms:
- Chest pain, rapid heart rate
- Loss of sex drive
- Sleeping too much or too little
- Withdrawing from others
- Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax
- Nervous habits
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Keeping Stress In Check
Tips for keeping stress in check
Feeling stressed? If so, you can blame evolution at least in part.
“In the old days, humans used to live with these very immediate threats,” says Patricia Normand, MD, a psychiatrist at Rush. “If a saber-toothed tiger was coming at you, you needed to react automatically to get away in time. So our bodies developed a chemical response to help us do that.”
Today, while most of our stressors aren’t quite so life-threatening, they continue to catalyze this millennia-old fight-or-flight response: The body produces adrenaline, spurring the heart to pump faster and increasing blood flow to the arms and legs. At the same time, functions such as digestion, reproduction and immune response slow or shut down to avoid interference and conserve energy.
These changes still have a purpose. They help you react quickly if, say, someone cuts you off on the highway.
Most of the time, though, we can’t or dont need to react so instantaneously to our stressors , which means that many of our stress responses are exaggerated or even needless.
In fact, they can be worse than needless: In addition to feeling unpleasant, excess stress can lead to serious medical conditions such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.
Take Some Time To Meditate
When stress levels are overwhelming, it can actually interrupt our normal functioning and daily activities.
However, meditation has been proven, through research, to be one of the best options to reduce your stress levels, anxiety and depression.
Mindfulness techniques can include quiet meditation, breathing exercises, and directed attention.
The best thing is that you can benefit from this powerful technique through the app on your phone, whenever you have the chance.
Through the Samsung Health app, you have a variety of mindfulness exercises and guided meditation.
The only thing you need to do is open the app, select Discover and tap Mindfulness.
There, you can select guided meditation programs, Sleep stories and a wide variety of relaxing music to meditate or simply taking some time to yourself to relax.
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What Is A Stress Tracker
A stress tracker is a device that monitors physiological stress indicators.
Most of these devices focus on your heart. They use heart rate monitors to track your beats per minute and give feedback.
Recently, wearables designers have developed other ways to measure heart rate activity. These measurements give more health insights.
The devices measure metrics like heart rate variability . This is the measurement of time intervals between your heartbeats. From this, stress trackers identify small fluctuations in your hearts function.
These fluctuations may link to age, body position, current health status, and even the time of day. They may also have to do with emotional health, mental fitness, and physical health.
Tracking HRV can be a great tool to motivate behavioral change. The measurements can help you become more aware of how your behavior affects your bodily functions and nervous system.
High-quality stress trackers can adjust for age and body position. They alert you to heart rate changes from elevated stress levels.
Generally speaking, a high HRV is a positive thing in medical circles. Low HRV is often associated with stress. It’s also associated with medical conditions like heart disease and hypertension.
Its important to realize that this measurement alone is not enough to tell you whether youre stressed or not. Thats why stress trackers take into account a range of different metrics.
Several indicators paint a more comprehensive picture.
How Stress Trackers Work
During a busy day at work or when youre chasing the kids or grandchildren around, it may be difficult to be mindful of stressors. Luckily, stress produces several tell-tale signs, notably sweaty palms and a rapid increase in heart rate. Stress trackers then use these physical changes to chart your emotional state.
Most stress trackers are worn on your wrist, but there are other options. Some products act as brain-sensing headbands, while others use the same technology using eyeglasses. There are even rings and jewelry with built-in tracking devices to monitor your heart rate and sleep cycles.
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The Accuracy Of A Stress Monitor
Stress is a complex topic. It is difficult to define because it is different for each of us. This makes stress monitoring a difficult task.
So can a stress tracker really track stress accurately?
When it comes to ways to measure stress, stress monitor tracking is only accurate if the technology used gives reliable real-time insights.
Most stress tracker devices rely on optical heart rate monitors. People have often questioned the accuracy and reliability of these monitors.
The argument is this. If a heart rate sensor on your wearable device cannot accurately read your heart rate, can you trust it to determine how stressed you are?
Firstbeat is the company that provides heart rate analytics for all of Garmins stress-tracking features. Their stress management analysis has undergone consistent evaluation and improvement. Its used in hundreds of thousands of its Lifestyle Assessments.
However, its important to note that these assessments need devices to be worn above the heart on the chest. They need to measure HRV 24 hours a day in order to be precise.
Valencell is a US-based biometrics agency that provides optical heart rate sensors. They make sensors for some of the industrys largest wearable manufacturers, such as Suunto, Jabre, and Bose.
Valencell notes that it can be challenging to determine HRV from the wrist if the wearers wrist moves too much. Their technology works best when its wearers are not moving at all.
