Catch Up With Your Network Circle
Studies show that the quality of your relationships and social interactions can help you deal with stress and anxiety. Positive social support can be beneficial in reducing trauma or psychological distress. As a matter of fact, your community, network of friends, and family can lower your cortisol levels and release happy hormones. So, catching up with a close-knit network circle can be a great bet for age reversal.
The effects of psychological stress on the skin are well-documented. If you wish to look younger, mental peace and happiness are crucial. You can start reversing cell damage and skin aging by consciously investing in self-care. We arent immortal, and aging is inevitable, but making a few tweaks to your lifestyle choices can help prevent the early onset of aging.
Sowjanya is an expert blogger and contributes in-depth articles about a range of different topics, such as beauty, health and wellness, and everything that may interest women. Her way of writing is easy to understand and informative at the same time. She is a regular contributor to StyleCraze.com and some other websites.
Conditions That Stress Causes
If you dont control high stress levels, chronic inflammation can accompany it and can contribute to the development and progression of many diseases of the immune system such as:
- Psoriasis
- Inflammatory bowel disease
Under sustained, long-term stress, you also can develop cardiovascular problems, including a fast heart rate and heart disease, as well as gastric ulcers. Youll also be at greater risk for type 2 diabetes, various cancers and mental decline.
Eat Foods High In Omega
Your body cant manufacture Omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid , docosahexaenoic acid , and alpha-linolenic acid so its important to get them through your diet or through supplementation. EPA and DHA are primarily found in foods such as salmon, anchovies, tuna, and other fatty fish.
The effectiveness of Omega-3 supplementation has proven to be very beneficial in reducing chronic inflammation and helping in post-workout inflammation such as joint pain.
In a study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 125 patients that were diagnosed with nonsurgical neck or back pain were administered 1200-2500mg of Omega-3 fatty acids per day. After 75 days, fifty-nine percent discontinued taking their prescription NSAID medications for pain. Sixty percent stated that their overall pain was improved, and 60% stated that their joint pain had improved. Eighty percent stated they were satisfied with their improvement, and 88% stated they would continue with Omega-3 supplementation. This study concluded that Omega-3 supplementation demonstrated an equivalent effect in reducing arthritic pain, as does Ibuprofen . If that doesnt prove the efficacy of Omega-3 fatty acids in relieving post-workout-inflammation then I dont know what does.
If you cant get enough fish in your diet, then supplement with Krill Oil.
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Chronic Stress And How To Manage It
Everyone seems stressed these days. From the current pandemic to economic pressures, racial unrest, political tensions and natural disasters, the start of the new decade has seemed to throw one stressor after another.
At some point, that stress may become something you cant simply shake off: Experiencing stress over an extended period may indicate that stress is chronic.
Chronic stress can take a toll on your mind and body. Fortunately, there are things you can do to back on the path to mental and physical wellbeing.
Stress Acne: Reduce Inflammation For Prevention And Treatment
Stress acne is a symptom of a taxed immune system. To clear your skin, reduce inflammation through diet and other natural methods.
Like the rest of your body, your skins health can be affected by your stress level. If you suffer from stress acne, you have undoubtedly discovered this for yourself. Pimples seem to pop up overnight when you feel yourself overwhelmed. Topical acne treatments may control your symptoms, but they cant cure the problem. This kind of acne is more than skin deep and preventing or curing it must be holisticcentered on your whole system, rather than merely targeting symptoms.
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Diet For Stress Acne: Reduce Inflammation
The link between stress and inflammation is complex and yet to be clearly understood. However, researchers have determined that diet plays a role in the inflammation process. The Western diet, which is generally rich in refined sugars and other processed foods has been linked to increased inflammation and to acne.
Foods with refined sugars are high on the glycemic index in others words, they trigger your bodys insulin level to quickly rise. A high insulin level puts your immune system on alert, triggering the inflammation response.
A diet rich in complex carbohydrates and omega-3 fatty acids can help you avoid this pitfall and improve your overall health. Avoid refined sugars and stay away from junk food. Eat whole grains and foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as cold-water fish , nuts and flaxseed. Getting adequate lean protein will help keep your blood sugar levels balanced.
Your Gi Tract And You
The GI tract is our largest interface with the outside world. If you think about it, your GI system is outside your body it experiences many of the pathogens and other foreign entities with which we come into contact. If you unfolded your entire GI system, it would cover a tennis court. The GI system also contains just as many neurons as your spinal cord and houses the largest collection of immune cells in the body. A system of that size is as powerful as it is susceptible.
Chronic stress that affects your GI tract can manifest as abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation and can lead to common diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease.
Early-life stress is especially concerning scientists only now are beginning to understand the long-term consequences. My research demonstrates the impacts of early-life stress on animal health and productivity, as well as human health. In pigs, this stress can result from early weaning and other management practices. In humans, it could be from physical or emotional trauma like abuse or neglect.
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Eat A Salad Every Day
Keep a package or two of leafy greens on hand to toss in your lunch bag or on your dinner plate. Having a cup of leafy greenslike baby spinach, arugula, kale, or lettuceeach day is one of the most beneficial diet habits you can adopt. These leafy greens offer an anti-inflammatory double-punch, thanks to antioxidants and bioactive compounds that reduce inflammation and prevent free radicals from creating new inflammation.
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Eat More Fermented Foods
The 100 trillion bacteria that live in your gut are imperative to your digestive and immune health. Digestive health is directly linked to keeping a healthy immune system and an imbalance in your gut flora can lead to the release of toxins, making your gut more permeable . When these toxins enter your bloodstream, your body produces inflammation.
Fermented foods such as Greek Yogurt, Kefir, and Kombucha contain unique functional properties that possess abundant health benefits due to the presence of microorganisms, or probiotics. By adding more fermented foods into your diet, youll produce a healthy balance of gut flora due to the probiotic properties, which will help foster good gut health and further reduce chronic inflammation .
If you don’t get enough fermented foods in your diet, then you should consider taking a probiotics supplement to help build your digestive system and good gut bacteria.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCT Probiotix
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Pay Attention To How Food Makes You Feel
Outside of blatant inflammatory foods, Dr. Cotter points out that food sensitivities are very individual. Some food items, such as gluten or lactose, may cause inflammation in you, but not in other people.
“The best way to identify what works for you is to pay attention to your body,” she suggests. “Notice what gives you energy and what makes you feel poorly,” meaning tired, bloated or achy.
And while you might be tempted to try at-home food sensitivity tests that promise to help you identify foods that are causing inflammation in your body, Dr. Alejandro Junger, MD, an LA-based cardiologist, founder and medical director of the Clean Program, and author of Clean and Clean 7, cautions against them. “They are overused and misinterpreted, and they only serve those who happen to use them correctly,” he says.
Instead, he recommends trying a specific food elimination diet by cutting out potential inflammatory foods such as gluten, dairy and caffeine for a minimum of two weeks, then reintroducing foods one by one to see how your body reacts.
Here’s everything you need to know to try an elimination diet.
Limit Heavily Processed Foods
Eating lots of foods that come packaged and highly processed with sodium and preservatives creates two problems: 1. They often contain inflammatory additives and 2. Eating these foods displaces more nutritious foods in the diet, says Rachel Dyckman, MS, RDN, CDN, owner of Rachel Dyckman Nutrition.
Avoid foods like bacon, hot dogs, sausage, and deli meats that have been linked to colon cancer and are considered a Group 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization, she says. “Also, limit artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose, which have been linked to health issues associated with inflammation, including diabetes and obesity.”
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Take Your Dog For A Walk
Missed your workout today? Take a quick walk around the block! While regular exercise is ideal for treating and preventing most all health issues, some days theres not enough time for a full-blown workout. However, results from a 2017 study suggest that getting just 20 minutes of movement reduces inflammatory blood markers. So, lace up your shoes and get going!
More on inflammation:
Easy Ways To Reduce Inflammation Overnight
Heres how to tamp down inflammation and reduce your chronic disease risk in as little as one day.
The subject of inflammation is everywhere lately, and the hype is for good reason. Not only can adopting an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle reduce chronic inflammation to help you stay healthy and slow down aging, but research also suggests it can reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, Alzheimers disease, autoimmune diseases, joint pain, and cancer.
Best part? You dont have to wait for months or years to start seeing results and feeling better! Small changes you make today can start reducing your inflammation overnight. Heres what to do ASAP to start reaping the health benefits.
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How Stress Can Save Your Life
Not all stress is bad. When we perceive a threat, our hypothalamus one of our most basic parts of the brain kicks in to protect us by triggering what many recognize as the fight or flight response. It is a primal evolutionary response programmed in our brains to help us first survive and then restore us to a normal set point, or what feels like stability.
What actually is happening has to do with something called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which is at the core of the stress response. During stress, the hypothalamus, a region in the brain, makes and sends out a chemical called corticotrophin-releasing factor, which signals for the pituitary gland to release another chemical, adrenocorticotrophic hormone.
This stimulates the adrenal gland to release adrenalin and cortisol. Adrenalin and cortisol, two of the most well-known stress hormones, power our bodies to react during the fight or flight response. They can heighten our response time in a fight. They can pump blood to our extremities when we flee. They can boost our immune system to protect against pathogens. That stress response gives us what we need to resolve the situation.
What Impact Does Stress Have On You
Stress occurs when life events surpass your abilities to cope. It causes your body to produce greater levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
In short spurts, cortisol can boost your immunity by limiting inflammation. But over time, your body can get used to having too much cortisol in your blood. And this opens the door for more inflammation, Dr. Calabrese says.
In addition, stress decreases the bodys lymphocytes the white blood cells that help fight off infection. The lower your lymphocyte level, the more at risk you are for viruses, including the common cold and cold sores.
High stress levels also can cause depression and anxiety, again leading to higher levels of inflammation. In the long-term, sustained, high levels of inflammation point to an overworked, over-tired immune system that cant properly protect you.
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How To Reduce Stress
How To Reduce Stress-induced Wrinkles And Fine Lines : Did you know that a crinkle on your forehead could be a sign that you are stressed and tired? No kidding! Studies have shown that stress can wreak havoc on your skin, making you look much older than your actual age! Its true. Crows feet and fine lines may not have much to do with the passing years but the drudgery of life.
Yes, human struggles and challenges are a given. One has to deal with them on a regular basis. However, how one manages daily stresses has a significant impact on the quality of life. Skin is the largest organ in the human body. As the body tries to adapt to changes to ensure its own survival, the skin too bears the brunt of the responses to a shift in its environment. Wondering how skin aging is a by-product of stress and anxiety? Read along to know more!
What You Will Learn From This Article:
- The difference between healing and chronic inflammation
- Symptoms of acute and chronic inflammation: includes belly fat, chronic pain, autoimmunity, allergies and more
- What causes inflammation: includes stress, dairy, coffee, alcohol and more
- Ways to reduce inflammation: includes resistant starch, green leafy veggies, certain herbs and spices, and reducing your stress and more
- Our top supplement recommendation for reducing inflammation
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How To Reduce Inflammation
Inflammation can be extremely uncomfortable, and if left untreated, may result in chronic pain and tissue damage. Fortunately, you have already taken the first step to combating inflammation by finding out what causes it, which will help you to make more informed decisions in the future. In addition to avoiding those things that cause inflammation, you can work to directly combat it by using these strategies:
Try To Get More Sleep
Not sleeping enough is pro-inflammatory, Raison says. Getting a good seven to eight hours of regular sleep a night is hugely beneficial to our health. If one is depressed or anxious, its hard to sleep, but there are things you can do to improve your sleep hygiene.
This includes powering down electronics an hour or two before bed and limiting caffeine intake after lunch. Here are some additional tips from a sleep expert.
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Eat Mostly Whole Plant
Fill up on beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. These foods are rich in fiber and antioxidants, both of which are key components of an anti-inflammatory diet, says Dyckman “Fiber promotes stable blood sugar, lowers cholesterol, encourages a healthy gut microbiome, optimizes digestion to help with the elimination of toxins, and helps us to maintain a healthy weight by keeping us feeling full. Antioxidants protect against inflammatory free radicals.”
Stress Inflammation And Diseases
Accumulating researches suggested that excessive inflammation plays critical roles in relationship between stress and stress-related diseases. Although stress and inflammation, or inflammation and diseases have been widely and nicely discussed, there are few literatures concerned of all these three factors . In this part, we will discuss inflammation in different stress-related diseases and explore the inside mechanism .
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How Do Stress And Inflammation Contribute To Chronic Disease
The relationship between stress and inflammation has been studied rigorously in the past decade, with researchers finding evidence that the inflammatory pathway is pivotal in the pathogenesis of many chronic diseases.1 In fact, 75% to 90% of human disease is related to stress and inflammation, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and neurodegenerative disorders.1 Studies suggest that chronic stress results in glucocorticoid receptor resistance that, in turn, results in failure to downregulate inflammatory responses.2,3
In this video, IFM educator Patrick Hanaway, MD, describes the role of stress and inflammation in cardiovascular and cardiometabolic health:
The Impact of Stress
Large bodies of research indicate that chronic stress, whether experienced in early life or as an adult, is linked to increased coronary heart disease risk.1,4 In particular, childhood adversity, including physical and sexual abuse in childhood, has been shown to relate to higher morbidity of cardiovascular events in women.5 Work-related stressors, poor sleep, and emotional disturbances have been correlated with adult-related cardiovascular disease.1
Managing Stress
Acute And Chronic Stress
Acute stress is something our body can handle because it is actually essential for our survival. Chronic stress is essentially an acute response that does not turn off, which ends up being dangerous. While the flight or fight response keeps us safe, when we are constantly in this state it does more harm than good.
The temporary increase in energy to prevent us from getting harmed does come at the expense of the bodys processes but only temporarily, which makes it less of a health threat.
When the situation becomes chronic, the stress hormones remain in the blood at elevated levels. High concentrations of cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine amplify the flight or fight response, which causes increased blood pressure, elevated heart rate, increased blood sugar and decreased immunity. This constant state of alertness has devastating effects on the body and predisposes it to a variety of serious illnesses.
Elevated blood pressure places harsh demands on the cardiovascular system which puts you at higher risk for heart disease. Your kidneys produce excess aldosterone which promotes the retention of water and salt, raising blood pressure and strain on the cardiovascular system.
Elevated cortisol levels increase susceptibility to viruses and bacteria because of their interference with the immune systems inflammatory response.
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