As a society, we’ve come to accept stress as an element of everyday life. Unfortunately, there’s a long list of negative ways stress affects the body. To help combat stress, check out the list below of the Top 10 Benefits of Relaxation, and consider stopping by Purefico MedSpa & Therapy today to help jumpstart the relaxation process.
While it feels good to conquer the day, in the end, it just simply feels better — and is more beneficial to your health — to relax. Some would argue that stress is our biggest health concern, given that it has been linked to so many other complications, from heart problems to dementia. CBS reported on a small study that examined the role of stress in seizures — and found that people are often misdiagnosed with epilepsy, when learning helpful relaxation and coping techniques may be a better solution. You may still end up racing to meet deadlines at work today, or handling a stressful personal crisis — life goes on, no matter what kind of day it is. But relaxing whenever possible, and in whatever way works for you (whether it’s reading a book, taking a walk, meditating, running, you name it!) is healthier for you than you might think. Check out the health benefits of relaxation below.
Relaxing protects your heart. — You’ve probably heard that stress can seriously up your risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks and other heart problems.
While researchers aren’t sure exactly why, the research is unanimously in favor of relaxation for your heart’s sake. “There are studies to show that stress is comparable to other risk factors that we traditionally think of as major, like hypertension, poor diet and lack of exercise,” Kathi Heffner, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Rochester Center for Mind-Body Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, told Health.com.
Intense, sudden periods of stress or shock, like a breakup or even winning the lottery, can trigger such a rush of adrenaline that the heart can’t function properly, resulting in heart failure or heart attack-like symptoms. In the case of a breakup or death of a loved one, this has become known as broken heart syndrome.
Relaxing lowers your risk of catching a cold — Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has been at the forefront of stress research since the 1990s. Early on, he showed that chronic stress lasting more than a month but less than six months doubled a person’s risk of catching a cold.
His more recent research has tried to figure out why, and results seem to point to inflammation. It appears that stress hampers the body’s ability to fight inflammation, by making immune cells less sensitive to the hormone that “turns off” inflammation, HealthyDay reported. READ MORE
This article originally posted on HuffingtonPost.com.
