Get creative
It doesn’t matter whether it’s colouring, painting or playing with modelling clay – after 45 minutes your cortisol levels will be significantly lower due to the creative effort. And that’s regardless of whether you’ve got arty before, or how successful the end result is. One theory is that the decisions involved in making art mean negative thoughts get replaced with happier ones.
Read something
Stress will reduce by as much as 68 per cent in as little as six minutes. The reason reading works so well as a stress reliever is because it requires concentration, and that distraction has a very real knock-on effect for your heart rate and how tense your body feels.
Stare at some trees
They don’t even have to be real to be effective. Just looking at a nature-filled photograph will do the trick, according to a 2015 study. Why? Looking at trees and foliage activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the body’s ‘rest’ functions. Try switching your screensaver or keeping some potted plants on your desk.
Wash the dishes
It can zap your stress levels instantly, as long as you make a conscious effort to pay attention to what you’re doing by zeroing in on sensations like the warmth of the water and the squeak of the dishes. It’s a simple way to practise mindfulness,
Chew gum
You’ll feel less stressed after 10 minutes. Chewing gum lowers salivary levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is one marker of psychological stress. How? It’s likely thanks to the way the chewing action increases blood flow to the brain. For best effect, chew with a little bit of force.
Switching off your email
Not permanently – just so that you only log in, check and respond to your emails in chunks, three times a day. When you do that, rather than reading them as soon as they hit your inbox, you’ll start to feel less stressed in about a week. Reading and sending emails increases your cortisol levels, blood pressure and heart rate, so the less you check your email each day, the better.
Drinking black tea
After six weeks of drinking the tea daily, you’ll feel about 20 per cent calmer when you’re faced with stressful situations. Researchers are still trying to work out why, but suspect it’s due to the way some of the ingredients in black tea varieties affect neurotransmitters in the brain.
Resisting the urge to vent
It might take a bit of practice, but it pays off. Research proves that people who regularly spend time talking about daily stressors actually feel more, not less, stressed as a result. The reason? Venting often makes you feel less satisfied about the situation, compared to how you felt beforehand.
Helping other people
Think you’re too stressed to help others solve their own problems? Think again. Over time, supporting others can help you react less negatively to the things that stress you out, perhaps because doing so helps keep your mind off your own worries.
Taking a probiotic
Pick one that contains the Bifidobacterium longum strain and take it for four weeks. When study participants did that, they reported feeling less tense and their levels of stress-related hormones fell too, say researchers from the University of Missouri. Gut bacteria send signals to the brain that influence mood, so the probiotic may work by tweaking the mix of bacteria to be ‘healthier’.
Lets Talk: Women and Stress
