6 Ideas To Lower Your Stress Level

It is not only with our ideas that you should do something against permanent stress for the sake of your health

Sure, you also have ideas on how to lower your stress level, but there is often a lack of implementation.

Perhaps among our 6 ideas for lowering your stress level there are some that you would like to try out for yourself. Or does the text give you enough strength and incentive to finally do something to make you feel better and to escape the downward spiral of stress?

Stress, the trivialized health risk

Stress seems normal these days. And most of us often play down the consequences of permanent stress for our health.

In the following we would like to show you a few examples that a high level of stress can lead to. We hope that by doing this you will see the need to actually use some of the anti-stress ideas   to implement:

• Many people who are depressed or who suffer from depressive moods had sleep disorders or a lack of sleep due to stress or other causes before these emotional problems occurred .
• Our heart is also sensitive to stress. It doesn’t always lead to both, but high blood pressure and arrhythmias are often related.
• Stress makes you hungry and an appetite for unhealthy sweets. This is partly due to the fact that our body lacks the happiness hormone serotonin, or that too little of it can be made available.  This creates cravings for serotonin substitutes, which can be found in chocolate, for example.

• Lack of concentration due to stress leads to slower reactions, which can be a considerable risk, especially at higher speeds or in city traffic.
• The immune system is also sensitive to stress and is weakened. Therefore, one is particularly prone to infections in stressful times.

Ideas to lower your stress level

If you know the reason why you feel terribly stressed – up to fear – or panic attack, then you can do something about it!

Usually there are very simple things behind it that shouldn’t really be a reason to fall into such states :

• Overwhelming
• Double burden in family and work
• mental crises because of grief
• Separation or other emotional stress
• Exhaustion during or after an illness 

Perhaps our ideas will help you to get out of the vicious circle:

1. Get out into nature

Current research has confirmed what we have all suspected for a long time: a stay in nature calms our nerves and contributes significantly to recovery.

“Nature” does not mean the meadow between two houses, but actually a stay in the forest or between fields and meadows. A natural place where your eye cannot perceive any buildings or signs of civilization.

Because this calms our insides and also fills our lungs with oxygen-rich, healthy air. By the way: the sight of a campfire or fireplace also calms the nerves!

2. Hang out with friends

Friends are able not only to distract us from stress, but also to awaken positive emotions in us.  And this in turn can release happiness hormones.

This consequently lowers your stress level and you relax because you clear your head. The prerequisite for this, however, is that negative topics are excluded.

If the conversations among friends revolve around problems, complaints, anger and everyday worries, the thing with the happiness hormones does not work.

So do something together, be active, go out into nature! That is doubly relaxing!

3. Take the time to relax

It’s clear,  that you can’t find time every day to go for a walk in the woods or do something with friends.

Even so, you should take time each day to relax.

If you now claim that you don’t have time for that either, it is simply a problem of your wrongly set priorities.

If you don’t have time for something, then you are not interested in it, because what you really want, you can do it too! And when you admit this to yourself, you are already one step further in coping with stress.

If you still manage to fill the time you have gained with relaxation techniques, such as yoga or meditation, you are already way ahead!

4. Establish rituals

A relaxed full bath by candlelight and relaxing music, maybe a book with it, the phone switched off, time just for you.

Maybe time for two if you want to take your partner with you to the relaxation ritual. Set a fixed date for this in your calendar, for example to end the work week with a bath every Friday evening at 7 p.m. This way you start a relaxing weekend.

It doesn’t have to be a bath, you certainly have other ideas that you can turn into a relaxation ritual: a reading hour on the couch, a footbath, a movie evening, handicrafts, …

5. Eat healthy and balanced

Magnesium acts on the synapses of nerve cells in a similar way to other prescription antidepressants. In many cases it is therefore even recommended by doctors as supportive treatment for depressive moods.

And those who are under stress also have an increased need for magnesium. Foods with a high magnesium content include:

• whole grain products
• Mineral water, especially medicinal water (it is always worth comparing labels!)
• Tap water with sufficient water hardness
• liver
• poultry
• fish
• cocoa
• nuts
• Potatoes
• spinach
• Kohlrabi
• Soft fruit
• Citrus fruits
• legumes

• Bananas
• sesame
• milk and milkproducts

You should also make sure you have enough complex carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are, roughly speaking, all starch products.

From these complex carbohydrates, your body can produce the happiness hormone serotonin itself. So always provide your body with enough “serotonin building blocks” so that it can protect you well against stress!

6. Move

Sport and any form of exercise also release hormones that strengthen your nerves and counteract stress. It does not depend on the intensity, but on the movement itself. 

If it also takes place outdoors in the great outdoors and among friends, then you’ve done everything right.