Stress management: Relaxing your mind and body
Why relax?
Relaxing your mind and body can make you feel calm and peaceful. It can help relieve stress as well as anxiety, depression, and sleep problems.
Stress is a physical or emotional response to life’s changes and challenges. When you are under stress or feel anxious, your body reacts as if it is under attack. This is called the fight-or-flight stress response. Your body releases hormones that speed up your heart rate and breathing and make your muscles tense. Stress also affects your emotions, making you feel moody, tense, upset, or depressed. Over time, stress can affect your health in other ways too. For example, stress has been linked to high blood pressure.
When you are able to relax your mind and body, your body stops producing the hormones that create stress. The feelings of stress ease, and you return to a state of calm, both physically and mentally.
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| Author: | Merrill Hayden | Last Updated: May 21, 2008 |
| Medical Review: | Kathleen Romito, MD - Family Medicine Lisa S. Weinstock, MD - Psychiatry | |
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