Laughter Is One Of The Best Medicines

Studies show that watching a funny show and laughing out loud can reduce stress, and more specifically reduce cortisol and adrenaline. Laughter has also been shown to improve circulation, decrease heart rate and blood pressure, decrease pain, and improve mood and immunity. Caring for them helps with stress, too. My dog makes me laugh at all the funny things she does. Learning to laugh at ourselves tends to happen when we let go of our stresses. Simply turning on tunes can melt away the day’s stress. Music is used to help people express themselves, facilitate movement, and provide emotional support. Music medicine, on the other hand, is the use of music without a therapist. They have been shown to decrease heart rate and stress more than other frequencies.31 Binaural beat therapy uses sounds entering the left and right ears at slightly different frequencies. Turn up the tunes! While you’re at it, sing and dance to the music. Do you sing in the shower or while driving? If not, you might try it.

Shake Your Foundations

Singing, humming, and chanting all stimulate the vagus nerve, helping to shift you into a parasympathetic state. Or turn on some music and have a dance party break, by yourself or with your kids. There is a reason cultures around the world include music, singing, and dance as part of their celebrations. Infrared saunas provide heat from varying wavelengths, which benefits our bodies in different ways, from tissue healing and decreased inflammation to detoxification. Talking with a friend or therapist can make all the difference in the world. Calling your mom has also been studied as a form of stress reduction, especially for daughters. Expressing how we feel and feeling heard are so powerful for us as humans. These forms of communication lower cortisol and adrenaline while increasing serotonin and oxytocin. We then feel connection, compassion, and increased confidence in ourselves, including in our ability to feel different feelings. Journaling, or writing about your feelings, is also beneficial. When you think about it, we spend a lot of our lives avoiding unpleasant feelings, such as sadness, shame, vulnerability, embarrassment, guilt, and anger. We go to great lengths to avoid conversations and situations that may involve these feelings.

Not Guilty

And if you’ve tried therapy but you’d like additional support to understand yourself and your experiences, you may find it helpful to work with an expert with a different perspective and approach. Naturopathic doctors are trained in counseling, so they can be a good resource, and some have completed additional training. For example, I completed certification as a life coach using the Holistic Breakthrough Method, which is a process to guide you to let go of past traumas and conditioned ways of being so that you can be your authentic, loving self. Another benefit in many of these stress recovery activities is that they give you alone time. Many of us live with, work with, and interact with other people much of the day, and are exposed to constant demands and stimulation. If your children are like my daughter, they likely have a radar that alerts them as soon as you’re focused on a task, because that’s exactly when they will ask you to help them with something. It can be hard to find a minute to spend by myself or a space in my home to spend it. This is so much the case that it can feel odd to finally have space and time alone. Before you know it, you’ll cherish time alone and help others have it, too. I’m going to review a few of them here, namely cannabinoids, psychedelics, peptides, and herbs that support telomere length. They then bind to receptors throughout the body, including in the brain, helping to bring the body back to homeostasis. Think of the story of Goldilocks.

Give Truth A Chance

She didn’t want things too big or too small, too hot or too cold. She wanted them just right. That’s what our bodies want and need, too, in order to function optimally. But stress pushes our bodies away from this perfect middle ground. That’s where endocannabinoids come in, to help shift us and our cellular function back to optimal. In this way, they help with stress recovery. Enzymes break down the endocannabinoids once their job is done. Endocannabinoids have been shown to decrease inflammation in the body by communicating with the immune system. They also decrease pain and stress. The whole flower can be smoked and inhaled, or ingested, or the oil can be extracted and formulated into liquids, capsules, or lotions that are applied topically. They have been shown to help those who are facing death from cancer, perhaps one of the greatest experiences of stress imaginable. Some states and countries have legalized these substances and are beginning to provide access to them for stress recovery and establish protocols for their use. Based on my research and experience, I feel they are an important option to consider for stress recovery, depending on a person’s situation and comfort level. If you are considering the use of an entheogen, such as ayahuasca, be sure to consult with a practitioner trained in the use of psychedelics or an experienced shaman who can help you use it safely and effectively. Petersburg, Russia, are substances made in the human body, and in animals, that have the ability to reset genetic expression after stress exposure. Khavinson studied peptides during the Cold War in an effort to help soldiers recover from the stress of battle. Not only were the peptides able to restore healthy function, but they also actually worked at a genetic level to undo the effects of stress, thereby having an antiaging effect. Khavinson has since discovered peptides for various tissues in the body, from the pineal gland to the bones, and everything in between. Petersburg, the Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology. He described his research over the past fifty years with great enthusiasm, explaining that the use of peptides has been shown to increase life span by 20 to 40 percent.