Don't stress out man!

Stress isn't what you think it is and there are many misconceptions about stress. Understanding the source of stress and the effects can help you combat it more effectively.

Managing Stress

If you want to relieve stress, find a way to exert some measure of control, no matter how small.

Managing Stress: What Rats Have To Teach Us | My Online Wellness:

Go outside. Boost your self-esteem

Five minutes in the green can boost self-esteem

Hardly a surprising result, but still - a good reminder for everyone. Being outside occasionally is a good thing. So, if you live in the desert like I do, is it "five minutes in the tan/brown"?

Relieving stress through spirituality

Spirituality and Prayer Relieve Stress.

Religion in general gets a bad rap. I won't go into the political or social aspect of it, but from a cognitive and health aspect science keeps finding more and more benefits to religious behaviors.

People who chew gum report feeling less stressed

People who chew gum report feeling less stressed: "It's not so pleasing when it glues your shoe to the pavement but a new study suggests chewing gum could be a great stress-reliever, with consequent health benefits. Perhaps the finding could help explain why Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson - an incessant gum chewer - has coped for so long with the stress of top-flight football?

Andrew Smith at Cardiff University surveyed over 2,000 workers and found that the 39 per cent of respondents who reported never chewing gum were twice as likely to say they were extremely stressed at work, compared with gum chewers, and one and a half times as likely to say they were very or extremely stressed with life in general.

Of course, rather than chewing gum having a stress-relieving effect, it's perfectly possible that some other factor reduces stress and encourages chewing gum. Indeed, Smith looked at a range of potential confounds and found that women, lower earners, younger, less educated respondents, smokers, people with demanding jobs and neurotic extraverts were all more likely to chew gum. Crucially, however, the link between chewing gum and lower stress held even after taking all these extraneous factors into account.

What's more, chewing gum was also associated with better mental and physical health. Again, this remained true even after controlling for extraneous factors, such that gum chewers were less likely to have symptoms of depression and half as likely to have self-reported high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

Smith concluded that chewing gum may be a 'readily available and relatively cheap method of addressing' stress and stress-related ill health. Possible mechanisms that might explain the associations reported here include an effect of chewing gum on autonomic nervous system activity and/or on the neurotransmitter serotonin. Smith noted that he has an intervention study underway that will provide a more robust test of the possible stress-related benefits of chewing gum.
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Smith, A. (2009). Chewing gum, stress and health Stress and Health, 25 (5), 445-451 DOI: 10.1002/smi.1272

New evidence that dark chocolate helps ease emotional stress

New evidence that dark chocolate helps ease emotional stress: "The 'chocolate cure' for emotional stress is getting new support from a clinical trial published online in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research. It found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed."

Short stressful events may improve working memory

Short stressful events may improve working memory: "(University at Buffalo) Experiencing chronic stress day after day can produce wear and tear on the body physically and mentally, and can have a detrimental effect on learning and emotion. However, acute stress -- a short stressful incident -- may enhance learning and memory."

This fits well with other earlier research that shows that mild stress improves motivation to learn and that emotion/stress plays a large role in memory retention. Maybe I need to stress out my students briefly just before each class?

Matter over mind

Seems that doing cognitive tasks coupled with physical movement is extremely taxing to the brain.

Religious people less anxious, brain activity shows

Religious people less anxious, brain activity shows: "Deeply devout people exhibit lower activity in a brain region linked to anxiety when giving the wrong answer on a simple test, new research finds

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But perhaps we are more prone to guilt - so I think that gets offest pretty well in the grand scheme of things.