Home Remedies for Stress, Anxiety
February 28, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
In today’s modern world, nearly everyone seems to be stressed out in their daily lives. Both spouses working to make ends meet, often long days – particularly in today’s environment where employers have the upper hand. With the remaining hours of the day there are endless chores, duties, activities, and obligations that consume those precious remaining hours.
Stress is experienced often by most people, and is mostly unavoidable in a busy life. Anxiety is a result of stress, and is usually a tenseness about an upcoming deadline or something coming up in the future.
You’ve probably heard it before, but stress can and will affect your health. Your heart rate, blood pressure, muscles, and emotions are all subjected to stress and can lead to headache, upset stomach, insomnia, and may even lead to illness or aggravate an existing or underlying health problem.
How to control stress
Get enough sleep
Sleep deprivation is unfortunately all too common these days. Long days and stressful worries will result in a poor night’s sleep. One of the most effective remedies for stress is to get enough sleep. Even one extra hour will make a big difference. Give something up and go to bed earlier…
Do physical activity
Exercise will improve your mood, your blood flow, and help you to think more clearly. A simple walk each day will do wonders to help battle stress. During your walk, you will probably discover that you are resolving some of the issues in your mind as you exercise.
Break up big tasks
Break up responsibilities into smaller pieces. You will be surprised at the effectiveness of visualizing and doing just one task at a time, instead of constantly thinking of the overall big project.
Be practical
Don’t take on more than you should. Be realistic about your expectations. Learn to say no. Do things that you can reasonably achieve. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Delegate.
Limit caffeine
While caffeine in coffee, tea or soda may seem like a beneficial supplement to get you going, it will actually increase your stress levels. As with everything, moderation is the rule.
Make time for yourself
Get away from your normal surroundings once in a while. It is all to easy to be in a constant routine. A purposeful change of scenery will be refreshing.
Learn to calm down
There are many methods you can learn which will lead to relaxation. Closing your eyes for ten seconds while breathing deeply and slowly and thinking of your favorite place in the world, can be just the thing. Getting a massage, doing Yoga, and learning meditation will all help to achieve a relaxed state.
You only have one life to live, and as each day ticks by, it’s a day that you will never get back. Take a step back from an overly busy life of stress and anxiety, and enjoy it – smell the roses…
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Stress and anxiety can wreck havok on auto-immune diseased people. It’s a cycle of stress, disease flare up, which causes more stress, which causes more flare up.
What a nice article..kudos to MSB…no stress..Amen!
I was watching some of these idiotic commericials on pain relief medications and how dependant these companies make people feel on daily popping a pill to stop pain, especially headaches. Rather than seeking out the CAUSE of a headache and trying to eliminate it, people foolishly choose to “MASK” their symptoms until the next headache. Their bodies are telling them through pain that something is wrong and do something to stop it.
Headaches can be a tell-tale sign of something quite serious, but often it is something that can be solved through easy measures IF the person is willing. The following are 20 possible causes of a headache and some possible remedies to mitigate or get rid of the underlying problem.
1. MSG- Monosodium glutamate is an artificial flavour enhancer that turns bad non-nutritious food into something that your tastes buds “thinks” is good. There are reasons why food compaines are putting no-MSG on labels so much, it is because many people react to MSG and the most common reaction is severe headaches. MSG also goes by other names (sources); hydrolyzed (vegetable) protein, autolyzed yeast (yeast extract), casinate, ribonucleotides, disodium insinate, disodium guanylate, and sometimes (possible other sources) carreageenan, artificial or natural flavours, seasonings, textured protein, bouillon, broth, malt extract, soy protein (isolate) extract.
Remedy- Get MSG and MSG hidden sources out of your diet through reading labels of the food you buy. An excellent book to read, “In bad taste, the MSG symptom complex”, by George R. Schwartz, M.D. describes just how awful MSG is to you and what to do.
2. Food allergies. Many people get exotic food from all over the planet that your body does not like and one quick symptom of this is headaches.
Remedy- Get an expensive allergy blood test or remove a certain food from your diet for at least 48 hours to see if your headaches get better or go away, process of elimination.
3. Natural and artificial processed supplements. Individuals will take all sorts of vitamins, minerals, and herbs from the health food store “thinking” they are good for them and become sick from it, not needing it to begin with.
Remedy- Like food, use process of elimination to see what makes you feel better. Also know the source of the health supplement. Just because it says a certain amount of something it doesn’t mean it came from a reputable source. The potentcy of certain herbs can vary greatly on time of year they are harvested for one example.
4. Dehydration. Too many people have monster headaches because they don’t have enough fluid in their bodies. As people age they lose the thrist response and forget to drink enough water.
Remedy- Drink enough water or fluids, and avoid high sodium soft drinks and alcohol. Make sure your home is not too dry, use humidifiers as needed.
5. Sodium. There are many sources of sodium in too many foods of top of people overly salting their food. Too much sodium leads to dehydration and some bad headaches.
Remedy- Either cut down on sodium intake in your diet, or drink more water to help dilute the sodium.
6. Caffeine. Not only can too make make you jittery and nervous, but in some people too much caffeine can wake up and stimulate you too much and cause some strong tension headaches.
Remedy- Gradually decrease your caffeine intake as not to shock your body.
7. If you wear glasses make sure everything is right with them. A wrong prescription can throw your eyes into much strain and give you some ugly headaches. If your glasses get tweaked and you have a stigmatism your vision will be thrown off big time. Dirty glasses will also tend to force your eyes to focus on the smudge more than what you are trying to look at.
Remedy- Have an eye exam if not done recently to see if your vision has changed. Have an obtometry office make sure your glasses are aligned properly. Clean glasses often and make sure lenses are free of flaws.
8. Eye strain. Those that don’t wear glasses still get headache related to the eyes. Poorly lit places, too much light, reading something too close or too far away, even rapidly eye movements can cause much pressure on the eyes.
Remedy- Give you eyes a break occasionally and close them for awhile to rest. Make sure printed material is large enough to read. Improve the conditions you are using your eyes; clean and clear and readable computer monitor and television, good not harsh lighting, avoid glare, wear sunglasses. Consider that you may need glasses.
9. Stress from over doing it. Pushing yourself to exhausion can lead to bad headaches from your body telling you to stop right now. This exhaustion leads to much eye strain and lack of properly oxygenated blood reaching the brain and head area.
Remedy- Of course get enough sleep and rest, sometimes a simple cat nap of 15 to 20 minutes can do much to rejuvenate your body.
10. Neck and or jaw out of place. Much tension on the neck area from sleeping wrong, whiplash, strain, etc. can lead to very painful headaches. The jaw area can affect the frontal and sides of the head if out of place.
Remedy- Massage and heat or cold compresses can help until ailment heals. Chiropractors can put what is out, back. They can also show you how you can do this yourself. Pain relief creams usually only hide what is wrong.
11. Sinus problems. Some of the worst long lasting headaches come from infected or inflamed sinus cravities.
Remedy- Sinus infections need treatment, see a doctor. Inflamed sinuses can be helped through nasal sprayers that have a salt solution that is very healing if done 3-5 times daily.
12. Ear problems. So much of health problems in the head starts with the ears. Infections to allergies of the ears affect the sinuses, throat, the equilibrium of a person that leads to dizziness and terrible headaches.
Remedy- Eye, ear, nose doctor can heal by irrigating the ear. The natural way is ear candling. Ear candles when done properly can remove much debris that has collected and causing much pressure in the ears, sinuses, neck, head areas. Much care MUST be exercised when using ear candles, read the instructions very carefully or have some professional do it. They do work exceptionally well when done right.
13. Teeth. Sometimes a cavity can radiate pain and cause headaches, and wisdom teeth are notious for this. Crowding teeth and off centered chewing can cause pressure in the jaw region and headaches. Sensitive teeth to certain food and temperatures can cause all sorts of lasting pain.
Remedy- A dentist can show you the problem and ways to better deal with. You can to stop eating certain foods that cause your teeth to feel pressure.
14. Airbourne pollutants. This can be chemical fumes or even smog and carbon monoxide poisoning in the home that gets into your bloodstrem through the air you breathe. One of the first symptoms of chemical toxins is a headache.
Remedy- Ventilation and getting away from the sources and fixing the problem. Carbon monoxide detector is alert you to a problem in the home. Avoided bad air as much as possible, this can be as simple as rolling up the window and using the air condtioner if you have one in a car on a crowded and congested freeway that is jam packed.
15. Pollen and other airbourne allergies. Any allergy to something can cause a reactionary swelling in the body, especially in the head area. People can be allergic to mold, trees, grasses, dust, pets, etc., etc.
Remedy- Find out what you are allergic to through scratch tests, blood tests, or testing certain items yourself with very tiny amounts to see how you react. Try eliminating the problem or lessen it through hepa air filters, vacumning regularly, change you clothes, wash your face, arms, legs, and brush your hair out. Your pets can bring in much dander and outside allergies in with them, clean them before they they come inside.
16. Magnetic source. Many people live too near or work around places that emit a magnetic field that cause people to have ringing in their ears and all sorts of head and bodily problems.
Remedy- Get away from it after determining the source. City and county laws sometimes have that can site a place of violation as dangerous. Sheilding yourself from something like this is not usually practical. Either have problem removed or remove yourself from it.
17. Cell phone. Not only can having a cell phone too close to your head cause all sorts of long term problems from the microwaves, but also headaches. By holding the phone in the same position for too long cause neck and jaw strain that can lead to headaches.
Remedy- Use ear plugs that connect to the phone, or hold the phone at a safe distance from your head and ears. Change positions of phone and occassionally move around to avoid cramping. Limit time on cell phone.
18. Noise. Loud high decibel noise damages the ears and leads to headaches through literal vibrations of the head. Certain high pitched sounds can also leads to headaches.
Remedy- Use ear protections wear and limit exposure to overly dangerous sounds. Workers exposed to hazardous noise levels have some rights, OSHA is one place to turn for this. Spend time in quiet places more often.
19. Stress, anger, worry. People will not believe how much physical pressure they put on their head region when they gnash their teeth together, clutching their fists together and even frowning a lot. Worry affects the whole body.
Remedy- One thing is awareness that the stress is causing you even more stress and body aches is a good starting point to easing the stress. Close your eyes for a few minutes and visualize just how bad you feel with overwrought emotions. Next time anger hits you, asking yourself “what is the point?”, and thinking out the consequences of anger can help you a lot.
20. Environment. Many headaches that just keep coming back can be contributed to the rapid changes of the weather or the fact that where you are living you cannot adapt to. Some people just cannot take the extreme cold, heat, higher elevation, dryness, excessive humidity and moistness, their bodies cannot adapt to it, an actual health problem with it.
Remedy- If you can afford to move go to somewhere that makes you feel better, older people do this all the time to warmer climates. If you cannot move then attempt to spend as much time making your body feel better by creating an artificial environment that suits you. This is what they do with exotic animals all the time at zoos and in homes. You can create somewhere that is a small retreat that makes you feel physically and emotionally better and more relaxed.