iamgeekfit

In honour of National Stress Awareness Week in the UK starting Wed Nov. 4, here's a few geek friendly de-stressing tips that can be summarized as: move, breath, sleep - do each well, and we set up the physio-chemical, neuro -kinesio conditions to de stress.

1) MOVE Stress sets off a bunch of chemicals in the brain to ready them for flight. Imagine the butterflies felt before giving a public talk or getting set to jump out of a plane. These are similar to what happens with stress: our nervous system gears us up for fight or flight. Now if we neither fight nor flee, in other words, we don't move, all that chemical soup just zips up and doesn't get dissipated through action. Going for a walk, swinging a kettlebell, moving something, is therefore a very good thing to do. (More on why movement rules here)

2) Move as many joints as we can whether sitting or standing.
Our joints are wired to provide signals about where we are and how fast we're moving (mechanoreceptors). They're also wired to signal noxious stimulus like pain (nociceptors). Usually there are more mechano- than noci- receptors. Activating mechanrecptors is like sending a lot of happy signals to the nervous system, like "i'm moving just fine; all's well."

If we don't move the joints, happy signals go way way down, leaving a clear path for any pain signals to come through louder and clearer than they would if there were also mechanoreceptors sending up signals. So the more joints that move, the louder and clearer the happy signals to the nervous system, the less stress is often perceived as smaller pain signals are dealt with rather than amplified out of proportion.

A side benefit to moving joints is also that if joints designed to move don't move, crud collects around them.Moving them keeps joints lubricated and crud free. Even more, our bodies work by use it or lose it principles called Wolffs Law and Davis Law. What we don't move tends to atrophy, like loss of bone mineral density, or loss of mobility - if we stop moving joints they tend can calcify to hold that position (aka arthritis). Not desirable.

3) Move joints through a full range of motion - a joint like a wrist can move both up and down and side to side. Knees can make circles. Fingers both curl towards the palm and move away from the palm and can make circles flexed or extended.

MOST of the problems like carpal tunnel syndrome and RSI are created not by repetitive movements, but by repetitive movements of a joint in only one of possibly many directions. Pain is well known to add to stress, so joint movement in range of motion is a great way to help reduce low grade pain from regular work activities.

For joint mobility work, i recommend z-health's RPhase and Neural Warm Up. Descriptions of these approaches are reviewed here.

4) Breath with attention Breathing is a well known huge way to relax and de-stress. We get this relaxing effect in no small part because of what we're doing to the carbon dioxide/oxygen ratio in our bodies. CO2 is what keeps our pH levels in balance. Healthy blood pH ranges are very tiny. Some argue that when we breath shallowly - from our upper lungs, holding our guts in, we tend to hyperventilate, sucking in oxygen to excess and thereby wrecking the co2/o2 balance. Upper lung breathing is also associated with that fight or flight threat response, which yup, fires up those threat response (stress) chemicals. Attending to our breathing can help to calm us down, especially as we slow it down. We respond very quickly to these breathing changes, which is a plus. When we find ourselves sighing or yawning alot, or gasping for air - good sign to attend to breathing.

5) breath from the belly - this action moves the diaphragm which is the pump for our lymphatic system - which is what filters a lot of the toxins in our body - so good to keep that moving. 

6) breath in through the nose - this warms and filters air going into the body - even during athletetic exertion - practicing breathing in through the nose is a calming thing that can help us stay more relaxed and our form looser, more efficient, less fatiguing.

7) breath out in longer breaths than breathing in: this helps build up a better level of CO2 in the body which is critical for well being. A great way to practice this kind of breathing is straw breathing: to breath in through the nose and out through pursed lips. Try to get a 1:2 ratio or better on the breathing out.

8) Sleep well - get good quality sleep at night. While debate ranges about how many hours a person needs, they need to be uninterrupted and hi quality. Insomnia/poor sleep can let cortisol levels get elevated and these are directly related to stress. 

8) starchy carbs like rice pudding four hours before bed - if you time your carbs right, you'll sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow according to research out last year, so time those carbs well for sleep.

9) sleep in a darkened room - cover up any LEDs that glare; get curtains that cover the windows to stop light leak even at night. Light is a cue to get up - ANY light - and can affect sleep quality.

10) don't check the clock if you get up in the night and go back to sleep. Just go back to sleep. If needed its more restful to get an alarm we can trust than to check the clock, as that can be a big stressor while trying to fall back.

So this list of top ten destressors can be categorized as move, breath and sleep. Each of them relate to helping our nervous system - the always on guardian of the body - to reduce perceived threat - as that what stress is all about. That's all our nervous system processes: is there a threat or not. So, all of the above really have to do with threat modulation.

Techniques to support each of these concepts of movement, breathing
and rest/recovery will help soothe our nervous systems to a more
restful, positive and productive (ie, less stressed) place.

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