Nothing feels quite as good as sitting down after a long day, breathing in deeply and just letting yourself relax. With age comes change, whether it is the state of your health, the loss of friends, moving, or financial instability. One way or another, the “golden years” can have their own stresses. Stress, as many of you know, is a quiet killer. It’s not just a feeling that lives inside your head, a harmless emotion. Stress causes a physical response within your body. It causes your blood pressure and heart rate to rise, and releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline into your bloodstream. A little bit of stress can be good, it can keep you alert and motivated, however, chronic stress and the physiological changes it causes can put a serious strain on your health. This is why it’s so important to make time in your daily life for some sort of relaxation. Here are some of the benefits you can gain from learning how to relax: Be Happier It comes as no surprise that stress affects your mood. If cortisol, also known as the “stress hormone”, is present for a prolonged amount of time, it can deplete you of serotonin and dopamine, which in turn can cause you to become depressed. Stay Healthy By relaxing, you can potentially avoid many of stress related diseases and health problems, including heart disease, asthma, diabetes, digestive problems, weakened immune system, Alzheimer’s, accelerated aging and premature death. Make Better Decisions A recent study showed that stress actually changed how people weighed their decisions. It is surprising that those who were under a lot of stress tended to focus on the potential positive outcome of a situation rather than the negative. This may...
