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…or Cycle or Swim or Lift It Out

Stressed out? You’re not the only one. In a 2014 poll conducted by NPR with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, more than 1 in 4 Americans reported having a lot of stress in the past month, while 50% of respondents—over 115 million people—said they experienced a stressful event in the last year. Considering that polls like this one don’t count the hidden, unconscious stress people experience without knowing it, it’s pretty clear we’re dealing with a serious and pervasive problem. Fortunately, one of the best and most immediate ways to beat stress is also one of the simplest: exercise.

In addition to physically affecting your body, exercise chemically alters your brain. Not only does it boost production of endorphins—the neurotransmitters responsible for that “runner’s high” you get after working out—exercise also lowers levels of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. One study conducted at Princeton and published in the Journal of Neuroscience shows physical activity can even reorganize your brain so it responds less to stress. Mice in the study were divided into two groups, one with free access to a running wheel and one without a wheel. After six weeks, the mice were  briefly exposed to a stressor in the form of cold water. Right after the stressor, the brains of the active mice experienced an activity jump in neurons responsible for shutting down excitement in the part of the brain, the ventral hippocampus, known to regulate anxiety. At the same time, neurons in the runner mice released more gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter that calms nerve activity in the brain.

I like running alone, but in exercise can provide you with an ideal opportunity to network or spend time with friends. If you’re like me, it also provides a great excuse to have some “Me” time.  Exercise also acts to lessen stress on a behavioral level. As you start to see changes in your body—from weight loss to increased strength and stamina—your confidence will grow accordingly. Suddenly more vigorous and energetic, you’ll have the power and self-discipline necessary to accomplish all your goals rather than stressing over them.

I know you’re thinking you’re too busy to exercise, especially since you probably need to spend a billion hours at the gym to reap any stress-busting benefits. After all, your lack of spare time is probably one of the things that’s stressing you out. But you really only need to do a little bit—twenty minutes or so—every day to take the edge off. Instead of scrolling through social media over lunch, try taking a quick walk around the block, which some research has shown to have the same effect as a mild tranquilizer. (Since exercise also improves your focus and concentration, you’ll be more relaxed AND super sharp for that afternoon meeting.) In the evening, spend some time watching TV on the treadmill instead of the couch. Take it from a busy physician who’s also a triathlete—you’ll never regret making time to exercise. And alleviating some of your stress allows you to be the best, most successful version of yourself. Why settle for anything less?

Do the holidays and post-election happenings have you stressed out?

If you’re so stressed out you feel like it’s affecting your health, you’re probably right. Chronic stress has been linked to conditions like heart disease, anxiety, diabetes, and depression. We’ve all been told we need to lower our stress levels, but who has the time? Is there a simple way to relax that actually works? Consider mindfulness meditation. Just a few minutes of contemplation every day has been shown to reduce stress, improve attention, and much more.

Don’t forget that the most proven, accessible and useful tool is available for you to start and use at any time – meditation. 

Put simply, mindfulness means focusing on the present. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created a program called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MSBR) that has brought meditation into the mainstream, mindfulness involves paying deliberate, nonjudgmental attention to the moment. This neutral mindset helps us see our worries and concerns for what they are—just thoughts—and allows us to let them go. In a study conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, a psychiatrist at the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, people with generalized anxiety who followed a stress-reduction program based on mindfulness were considerably less anxious than those in a control group who were taught other stress management techniques. Another study found health care professionals who participated in an MSBR program reported significantly less stress and more self-compassion compared to a control group. Researchers have even found mindfulness to be helpful in treating serious mental health issues like obsessive compulsive disorder and drug addiction.

For those of you wanting more tangible proof of meditation’s benefits, consider this: mindfulness actually changes your brain. Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, conducted studies involving brain scans of meditators. She found that people who had been meditating for a long time had increased grey matter in the auditory and sensory cortex, which she attributes to the mindful attention paid to breathing, sounds, and other stimuli during meditation. She also discovered more grey matter in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with memory and decision making. According to Lazar, meditators in their fifties had the same amount of gray matter in one part of the prefrontal cortex as people in their twenties in spite of the fact that the cortex is known to shrink as we age.

Not only does meditation cause concrete change, it can do so relatively quickly. While Lazar’s initial study looked at long-term meditators, subsequent research showed increases in subjects’ brain volume after just eight weeks of meditation. Another study by J. David Creswell and his team at Carnegie Mellon University and published in the June 2014 issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology looked at whether “low doses” of meditation would affect stress response. When completing nerve-wracking tasks assigned to them, participants who received just three days of 25-minute mindfulness training sessions reported lower perceived stress levels than a control group.

The takeaway? Even if you’re short on time (and who isn’t?) you can reap the substantial stress-busting benefits of mindfulness meditation. Many guided meditations are available online for free, and you can even download apps like Stop, Breathe, & Think that allow you to sample the basics of mindfulness.

Purpose and Death

Did you know having a sense of purpose can actually add years to your life? An analysis of ten studies following 136,000 people from the United States and Japan for around seven years found those who reported a feeling of higher purpose in life lowered their risk of death during the study period by approximately 20 percent. The study, published in the Dec. 3 2015 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine also found participants who said their lives were meaningful had less chance of developing heart disease. Although it’s not clear exactly how a sense of purpose can lengthen life, the authors of this particular study think it might protect the body from potentially harmful stress responses as well as encourage a generally healthier lifestyle. And while the study shows an association rather than a cause and effect relationship, its implication—that knowing what you want out of life and having a plan to get it can impact lifespan—is significant.

Making a Plan

So let’s say you take this research about a sense of purpose to heart and make a goal for yourself. How do you achieve it? First and foremost, set and declare a clear intention. A study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology measured how often people exercised over two weeks. Researchers randomly divided 248 people into three groups. In the control group, participants were asked to keep track of how often they exercised and then instructed to read a few paragraphs of a novel. In addition to being asked to track exercise, the second group read a pamphlet on the benefits of exercise for reducing heart disease and given a motivational speech. The third group was told to track their exercise and given the same pamphlet and speech as the second group, but they were also asked to come up with a plan explicitly stating where and when they intended to exercise. At the end of the two-week study period, only 38% of people in the control group and 35% of the second group exercised at least once a week. In the third group, where participants wrote down exactly what they planned to do? A whopping 91% of this group exercised at least once a week. By simply setting and stating a clear intention, you can seriously amp up your chances of achieving your goal.