Body Tension Activities that Soothe Stress at Any Age

When you’re under stress, it causes tension in the body, especially in the muscles. What this tension does to your muscles is it keeps them from relaxing the way that they should.

This is not a physical condition, but is a physical reaction to the emotional fallout that’s caused by stress. This is why you can have backaches when you’re stressed – or stiff shoulders or neck pain.

Your body is taking on that stress. Because stress is absorbed into the body, it causes the aging process to accelerate. But there are activities that you can do no matter what your age is that can soothe that stress.

Meditation is one. Even if all you can do is practice it for 10 minutes, it’ll still help because it causes the body to relax, but it also relaxes emotions. People who engage in meditation can eliminate anxiety and control stress.

Practice deep breathing. Deep breathing calms the central nervous system and reduces stress. Do something fun like dancing. Dancing results in the release of endorphins, which are the feel good hormones -,so not only does it relax you emotionally, but it also causes your muscles to unclench so they relax, too.

If you don’t want to dance, take a walk. Being outside can help lessen stress. Even if all you do is walk around your neighborhood, it still helps, because this act causes a rise in serotonin.

This neurotransmitter is a mood booster, so you feel good physically and emotionally when it’s released. Play with your pet if you have one. Research shows that animals relieve stress because the interaction with them causes the body’s level of cortisol, the stress hormone, to lower.

Explore a new place or even your own area. Take a hike on a nature trail or play tourist in your own city. Studies show that spending time in nature not only lowers your body’s response to stress, but it also boosts the immune system, relaxes the mind and gives you energy.

Grow flowers or vegetables in an indoor garden. This has the same effect as being out in nature. It boosts your mood, while at the same time it relieves stress. Plus, keeping your hands busy nurturing and growing plants can also help keep a positive mindset.

Listen to music. Music is a known stress reliever for both the body and the mind. You can enjoy music at home or you can find a concert to attend or look up a local band and go hear them play.

Find something to laugh about. This might be a movie or a video, but laughter can ease body tension in the muscles, while at the same time limiting the stress reaction, lowering blood pressure and boosting endorphin production.

Use aromatherapy. Certain scents relax the muscles and lower stress. Eat some dark chocolate. This delicious treat is known to lower the amount of cortisol produced by stress and lowering the cortisol relaxes the muscles.

Botox Is Covering Up Signs of Stress

When you get stressed out, you can physically see it aging your face. By staying tense all the time, your face gets clenched up and starts to develop wrinkles. You might see it on your forehead, your brow, under your eyes, and even in crow’s feet on the outer corner of your eyes.

Many people see these and decide to get Botox, which helps make the wrinkles go away, but it might not be a long term solution. It’s not just aging that’s causing your wrinkles.

Instead, it might be stress that’s causing accelerated aging. Botox provides a good aesthetic solution, but only temporarily. While it might make the wrinkles disappear, if you don’t address your stress issues, then they’re going to come back in time.

You need to go beyond the surface level and figure out what’s making you stressed out. Solving your deeper issues is a more demanding task, but it has a lot more benefits. Apart from the aesthetics, it also helps you feel a lot happier, and can improve you physically in ways that you can’t see.

It can lower your blood pressure, decrease your chances of a heart attack, and stop your weight from fluctuating. You need to take wrinkles as a sign that you’re stressed out and take action there.

Long term stress doesn’t just affect your face – it can completely ruin you physically – from depression to lowered immune systems. In both men and women, it can cause your hair to thin out and your hairline to recede, which Botox alone can’t fix.

If you live a less stressful life, you can keep yourself looking younger, longer. If you do end up getting Botox, you need to capitalize on things and fix the problems you have before it gets worse.

If you don’t, the wrinkling will continue, and you’ll be left having to get yet another round of Botox. If you do, then your temporary solution will become a lot more permanent, at least until real, natural aging begins.

You can’t solve your deep problems with a surface level solution. There are more important things at risk than just your face if you’re dealing with prolonged stress. Focus on what truly matters: your health.

Don’t let your body fall into disrepair, and certainly don’t let stress take over. If you’re having to monitor your blood pressure, you’ll have much bigger problems than a few wrinkles.

Chronic Stress Ages Your Bones

When you think of the most common problems faced by old people in terms of health, you might bring up the fact that they often have weak or brittle bones. This is true, but this isn’t a problem exclusive to old people.

In fact, stress can age your bones no matter how old you are, giving you some of the same problems that might be experienced by senior citizens, doing irreversible damage to all kinds of joints and bones.

The main culprit to blame here is cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that gets released when you’re stressed out. It’s meant to help you in the event of a short-term stressful situation, and it can do that.

However, long-term stress never lets cortisol production return to normal, meaning that your cortisol levels will rise and remain at unhealthy levels, bringing lots of negative health effects along with it.

The reason cortisol damages your bones over time is that it stops certain processes in your body that are meant to build up bone structure, using it for extra energy instead. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue if you were to have some short term stress, but with chronic stress, you lose key elements in your body that are there to fill up any small holes that might develop in your bones.

If left unchecked, this leads to a condition known as osteoporosis. With osteoporosis, your bones literally become porous, meaning filled with holes. The reason this is so dangerous is that this means your bones are now far more fragile, and it would take a lot less force for you to sustain a serious injury.

With less density, your bones will be more likely to fracture in the event of something minor, and will be much harder to mend afterwards. With osteoporosis, simply tripping can lead to a broken pelvis or leg, costing a lot of money to fix and seriously affecting your mobility for many years to come.

This serious condition can appear in younger people from stress alone, and with so many years ahead of them, that’s a condition that they can’t afford to have. Consider regularly exercising and getting enough calcium so that your bones are more likely to stay strong.

This won’t fix the root problem, stress, but it can help lessen the effects of it. At the end of the day, you really need to figure out what’s causing you stress and address that before you develop a condition like this. 

Common Events as You Age That Throw Your Stress into Overdrive

While stress itself is enough to hasten your aging, there are also numerous events that will happen over the course of your life that will continue to stress you out. These are often inevitable, which can be very frustrating, since they take such a toll on your mental well-being.

You need to be prepared for these kinds of events to avoid as much stress as possible in the future. One source of stress that is often overlooked until it’s too late is retirement. Struggling to figure out funding for retirement can be extremely difficult, especially when you’re trying to play catch-up.

You should start saving for it as soon as possible – otherwise you might be faced with a great deal of unnecessary financial stress in the future. Another common source of stress moving to a new home.

As a younger adult, you’ll likely find yourself moving to new apartment complexes a few times before moving into a house, and even then, moving houses at least once. This process can be long and arduous, and can certainly be stressful.

Cleaning everything at the same time, packing, moving, unpacking, and getting settled is a very difficult thing to do. On the more morbid end of things, death is something that you’ll have to deal with in life.

Whether it’s someone you loved or someone you relied on – or even a beloved pet – you may one day have to see them pass away. It often feels unfair or unreal, but it’s just one of those facets of life that you have to accept.

It can put you in a very stressful situation in which you’re trying to continue with your normal life while trying to deal with mourning the loss of someone close. Health issues on your own end can also make a significant impact on your stress levels.

As you age, small problems can continue to get bigger and bigger. For example, if you have some knee pains early on, that can become borderline incapacitating later in life, causing more and more issues as time goes on.

Other health issues like a poor diet can cause severe weight gain once your metabolism starts to slow down as you age. The weight gain can then snowball into more hazardous health concerns.

By planning for these events in advance, you can lessen the burden that you’re going to be putting on yourself. If you try to rush into these things unprepared, it can cause you a great deal of unnecessary stress and can advance your aging process even further.

Confident Senior Citizens Suffer Fewer Effects of Stress

Confidence is the key to so many things in life. It can absolutely transform your life – especially if you learn it young. One of the things that it helps with the most is stress. Stress is most often caused by you feeling as though you don’t have control over the situation surrounding you, and you don’t like that situation.

By being more confident, you’ll find that you actually can influence the world around you in such a way that you’ll find it much more to your liking. When it comes to living as a senior citizen, there’s a lot of stress in life.

You’re going to have too much to worry about regarding health and retirement to have time for worrying about the little things. Luckily, confidence might be what you’ll need in order to handle those little things.

By being more confident, smaller problems will usually sort themselves out without requiring much of your own input. By being more confident, you’ll find yourself a lot more willing and able to let go of stress.

Where you might be concerned at some point over things in your life that are out of your control, confidence allows you to simply accept that fact and move on to better things. With less dwelling and fewer concerns, you’re going to be less stressed out.

Another aspect of confidence that helps decrease the effects of stress is a willingness to do what you want to do. So many people tend to not take time to do things that they enjoy because they’re hyper focused on work.

More confident people are able to take some time to themselves and enjoy what they want to do, whether that’s a hobby or a pastime or anything else. This leads to a lot more happiness in the long run, and a lot less stress.

One thing that confidence teaches is how to handle things when you’re under a lot of stress. When under a lot of stress, people tend to get aggressive. They might lash out at someone when they don’t mean to, or just become flustered easily.

Confidence can teach you to maintain a positive attitude through the stressful times, while still remaining assertive enough to get the things that you want. It doesn’t always require force, because that can just create more stress for all parties involved.

Creative Ways to Take the Edge Off Your Stress

When you’re stressed out, one of the things you might need to help yourself is an outlet – something that you can direct your feelings and emotions into instead of keeping them inside, which can cause you to age faster.

Most people find that they can use creativity as a means to take some of the edge off and help calm their stress. The reason creative activities give you a good outlet is that you’re able to almost project any feelings you might be having onto that activity.

It gives you a way to express yourself, which is healthy if you’ve been holding in a lot of thoughts and feelings recently. Everyone needs a way that they can express themselves, and even if you’re not exactly an artist, you can still find many benefits in creativity.

There are all kinds of ways that you can express yourself and reduce your stress levels. One of the most common forms is painting. Painting is simple and easy to start, and there are plenty of soothing guides out there that you can follow in order to make your own art.

The equipment you need isn’t too expensive, especially to start out, but later down the line you might find yourself picking up some nicer supplies if you’d like to. Others have found that clay molding is what helps them calm down.

It can be something very simple like shapes, or something more intricate like usable cups or pots. You can go to classes where they’ll teach you how to use a clay spinning wheel, or simply follow other guides along at home where you’re comfortable.

Either way, this is a good method of making something that you can both take pride in and use in a practical way. One simple creative hobby to get into is wood carving. While it may seem daunting, since most of the examples you’ll find are very intricate, it’s actually quite relaxing at the casual level.

All you need is a good knife and some wood that you can find in your backyard. Whether you’re just whittling it down to pass the time or you’re actually making a little design out of it, this is a great option if you want something without a lot of tools.

It can even be something super simple and affordable, such as coloring in a coloring book. They have many for adults, if you’d like to check them out and see what piques your interest. Take some time to learn the ins and outs of the craft and you’ll be able to make some amazing things.

Deep Breathing Does More That Just Calm You Down

Many people have heard that when you’re stressed out, you just need to take a deep breath. As absurd as it might sound, this actually does work, though it might take more than just a single breath.

If you can learn how to use deep breathing consistently, you’ll not only find that you’re reducing your levels of stress, but you might also be undoing some of the negative effects of stress that age you.

The reason deep breathing calms you down so much in the first place is that, for one, it lowers your heart rate. A high heart rate can often make you feel panicked and worried, whether there’s a reason for it or not.

By slowing things down, you trick your body to stop feeling as though it’s worried. It also gives you a second to clear your mind and only focus on one thing, instead of trying to focus on many things all at the same time.

There are a number of scientific reasons that deep breathing helps your body feel less stressed and actually helps undo the damage done by it. One reason is that it helps you detoxify your blood stream.

Normally, carbon dioxide is released from our blood through breathing, because it’s a biproduct that needs to be eliminated. If your breathing isn’t good enough, you can have it build up and result in negative effects all over your body.

Deep breathing helps your blood stream run more efficiently, and with better blood flow, you’ll see all kinds of benefits. For one, your muscles will be much healthier. If they’re not receiving proper blood flow, your muscles can be prone to soreness, injury, and even spasms or cramps.

This means that you’ll see things like a sore back or neck less often with deep breathing. Another benefit of deep breathing is that it helps combat cortisol levels. Cortisol is the stress hormone, the culprit that causes a great deal of uncomfortable side effects to accompany your stress.

By having something that will make cortisol less prevalent and less effective, you’re able to reduce the amount of aging damage done by being stressed out. Deep breathing isn’t anything complicated, it doesn’t require training or any special equipment.

It can be done anywhere at any time, meaning you can employ this to help you just about anywhere, very discreetly – no one will know you’re doing it. Once you get used to it, it’ll almost come naturally.

Develop a Support System for Stress as You Age

Stress is not something to be taken lightly. It can really have many negative effects on your life, and it’s definitely hard to deal with. If you’re not able to handle it effectively, you might end up succumbing to faster aging and other physical issues.

One of the best ways to make sure you’re able to handle your stress well is to make a support system that can help you as time goes on, ensuring that it never gets out of control.

A support system should be a group of people close to you that you know you can rely on. They should be there for you to calm you down, help you work through things, and become a better version of yourself.

You need to be able to be open and honest with them so that they can quickly help you make decisions on what to do in order to manage your stress. Some of the most common people you might pick for this job would be family members.

If you have a close relationship with your family, then you should be able to be open and honest with them about what’s stressing you out. Having known you for awhile, your family should be able to tell you what would work best in your situation and give good advice regarding what’s worked for you in the past and what you should do now.

Unfortunately, this might not always be the case. If you need alternatives, you should have plenty of others in your life who can form your support system. One often overlooked option is your boss.

If you’re on good terms with your boss, then you should be able to go to them for help, especially when it comes to work-related stress. If they do care for their employees, they should be able to help you, because they should be doing things in the best interests of those who work for them.

One important part of a support system is maintenance. Finding the right people and having them help you is great and all, but if you want that to last, you need to keep up with them.

This means first and foremost maintaining contact. If you’re not keeping up with them, they’ll assume you don’t need more help, and will likely stop being a part of that support team.

Additionally, you need to sometimes help them out with any issues they may be having. Friendship works two ways. And being able to help others with their issues sometimes gives you insight into your own.