Stress is quite easy to handle at times. Setting peace as the ultimate goal of your mind can work wonders. Pause and relax in tough situations and try to destress yourself. It’s not the stress that kills us. It’s the reaction to the stress. The greatest weapon against stress is the ability to choose one thing over the other. Chronic stress can raise blood pressure, cause hypertension, and trigger heart attacks and strokes as well as depressed and suicidal thoughts. It can affect your mental balance and the cardiovascular system of your body adversely. Over time, continuously experiencing stress can make you feel difficult and uncomfortable and cause more health problems.
A poor diet, busy life, and demanding job can add to chronic stress levels, which may turn quite difficult to handle in the long run. This may also add to your weight and give rise to metabolic syndrome and heart problems. So, what’s the connection between the stress and the muffin top? That’s true, the answer is DIET. Cravings are common when stress occurs, and they also cause hunger pangs. The body uses the stored energy when it causes fight-or-flight response, and it helps you stimulate energy from the food that stimulates the brain to secrete more hormones and use the stored energy. The Result is – Hunger which makes you eat the wrong foods. High-fat foods not only contribute to overeating and weight gain, but they can also worsen your stress. Let’s have a look at foods to avoid and foods to eat to best the stress.
5 Foods To Avoid While Dealing With Stress:
Here are the top 5 foods that can worsen your stress.
- Ice-cream: Ice-cream might cool off your mouth, but it won’t cool off your body. It is the food with high refined sugar, so your body glucose levels increase.
- Coffee: You might think that focus-inducing coffee could help distract you from the stress of a looming project deadline, but having a lot of coffee to beat your work stress can harm your body. It can increase and boost your wrong levels of sugar. Caffeine is known as a mood-booster that stimulates dopamine activity. So, avoid drinking coffee now and then when stressed.
- Fast foods: When your body switches to the fight-or-flight response, it may elevate your blood pressure. If you are constantly having high blood pressure and you snack on fast foods, it may lead to the consumption of high sodium foods and may aggravate your hypertension. Like, I told you initially, stress is not that kills but it’s the response to stress that matters. Fast foods are not beneficial for your health. So, avoid them when stressed.
- Canned soup or packaged foods: These foods are the most convenient, easy, and instant to munch on something handy but very high in sugar and salt which can cause adverse side-effects on the body.
- Diet soda or canned juices: You may think its liquid, but these fluids can cause various side-effects on the body and increase your sugar levels and may cause side-effects in the long run.
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5 Best Foods To Eat To Beat The Stress:
Here is the list of the best foods which can help you beat the stress.
- Spinach: Research suggests that folic acid deficiency can suppress certain enzymes that help in the production of serotonin and dopamine. Certain stress levels tend to produce excessive hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, and fewer transmitters associated with relaxation and happiness. Having spinach in your diet can help you have sufficient folic acid. For more folate, try chickpeas and lentils, broccoli, or avocado.
- Olive oil with salad: It stimulates the happiness hormone and the feel-good factors which decrease the systolic pressure.
- Oats: Oats is the best food to beat the stress because it helps in mood-regulating neurotransmitter known as serotonin. This is a stress-induced carb, which helps in building a block in the brain which causes the release of stress-free hormones that are beneficial for your body.
- Wild salmon: Omega 3 fatty acids are best when you have chronic stress, as it helps in releasing the good hormones. Consuming fatty fish regularly helps in boosting your mood, and it releases serotonin that makes you feel happier and confident when you need to deal with the stress. An added benefit is that it helps in controlling the inflammation which helps in decreasing the stress levels and the side-effects of chronic stress.
- Dark chocolate: It’s the food for beating the stress. But, the keyword is dark not just any chocolate. Dark chocolate can stimulate euphoria-like inducing chemicals that can help you beat the stress. Make sure you grab real dark chocolate and not just any branded chocolate that causes nothing but weight gain.
So, these are the apt and the best tips to combat stress and deal with chronic stress in the long run. These diet tips are beneficial for you to live life positively by releasing the feel-good hormones that make you feel confident and better while dealing with stress. Think again, your body is smarter than you think.
