Are you stressed? Stop

This text was written by a TecMundo columnist; Learn more at the end.

I was motivated to study stress by feeling the effects of overwork. After some episodes of acute stress in response to life situations, I found a non-pharmacological alternative to alleviate the consequences of stress in my life, which is ironically the central theme of my work.

Benefits include Physical exercise provides us with the fastest impact on our mental health. These are instant gratifications that come within minutes of moving, especially when we do something we enjoy, like exercise; This results in reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms, increased pleasure and well-being, and reduced stress.

When we’re stressed or physically and mentally exhausted, exercise seems like the last thing we want to do. But this is exactly what will make us feel better. Understand how this happens and learn the essential ingredient of physical movement that will buffer your psychological stress.

Exercise and stress. Stress and exercise

A two-way relationship must be recognized:

• Exercise leads to decreased perceived stress;
• High perceived stress can reduce the amount of exercise we do.

Physical exercise is by definition a stressor because it disrupts the body’s normal physiological balance, but body movement is not like other stressors that have negative negative effects.

The stress caused by adequate amounts of exercise is one of the best stresses we can create for the human body.

Despite the stress, Exercise, especially when done at moderate intensity, reduces the harmful effects of other stressors.. Exercise does this by regulating a variety of physiological mechanisms, such as regulating the HPA axis, an endocrine stress response axis, as well as regulating neuropeptide Y, which helps calm the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in regulating stress and anxiety. “An anxious amygdala is our worst enemy,” Jennifer Heisz, a researcher in this field, said in an interview. The brain’s amygdala reports to the hypothalamus, which causes the stress response.

Adrenaline and cortisol rise, signaling the threat to the body and mind. Chronic stress has been identified as a major pathway to increased incidence of depression worldwide through inflammation. – an aspect that exercise also helps with.

A day of exercise can be a less stressful day

Education can act as a kind of “anti-absorptive” shield against stressful situations. On days when people exercise, stressful events impact their mental health less. Active people responded to stress 14% better than physically inactive people. In active individuals, reactions to stressful events were lower on training days (17%).

“Exercise may strengthen people’s ability to psychologically manage stressors more effectively, but this is only one mechanism that explains the effects.”anti stress”.

stress buffering

Exercise has a stress-buffering effect through 4 mechanisms (stress buffering):

1) Preventing the perception of stress. Physically active people may be less likely to find situations stressful.

2) Strengthening personal and social resources, such as self-efficacy (belief in being capable) and social support, can help reduce stress.

3) Affecting psychological and/or physiological stress reactions. In this case, stress-related tension/anxiety or cortisol release decreases after acute physical activity or chronic physical training.

4) Creating compensatory effects through increased health, improving health levels rather than acting directly as a stress buffer.

An important ingredient

When I wrote at the beginning of the article “especially if we are doing something we love, such as exercise”, this was motivated by an interesting study published years ago. Researchers investigated whether stress had a negative impact on the life satisfaction of more than 800 students at two schools in Switzerland; examined whether physical activity could buffer this effect and whether it was strengthened by intrinsic motivation. someone who is characterized by positive emotions such as joy, fun, and pleasure.

As expected, stress caused decreased life satisfaction. However, contrary to expectations, physical activity did not function as a stress buffer for students. The reduction effect only occurred when students had high intrinsic motivation for physical activity, that is, when they liked what they were doing.

The positive emotions promoted by physical activity may be key components of the relationship with stress. The title of the article couldn’t be better: No fun, no profit (no fun, no profit).

Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, known for the physical effects exercise gives him, recognized: “Exercise provides us with an outlet for the pent-up energies created by stress and thus tones the soul just as exercise shapes the body.”

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Fábio Dominski He holds a PhD in Human Movement Sciences and a degree in Physical Education from Santa Catarina State University (UDESC). He is a university professor and researcher at the Laboratory of Sport and Exercise Psychology (LAPE/UDESC). he is doing scientific dissemination on social media there podcast available on Spotify. Author of Physical Exercise and Science – Facts and Myths.

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