A rough commute, a disastrous work presentation, or a dressing-down from a boss can be all it takes to get our stress hormones pumping on a bad day. But just as we have a fight-or-flight stress response that sets our heart rates and blood pressure rising, we also have a "relaxation response" that we can tap into to calm us back down.
The trick is to know what works and what doesn’t. Here are five simple methods to quickly tamp down stress, backed by scientific evidence.
Write down your worries
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by jitters right before a big presentation or an important interview, but sometimes relieving that stress can be as easy as just writing them off.
One study from the University of Chicago found that students who were prone to test anxiety improved their test scores by nearly one grade point after they were given 10 minutes ahead of the test to write about what was causing them fear. Those who had the most pre-test stress and who unloaded the most negativity onto the page before their test saw the most improvement in test scores.
The researchers say stress and pressure can inhibit our brains’ working memory; that’s why so many of us choke during stress and just go blank. The act of writing about the stress event may help us unload our anxieties and free up brainpower needed to complete the test, the researchers speculate.
Get mindful
There’s been plenty of research in recent years that appears to prove practising mindfulness meditation can help everyone from kids, to those with depression learn how to handle stress. By focusing on the breath and paying attention to just the present moment, meditation practitioners say they learn how to just let their worries roll off them.
But while many say it can take weeks to really get the hang of meditation, one recent study found that even those just learning can reap the stress-relieving benefits of meditation right away.
The study had participants try three days of mindfulness-meditation training and then complete speech and math tests in front of “stern-faced” evaluators. Another group completed three days of poetry-analysis training.
After the tests, the mindfulness trainees reported feeling much less stress during the exams than the poetry readers reported, suggesting that the meditation group members had learned psychological resilience to help them handle both the test and the less-than-friendly evaluators.
Take a walk
It’s hardly news that regular walks are good for your physical health, nor is it even news that a walking routine can help lift mild depression.
But research has found that going for a walk can also help the brain reorganize itself so that it can better handle short bursts of unexpected stress.
One study looked at how mice deal with stress, after they were broken into two groups: one was allowed to run on a wheel at leisure for several weeks, while the other group was not given a running wheel.
When each group of mice was exposed to stress -- - in this case, a short plunge into cold water -- the neurons in the brains of all the mice showed signs of stress.
But the brains of the running group seemed to be able to calm down better. These mice showed a spike in the activity of neurons that shut off excitement in the ventral hippocampus, a brain region shown to regulate anxiety. So while the running mice were quickly stressed, something about the running had also helped them learn how to be resilient and quickly calm themselves again.
Chew some gum
Sometimes we want to completely zone out and relax after a stressful moment; other times, we don’t have time for meditating; we need to power through the stress and get focused on solutions. That’s where chewing gum can help.
Gum isn’t great for our teeth, but several studies have shown it can help channel our energy and focus so we don’t have time to worry about stress.
One study had participants complete stress-inducing activities on computers that forced them to quickly answer arithmetic questions, keep track of lists of letters, and identify colours, all at the same time. They performed the tests either while chewing gum or without gum.
The participants reported lower levels of anxiety and feeling more alert while chewing gum during the stress tests than without the gum. When researchers took objective measurements of the participants’ stress, testing their saliva for cortisol -- a well-known marker of stress -- the gum chewers had significantly lower cortisol during both the mild and moderate stress tests than the non-gum chewers.
Smile
It sounds cliche: If you’re feeling blue, put on a happy face. But science has found that forcing yourself to smile can actually work to make you feel better.
One study had participants complete the stressful task of tracing a star with their non-dominant hand using a mirror, after being misled into believing most people could do the task with ease. (It’s actually pretty hard.)
Some members of the group were told to keep their faces neutral, others were told to hold a full, eye-curling smile, while the members of the third group were made to mimic a smile by holding a set of chopsticks between their teeth. Their heart rates were monitored during the test and afterward to gauge their stress levels.
Those mimicking a smile by holding the chopsticks recovered from the stressful activity with lower heart rates than participants who held neutral expressions, while those with the full, real smiles relaxed the quickest of all.
The researchers say smiling during brief stress -- even if it’s a forced grin-and-bear-it smile -- appears to help us reduce the intensity of our body’s stress response.
