Anxiety /Stress

   Anxiety or Stress is a feeling of physical or emotional tension that can be result of some event. It can come from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous. Stress is your body’s reaction to a challenge or demand, a long term stress turns to anxiety.

Stress can be positive, such as when it helps you avoid danger or meet a deadline. But when stress lasts for a long time, it may harm your health.

 Types of Stress:

• Acute Stress: This is short-term stress that goes away quickly. You feel it when you see vehicle opposite to you on the road, have a fight with your partner, or ski down a steep slope. It helps you manage dangerous situations. It also occurs when you do something new or exciting. All people have acute stress at one time or another.
• Chronic Stress: This is stress that lasts for a longer period of time. You may have chronic stress if you have economical problems, an unhappy marriage, or trouble at work. Any type of stress that goes on for weeks or months is chronic stress. You can become so used to chronic stress that you don’t realize it is a problem. If you don’t find ways to manage stress, it may lead to health problems. 

When you have chronic stress, your body stays alert, even though there is no danger. Over time, this puts you at risk for health problems, including:

• High blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Diabetes
• Depression or anxiety
• Menstrual problems
• Obesity

Anxiety affects you in three ways:

1. On your body.
2. On your mood.
3. On your behavior.

In addition to detailed understanding on above three, anxiety will impact our immune system severely.

People worry about increasing widespread of COVID-19 in surrounding places. Most of the Corona hospitals’ fully occupied with patients and state governments are checking for alternative arrangements to treat Corona patients in hotels, Schools, Stadiums, etc.

One may experience a horrible situation when admitting a patient at hospitals if the decease is other than Corona in an emergency. Hospitals wanted to patients to undergo Corona screening test then only ready to admit if the test is negative.

This kind of procedure may severely affect the patient’s health in case immediate treatment needed like high blood pressure or heart stroke. Irrespective  of economical strata everyone can be infected and impacted with Coronavirus.

In addition to this continuous listening of COVID-19 related news creates more worrisome in the mind. Corona increases anxiety, this leads to a further increase of Corona Patients.

The Brain & Anxiety

All commands will be issued from the brain, once brain dead, means complete body dead, there will be no physical action in the body. Brain communicates to the rest of the body through nerves network to act. If such nerve system has any problem beyond normal state then your body will not function 100%.

The stress response begins above your shoulders. The amygdala (a cluster of cell nuclei inside the temporal lobe that processes emotional data) sends a threat message to the hypothalamus, which in turn tells the sympathetic nervous system to protect you from attack.

The nervous system increases heart rate, constricts some blood vessels and dilates others, slows down the intestines, inhibits digestive secretions, and prompts glands to flood the system with cortisol. In one statement we can say that body immunity goes down to face the external world.

How to reduce anxiety and Improve Body immunity:

A recent study conducted by Harward university in the wake of Corona raise in the US has recommended the yoga to overcome anxiety due to Corona pandemic.

• “Yoga (Asana). Not a yoga person? No need to start now unless you’d like to try it. Sometimes trying new things and discovering new activities you can benefit from and enjoy can be a welcome, healthy distraction. Yoga Studio and Pocket Yoga are good apps to consider”
• “Meditation (Dyana). Regular meditation is very calming. Many apps teach simple forms of meditation, such as Headspace or Calm”
• “Controlled breathing (Praanayama). One simple technique is called square breathing. Visualize your breath travelling along a square. As you follow the instructions to inhale, hold your breath, or exhale, count slowly to three on each side. Try it now. Inhale up the first side of the square. Slowly count one, two, and three. Hold your breath across the top. One, two, three. Exhale down the other side of the square. One, two, three. Then hold your breath across the bottom. One, two, three. After a few minutes of this you should be feeling calmer and more centered”

Yoga has not required any costly equipment to start only need a desire and some guidance to practice. Present internet world it is easy to learn and practice. In the next post, we cover with few yoga practices. Start practicing yoga and improve your immune system!

An introduction to yoga and its rules (in video)

.. more on to fight Corona, please read!