Stress Causes and Response to It

As mentioned in previous chapters, stress is deadly if not treated efficiently and quickly. Despite civilians being informed that the negative impacts of stress, they choose to live with it, letting them accumulate until it reaches affects biological reactions. Although it is unarguable that stress cannot be prevented, there are a lot of ways to deal with stress better. (NHS.UK, 2017)

One of the most practiced ways to deals with stress is mindfulness, which is a practice of meditation, to be more aware of your surroundings (Powell, 2018). In recent studies, mindfulness is found to be able to reduce stress and its consequences by controlling the amygdala, which plays a key role in controlling emotions (ibid). Techniques such as mindful breathing (also called 7/11 breathing) or Raisin Exercise in mindfulness can be easily practiced within a short period of time can be used by civilians during their busy lives.

Not only mindfulness can relieve stress, but controlling the amygdala can also control how we perceive what we observed. One of the key skills to learn in mindfulness is Respond rather than React (ZenHabits, n.d.). This skill can help controlling extreme reactions, such as anger against others. This can help improve social relationships, which can result in a lower stress level as more people are there for you to talk to should it be required.

Mindfulness has been used in a lot of developed countries as a part of their curriculum. England, infamous for their education system, has gradually rolled out mindfulness courses designed to help teenagers to cope with stress (Jezebel.com, 2019); institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has also got a Medical Services Team which provides mindfulness-based stress reduction courses to aid their students during their stressful studies. (Medical.mit.edu, n.d.)

These studies and applications of mindfulness in different large infamously stressful environments (such as MIT or Harvard University) can prove that mindfulness is effective and useful for dealing with stress, and therefore can be deemed realistic to put in action in real life.

Without a doubt, there are numerous ways to cope with stress. There is a tip that is shown to help reduce stress in a short and long period of time effectively. That is, getting away from stressors. when you allow yourself to step away from it, you can have more time to do other stuff, which can help you have a new aspect or practice techniques to feel less overwhelmed. The best way to have escaped from the stressor is vacation. One study found that three days after vacation, peoples’ physical grievance, their sleeping quality, and feeling had improved as compared to before vacation. These benefits were still last five weeks later, particularly in those who had more personal time and overall satisfaction during their vacations. One study found that a four-day 'long weekend' vacation had good influences on well-being, recovery, strain, and perceived stress for as long as 45 days. While the contraction in strain was larger for those who spent the vacation away from home, the other effects were similar for those who stayed home.

Researchers recruited a group of healthy non-meditators to live at a resort for 6 days. In this group, participants were arranged at aimless to just relax at the resort or to participate in a meditation retreat at the same venue. Both of these groups were also contrasted to a group of “regular meditators” already enrolled in the retreat. The people joined in blood draws before and right after the retreat and also reported on their psychological well-being at the same time and 1 and 10 months later. The blood draws were used to explain patterns of gene expression, immunity, and biomarkers related to cellular aging. both meditators and non-meditators proved big changes in gene expression processes related to adjusting stress in the body, controlling healthy immune function, and metabolizing amyloid-beta, a protein segment that can build adverse plaque in the brain related to the onset of Alzheimer's. Accomplished meditators also displayed advantageous activity in genes related to combating viruses and decreasing inflammation from the before-and-after retreat. They also observed vacation-related rises in telomerase which is a biomarker thought to protect against cellular aging. Moreover, members in all three groups felt less depressed and stressed, and had more energy both at the end of the vacation and one month later.