4 Quick Ways To Manage Stress (During COVID-19)

It’s a highly stressful time for everyone with the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s very important to manage your mental health. With a quarantine in effect, most households are very busy and it can be difficult to find time to use strategies that can help to lower your stress and preserve your mental health. Fortunately, there are activities you can do to reduce stress that take little time.

RESOURCES & LINKS:
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The Effect of Exercise Training on Anxiety Symptoms Among Patients: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/774421

Association of Efficacy of Resistance Exercise Training With Depressive Symptoms: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2680311

Urban Nature Experiences Reduce Stress in the Context of Daily Life Based on Salivary Biomarkers: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00722/full

Doses of Neighborhood Nature: The Benefits for Mental Health of Living with Nature: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/2/147/2900179

Animal Visitation Program (AVP) Reduces Cortisol Levels of University Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2332858419852592

Mindfulness and mind wandering: The protective effects of brief meditation in anxious individuals: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810016303142

Brief mindfulness meditation training alters psychological and neuroendocrine responses to social evaluative stress: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306453014000584
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The first strategy I encourage you to try is exercise. And the good news is that research shows that all types of exercise are effective for mental health.

A 2010 study by Dr. Matthew Herring and colleagues found that just 20 minutes of exercise helped to predictably reduce feelings of stress and anxiety for most people. And 30 minutes of exercise worked even better. They also found that the stress-reducing effects of exercise tend to last for many hours afterwards, so the sooner in the day that you can start exercising, the better.

For those of you who like demanding exercise, I have good news. Studies show that the harder you work physically, the greater the impact on your mental health.

For my next tip, I encourage you to spend time in nature. A 2019 study by Dr. Mary Hunter and colleagues found that spending as little as 20 minutes in nature was enough to lower cortisol levels, which is the main stress hormone in our bodies.

And for anyone who prefers or simply needs to remain indoors at this time, nature can still help to lower your stress.

There are studies which show that simply looking at certain aspects of nature such as trees, birds and water can help to lower stress. But the key ingredient for nature to work is to take time to enjoy and connect with it.

Third, for anyone who has a dog or cat at home, I have a strategy that should make your furry friend happy, while also helping to lower your stress quickly.

A 2019 study by Dr. Patricia Pendry and colleagues found that petting a dog or cat for 10 minutes helped to significantly reduce stress.

There is even a study that found that simply petting a dog for 3 minutes can help to increase Oxytocin, which is also known as the main love hormone in our bodies.

And for my fourth and final tip, I’d suggest spending a little bit of time practicing mindfulness. If you are not familiar with mindfulness, it’s a highly effective way to quickly relax the mind and body.

A 2017 study by Dr. Mengran Xu and colleagues found that just 10 minutes of mindfulness was enough to get people to stop worrying about internal thoughts and focus on being in the present moment.

And if you need a little more convincing to try mindfulness, a 2014 study by Dr. David Creswell and colleagues found that just 75 minutes of mindfulness spread out over 3 days was effective at helping people to manage their reaction to a stressful event.

And more good news from this study, the short periods of mindfulness seem to work best for people who aren’t naturally mindful, which is probably most of us.
If you need help implementing these strategies, please contact us @ https://www.drsullivan.ca/

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