Stress & Anxiety

Is stress making you unhealthy?

Let’s face it: not everyone in Austin can have the ‘laid-back’ vibe that our city is famous for. Like many Austinites, you might face pressures from work, a hectic schedule, or the demands of family. Add to that the inevitable stress of living in an ever-changing cosmopolitan city.

Finding time to relax and regain your calm in Austin can seem out of reach or even impossible. But at Clear Point Wellness we specialize in helping people just like you to unwind while getting control over stress and anxiety.

What are the effects of anxiety and stress?

Your natural response to stress is helpful from an evolutionary perspective. Your body sends out hormones that help you deal with threatening situations (also known as the ‘fight or flight’ response). This hyper-vigilant state enables you to cope with the unexpected. But in modern society almost everything in your environment — from text messages to billboards to car horns — is designed to ‘catch your attention’ and put you into that anxious state.

Unfortunately — and we’re not trying to stress you out here — the effects of chronic anxiety can create serious physical problems. In fact, being chronically stressed can lead to life-threatening diseases like heart attacks, thyroid failure, hormonal imbalance, and auto-immune diseases.

The key to beating stress is to face the problem calmly and get a real strategy for controlling your exposure to stressors as well as your stress response.

Professional treatment for stress and anxiety

Wellness doctors focus on identifying risk factors for poor health, including physical stressors and the stress response. As a result of chronic stress or anxiety, people create adverse ‘holding patterns’ within the musculo-skeletal system that are difficult to free up without treatment. Chiropractors are experts at finding these negative physical patterns, and eliminating the circulatory and nervous system constrictions that result.

Massage therapists can provide a much needed relaxation of tight, tense musculature as well as provide the space to be inwardly focused for a time.

Meditation or yoga can offset the effects of stress in big ways, teaching you to regulate your breathing and your sense of peace in a hectic world. The Mayo clinic conducted a major research study on meditation which indicated that a simple 20-minute daily meditation could reverse high cholesterol and heart disease.

Self-Care Tips

You can reduce your stress and anxiety by trying some of these tips:

• Try to schedule ‘buffer time’ between appointments so you feel less rushed
• Practice deep breathing for 5 minutes during your day
• Try yoga or meditation exercises
• Stretch and exercise regularly, even if only for 10 minutes a day
• Take several walks to break up a hectic day
• Try reading your email and answering phone calls only during planned times

Online resources

The Mayo Clinic:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress-management/MY00435

You can also take this stress inventory:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress-assessment/SR00029

National Institutes of Health:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003211.htm