If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of stress in your life, then it might be time for you to take a step back and look at your lifestyle. In many cases, finding remedies for stress is about how you live your life.

This post will discuss things like diet, exercise, daily habits, herbs, and essential oils can all be effective at relieving your stress naturally. Keep reading if you want to find out how you can get rid of your stress for good.

Eat a Healthy Diet

If you want to relieve your stress levels in a more natural way, it all starts with your lifestyle choices. Believe it or not, just changing you diet can make a big difference in how stressed out you feel. It is good to eat healthy year-round for general health and wellness, but if you are experiencing a higher amount of stress during the holidays, at least try to stick to some of the healthy eating rules listed below.

The following tips will help you eat a healthy diet that helps tremendously with your stress levels:

Load Up on the Nutrients

A really easy way to make sure you are eating a healthy diet that helps to reduce stress is not by focusing on specific food groups, but just making sure you have plenty of vitamins and minerals with your foods. This is going to ensure a well-balanced meal every time, and give you the nutrients that are important for reducing stress. Here are some you want to look for:

Protein – The first nutrient that is great to have with your healthy diet for stress relief is protein. The protein helps give you essential amino acids that are wonderful for brain function, therefore helping you manage your stress as well.

Omega 3 Fatty Acids – While you want to be careful to avoid saturated fats, healthy fats are not only acceptable, but recommended. This is when you look for omega-3 fatty acids, such as what you get in tuna, salmon, and many nuts including walnuts and almonds. These fats are great for stabilizing your mood, which can help with stress.

B Vitamins – Among the different vitamins you should have with your diet, you really want to make sure you have plenty of B vitamins. These provide more energy and can help reduce stress naturally. You will get B vitamins in foods like poultry, wild-caught fish, leafy greens, and eggs.

Calcium – Calcium is a great nutrient to have with your new stress-free diet, which helps with some of the side effects of stress, such as headaches and tense muscles. Get calcium from yogurt, cruciferous veggies, nuts, and beans.

Reduce Your Sugar Content

There are also some foods that can do damage to your diet, and increase stress. One food is a category, which is anything with added sugars. This isn’t natural sugars like what you find in fruits, but added and artificial sugars, such as what you find in fruit juice, baked goods, and sweet treats.

Be Careful with Caffeine

Unfortunately, you may need to reduce how m ouch caffeine you consume each day. Caffeine is not only bad for people with a lot of anxiety, but it can also add to your stress levels. This is because caffeine often keeps you a little too alert, keeping you from getting a good night’s sleep. Insomnia is a common precursor to stress, as it keeps you from being able to handle your stress effectively. You don’t need to give up all caffeine, but cut back on the coffee if you can.

Get Regular Exercise

For some, getting into a stable health routine can prove to be extremely challenging when trying to balance family, work, and life’s other obligations. If you are thinking ahead though, getting a regular exercise schedule down and sticking to it can be one of the greatest things you can do to ensure that you will live a long healthy life as each year passes.

You Lower Your Chance of Sudden Death

Of course, this sounds quite grim, but researchers have discovered that adult men lower their chances of death by a wide margin just from taking up some sort of exercise routine. This can include very easy exercises like walking, slow jogging, and swimming, so that says a lot about the importance of being physically active. Try to schedule time for your work out at least twice a week to get decent results. If you’re not accustomed to working out at all, start off small and gradually work your way into more intense workouts. You have to walk before you can ruin.

You Will Have More Energy

Do you ever just feel sluggish? If you live a pretty sedentary lifestyle, then this might be due to not having enough energy in general. You buddy will only make energy available when it knows that it’s possible for it to need energy reserves. That’s why people who are used to being inactive have a very hard time getting back in shape. The body isn’t used to burning fats, and instead focuses on storing them. It will take some time, and possibly some dietary changes, but change is just a few steps away.

Retain Bone Density

A major part of growing healthy bones is having your weight put on them. When you aren’t on your feet a lot, your bones will actually lose important nutrients because they aren’t needing to be strengthened on a constant basis. This is really bad, because that means that bones will become brittle and break more easily over time. Getting exercise puts a positive stress on your bones, signaling them to get those fresh supplies of calcium that your body has stored from healthy meals. Remember that what you eat today could be your bones years from now, so it’s important to make the right choices.

Use Essential Oils

If you know more than 20 people, there’s a pretty good chance that someone you know is really into essential oils. These old-world oils have seen use for over 2000 years, and in that time, science has learned some of the marvelous secrets of these ancient concentrates that have helped to improve the lives of millions through history. Today, you can look up information on essential oils with ease.

They Are Anti-inflammatory

A lot of the discomfort and painful itching that people experience during skin irritations and rashes are just different forms of inflammation. This type of irritation can occur in a variety of ways, but most commonly through allergic reaction. Plants and animals sometimes give off oils or dander that are irritating to the skin, so the skin can sometimes become rough, red and raised. Diluting an essential oil like basil oil in some coconut oil can help to soothe the irritation so that your skin can heal more easily. Oils can also be ingested to calm inflammation internally as in the case of IBS and other diseases that cause this type of inflammation.

They Can Help You Relax

Some people use essential oils for aromatherapy. This is when an oil is placed in an area where it can be amplified, like a diffuser. There, essential oils are added and heated so that their fragrance is distributed through the air. People nearby can breathe thee odors in through their nose and relax, often with music, and achieve peace. Lavender oil is known for its beautiful smell, so lavender is typically mixed with other oils to achieve new scents that people can enjoy. Studies have shown that these scents can improve mood, memory, and general cognitive performance during periods of use. In some cases, it is also used for PTSD.

They Can Help with Digestion

Essential oils like Basil oil and Oregano oil are excellent at making the gut a more hospitable place for the helpful bacteria that live in the intestines and stomach. These microorganisms help to perform all sorts of important tasks like help you to digest food and send messages to other parts of the body. Oils like these can also kill harmful bacteria that enter the body through food and other forms of contact. When ingested, the oils can act as a discriminant poison for certain types of bacteria, making your gut a happier place.

Try Healing Herbs

Herbs have been a major part of natural medicine for thousands of years. In recent times, new information has been released regarding the effectiveness of herbs to help the body. Science has finally been able to unlock many of the secrets that ancient health practitioners have known since early recorded history.

Parsley

You’ve probably gotten used to seeing parsley end up on the table or getting thrown off the side of the plate, but parsley was once an important part of every meal. During the turn of the last century, parsley was added to plates as a courtesy to help people with digestion. It only fell out of popularity with the introduction of antacids and similar products, until younger people no longer knew the purpose of this green plant on their plate. In recent years however, pushback from consumers looking for more natural options have returned to natural methods used by their grandparents.

Lavender

Lavender is a fragrant, and versatile plant with many healing properties. Lavender is mild, and can be used in a variety of ways to help calm inflammation and other ill effects that come from sickness. Lavender is used with respiratory infections, and can help you to get a better night's rest. It also has a strong impact on the small intestines, and helps to clear up skin. When you eat it, it can also help to reduce inflammation in the bowels.

Chamomile

This herb is another great herb for inflammation and allergies. This plant can be used in tea to help calm the person drinking it, and help them to get better rest. It works well to reduce the size of tumors in the body, and can be used to help stop muscle spasms. Many of the benefits are more apparent when the chamomile is used in its concentrated form, chamomile oil.

Basil

Basil oil is well known for being anti-inflammatory, as well as a powerful antifungal. This is important for keeping the body's natural balance of gut flora. If the other bacteria become too numerous, serious illnesses can develop, and cause a lot of pain and discomfort. Basil oil kills dangerous bacterial colonies and leaves the good bacteria that help the body to function.

Journal for Stress Relief

If you’ve never tried sitting down and writing out your innermost thoughts, then you haven’t yet experienced journaling. You might be surprised to find that journaling has a lot of heavily documented benefits that can go a long way to making a range of personal improvements. Scientists have been studying the effect that journaling has on the human mind, and experts are saying that journaling has more benefits that are far reaching than you would expect.

Have an Outlet

What sort of expression do you do? Self-expression is a huge part of mental health. Nearly everyone knows what it’s like to experience some form of frustration, and having a way to vent this frustration is essential to how you experience happiness. Without an outlet, feelings can easily become buried, and if unchecked can manifest in some kind of emotional outburst. Therefore, having an outlet is of utmost importance. When those pent-up feelings are out on paper, they’re less likely to become a save-point for negative emotions.

Exercise Creativity

When you write in a journal, you have an opportunity to get to the root of how you feel about things around you and in your everyday life. You can easily say, “I saw a man” but when you write down how you felt when you saw the man, you are getting much closer to the root of what the man represents, and how you are affected. With every word, new thoughts and ideas may begin to take shape. You may find yourself looking to expand your vocabulary, or getting caught up in writing to the point that you write longer than you have planned. Get lost in it. You won’t regret that time.

You Can Process Experiences Safely

One of the best things about writing a journal is that it allows you to have an exact fresh accounting of events that happen to or around you. Now that you have become expressive, you can use that to write down your initial reactions to stimuli. How does that stack against how you feel now? You may find that some of your view change over time.

Can Help Organize Your Thinking

This is one of the hidden blessings of write. As you write, your mind will begin to learn how to prioritize certain pieces of information to make your statements more cohesive. This means that your thoughts and ideas will even become more enjoyable to read!

Mindfulness Meditation

Over the last 20 years, massive achievement has been made in the world of mental health regarding mindfulness. Currently, mindfulness is one of the most reliable sources of mental healing, with prescription drugs being the more mainstream approach on the spectrum. Doctors have documented measurable successes and progress in patients attended those types of programs. What exactly can mindfulness do for you?

Keeps Your Stress Low

Simply put, mindfulness meditation can be used to help you reduce stress. Even just the simple act of going through your day and recounting positive moments can help put you into a peaceful frame of mind. AS you sit there, relaxed and free from physical stress, you open yourself up to the possibility that more of your life can be that way. These moments to reflect on where you are, and how truly free you really are can be the beginning of an entirely new way of looking at the world that leads you to a more successful path.

Centers You During Troubling Events

When shocking and upsetting things happen, it can be easy to get caught up in the chaos that follows any major event, but there’s a wisdom in working towards controlling your feeling and managing your stress in a more collected way. Mindfulness meditation can help you to center your thoughts during trying times and give you the poise that you need to get through those tough times. If you are trying to function while frazzled, you are always more likely to make mistakes and overlook important facts about the situation.

It Aids Recovery

When you mind is under a lot of stress, your physical body can end up feeling run down and weak. If you’ve sustained a lot of physical trauma, your mind needs to be in a healthier state. Studies have proven that people with a more upbeat outlook after a serious injury tend to heal more completely. Stress can produce toxins that make it more difficult for your body to heal itself.

Improves Academic Prowess

When your mind is calmer, it functions on a higher level. Meditation can help you to organize your thoughts in a more productive way, and being happier and less stressed out recall information with greater accuracy. That why you sometimes do better on a test you study very hard for, in that you remember better because you were more confident, not just because you read it more times.

Try Acupuncture

Acupuncture is an ancient technique that goes back thousands of years. It was used to handle everything from anxiety to pain. Holistic health practitioners who have been trained to perform acupuncture insert very thin needles at very specific points to gain access to desired effects, usually at the request of the person having the procedure done. When acupuncture is performed, you can expect there to be little or no pain during the sessions. Whatever the case, what can acupuncture really do, and what can you use it for?

It Can Help with Insomnia

Do you have trouble getting to sleep at night? It turns out that a large portion of people are restless at night. This can be caused by anything from mild discomforts that they experience to major distractions, but it usually boils down to stress, or a lack of adequate activity in a day. Going in to get acupuncture can help make sleeplessness a thing of the past. In fact, a lot of people fall asleep on the table because they are so relaxed!

Helps Manage Chronic Pain

One of the main reasons why acupuncture was created was as a way to deal with pain. Acupuncture interacts directly with nerves under the surface of your skin. When these points have needles in them, they usually cease to send or reduce the pain information that is sent to the brain, thus reducing the amount of pain that you experience.

Reduce Headaches

Today, acupuncture is growing in popularity once again as a treatment for chronic pain that stems from migraines and fibromyalgia. People who suffer from these disorders know that they can be treated and gain some relief from not only pain, but from having to spend so much time under the influence of heavy narcotic drugs. Having an alternative can provide a small amount of freedom from people suffering through these conditions.

Prevent Cognitive Decay

As people get older, it can be hard to continue the level of use that is needed to keep areas of the body in shape and functioning at a high level of performance. The same thing can be said of the mind. People who use their mind less as they grow older become vulnerable to cognitive decay. The mind gets weaker just like muscles if left without exercise. Getting acupuncture helps provide stimulation for the mind.

Participate in Relaxing Activities

In this modern age, the daily lives of people have become ruled by technology. The majority of human on the planet have accepted that phones, computers, television, and radio fill the air with sounds and information that travels at the speed of light to be consumed by anyone willing to absorb it. What can a person do to find rest and relaxation in these noisy, busy times?

Drink Some Tea

This might not sound all that exciting, but taking the time to truly appreciate a cup of tea is a luxury that is rare today. Really enjoy it though. This isn’t talking about hastily dumping tea into Styrofoam to put in your car and take sips in between street lights and freeway traffic. This is about really sitting and enjoying that tea. Tasting its flavor and truly connecting with the experience. Find a calm spot in your home to have tea and give yourself some time.

Exercise

Working out is easily one of the best uses of time that a person can do. This can be said because keeping your body at a high operating level is great for you both physically and mentally. When you work out, you also relieve a ton of stress, and you can sleep more easily once you’ve working off some of the day’s pent up energies.

Meditate

Talk time you focus on things, and reflect. You might be really surprised to find that a lot of answers come to you over time. The brain is excellent at solving problems in the back of your mind while you handle the day's work. Let that part of your mind do its job, but first, you have to learn how to get out of the way.

Write in A Journal

Writing can be one of the most therapeutic things that you can do. Writing allows you to become more well versed in organizing thoughts, and it gives you a fully honest snapshot of where your mind was at the time of the writing. The major difference about journal writing, is that you will want to focus on how things make you feel so that you can gain a better understanding of how you felt about those things versus how you feel currently.

Take Supplements

Among many of the most important discoveries of the last 100 years, not many can boast the same life changing innovations as the invention of the supplement. Fortification of foods has all but eradicated some of the short-term deficiency diseases like rickets and scurvy. Even though these improvements have changed the quality of life for tons of people for nearly 60 years, some people still don’t feel that supplementation is a necessary thing for living a healthy life, so the following section is just a few paragraphs discussing why you should take supplements.

Some Foods Don’t Have Much Nutrition

What was the last good that you ate? With the rise of processed foods in the last few decades, people have become increasingly dependent on food that is made in factories. The only serious issue with these kinds of foods, is that they rarely contain the ingredients and nutrition that can keep you healthy. Without fiber, vitamins, and minerals, you are essentially eating an approximation of food, so supplementation becomes necessary. Not everyone has the time or resources to make their own balanced meals either, so naturally that is the next best solution.

You Might Be Close to Deficiency

Take a look at your hands. Look closely at your fingernails. If you see little peeling bits of skin around your nails, then that means that you are relatively vitamin deficient. Studies have been done on short term deficiency, but none have been done on the effects of long term deficiency. This is likely because long term deficiency is assumed to result in death, which can easily become an outcome in some cases. For example, if you don’t have enough of the right vitamins, you could become vulnerable to cancers, and poorly repaired organs.

Fortification Doesn’t Cover It All

Even though you might be eating food that boasts fortification of vitamin C or D, the body requires balanced amounts of all of the vitamins and minerals. Not just a few. Taking supplements can ensure that you are getting all of what you need, especially when it comes to replacing cells in vital organs. This reduces the chance for strain on your system, as well, as the possibility of organ failures.

You’ll Age Better

When you have all of the vitamins and minerals, not only will your body work better, but you’ll even age better. When you don’t have enough nutrients, the body can become tired looking and weak very quickly. If you take some time to give your body all of what it needs, then you can keep it running for years to come.

Consider Lifestyle Changes

Do you feel stagnant? When was the last time that you felt truly excited about doing something?

Do you feel like there are obstacles that are holding back from reaching your full potential? Sometimes it’s hard to get back on track. People are also facing higher levels of stress than seen in previous generations. Sometimes the best cure for facing issues is to counteract the bad with doing something nice for yourself. It’s possible to make small adjustments to your life that raise the quality a few notches. If this sounds interesting, you should consider some lifestyle changes.

Get More Rest

It’s easy to get caught in a bad cycle of staying up late. A lot of people do it, but the toll that it takes on your body over time is immeasurable. Being sure to get the proper amount of rest can be life changing on its own. While this aspect is due to habit and general lifestyle, there are tons of little habits that you can work on. For example, practice going to bed at a good time of the night, and when you need to wake up, stop relying on your snooze button, because you can make yourself more tired if you’re waking up several times in a row.

Avoid Your Stress Triggers

Everyone has certain things, people, or situations that can cause stress. If you are keeping a journal, you will notice the days when your stress seems to be higher. Regardless of what it is, the first important thing to do is figure out what your triggers are, then work on avoiding them the best you can. This might mean avoiding certain people, waking up early so you’re not constantly getting to work late, or reducing your caffeine and alcohol consumption.

Think Positively

Do you find that you tend to assume the worst or constantly have negative thoughts in your mind? Believe it or not, this can be reversed with practice. Try to focus more on positive things, instead of letting those negative emotions consume you. It is just a matter of looking on the bright side. Don’t ignore negative things that happen, but learn to accept them and move on.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a practice used when you think more in the present, instead of worrying about the past or the future. You really focus on what is going on right now in this moment, avoid judgment of others, and learn to forgive yourself.

Natural Ways to Relieve Stress