Stress Reduction: Meditation, Medication, And Relaxation

This research highlights the effects of stress at work place, and on personal healthy. There are three indicators for stress they are; emotional, and physical. Stress in general is not hazardous, but if it continues for a long time it become chronic, and may affect person’s life. Therefore I am going to present three ways to cope with stress they are: medication, meditation, and relaxation. Meditation and relaxation are two safe ways unlike medication which contain some kind of drugs and it have many side effects. Finally I will give some hints to reduce stress at work socially.

“Stress isn’t illness but there’s quite a bit of evidence that it increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and mental health problems. So people can become ill because of chronic stress” (Barber, 2008).

“Stress hormones constrict blood vessels, speed up the heartbeat, and make the heart and blood vessels especially reactive to further stress”.(Harvard letter) -(www.health.harvard.edu).

Work is the most important factor in people’s life, it affects on their whole life. In work place, every employer or employee try to do the best, therefore employers tend to challenge each other which can be a source of stress. “This source is known as the interaction between individuals and any source of demand (stressor)”. (Bonita, 1995).

The United Nations World Labor Report attributes the source of stress to work places that can increase stress levels and they are: long work hours; role conflict; physical hazard exposures; and interpersonal conflicts with coworkers or supervisors. (Bonita, 1995).Consequently stress causes healthy problems and social conflicts. Therefore medication, meditation, relaxation, and job management are powerful ways to over come stress.

Signs and symptoms:

They are divided into two categories emotional, and physical.

Emotional:

Feeling irritable, feeling frustrated at having to wait for something, feeling restless, unable to concentrate, Becoming easily confused, Having memory problems, Thinking about negative things all the time, Negative self-talk, Having marked mood swings, Eating too much, Eating when you are not hungry, Finding it difficult to concentrate, Not having enough energy to get things done, Feeling you can’t cope, Finding it hard to make decisions, Having emotional outbursts, Generally feeling upset, and Lack of sense of humor.( www.changingminds.org)

Physical:

Muscle tension, low back pain, pains in shoulders or neck, pains in chest, stomach/abdominal pain, muscle spasms or nervous tics, unexplained rashes or skin irritations, ‘Pounding’ or ‘racing’ heart, sweaty palms, sweating when not physically active, ‘Butterflies’ in stomach, indigestion and ‘the gurgles’, diarrhea, unable to sleep or excessive sleep, shortness of breath, and holding breath. (www.changingminds.org)

Medication:

Before beginning with types of medicines, brain is related or affected by hormones and these hormones are responsible for feeling and behavior. There are as many as systems that control function of the body and the brain, they are affected by many factors, especially stress. Medicines balance the release of hormones, which decrease stress.

There is no one specific family of medicines that is used to decrease stress. Physicians prescribe a range of medications to set specific stress-related symptoms. For example, Sedatives and Antidepressants they use to help people to cope with stress. The role of Sedatives is to decrease the activity of the central nervous system, which makes persons feel more relaxed. This family contains the following types of medicines: Benzodiazepines which include alprazolam (Xanax), clonazepam (Klonopin), diazepam (Valium), lorazepam (Ativan), triazolam (Halcion), temazepam (Restoril), and chlordiazepoxide (Librium). These medicines acts on a naturally occurring neurotransmitter substance in the brain called GABA whose role is to slow down the activity of the brain. The side effect of these medicines in a higher dose can cause slurred speech, an impaired ability to walk around, poor judgment, and slowed reflexes. (www.mhmrtc.org)

Antidepressant, their use is to treat depression. However they are used also used to treat stress symptoms. The family name of these medications is called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) they contain medicines such as Paxil, Prozac, and Lexapro. They directly affect on the primary cells in the brain who’s called Neurons, they are connected to each other by a chemical messengers known as a neurotransmitters. The process of communication releases a neurotransmitter chemical into a space between neurons known as the synapse, where it makes contact with a receiving neuron and stimulates that neuron into action. Having completed its communication job, the Serotonin gets sucked back up by the sending neuron in a process called reuptake. When reuptake happens too quickly or efficiently the net effect is that not enough Serotonin is present to properly do its job, and mood regulation problems can result. They can cause nausea, dizziness, dry mouth, sleep disturbances, and a wide range of sexual arousal and climax problems as side effects.(www.mhmrtc.org)

Meditation:

Meditation is an important example for relief of stress, and it had been used from hundred years ago. It is an effective way to cope with stress without taking medicine, and it is known as a self helping process. The example that I took is Yoga.

Yoga is one of the oldest systems of health. The practice of Yoga is to normalize the production of thyroid hormone. The thyroid gland is the master regular of all other glands, and as the glands are connected with stress and emotion the ability to increase or decrease thyroid activity can be an important self-help process. There have been more than a thousand studies since 1970s for Yoga. The studies have demonstrated that Yoga can bring that about stress and anxiety alleviation, blood and heart rate reduction, improved memory and intelligence, pain alleviation, and many other benefits.

Relaxation:

Stress management begins with identifying sources of stress. To identify your source of stress look at you habits, and your attitude. Try to answer these questions:

What caused your stress- how you felt physically and emotionally- how do you act in response- what you did to make yourself feel better.

Your goal is to change the situation or to change your reaction. If you can’t avoid a stressful situation, then try to face it. Express your feeling instead of bottling them up. Be willing to compromise, be more assertive, and manage your time better.

These are healthy ways to relief form stress:

Go for a walk, spend time in nature, call a good friend, take a long bath, listen to music, and you can watch a comedy film. For deep explanation, you should set aside relaxation time. This time you should set alone without any interruption from others, it’s your time to take a beak from every thing don’t remember any thing about the past nor things about your future. Second helpful thing that you should make connection with friends; spend time with good friends that may help you to over come your conflicts. Eating healthy food may also help, you can also avoid caffeine and sugar because they increase energy and affects you mood; cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs they relief you for a while, but the relief is not permanent. Do try to escape from your problems by these kinds of things, solve your problems with a clear mind. And finally sleeping probably, and getting enough time for sleep helps your mind to relax and recharge, because the more you are tired the more stress you will have. (www.helpguide.org)

Stress management at work:

Work is the most important factor in people’s life and it affects on their whole life, so every one try to do the best, employers tend to challenge each other which can be a source of stress. The United Nations World Labor Report writes about the factors that may increase stress level and they are: long work hours, role conflict, physical hazard exposures; and interpersonal conflicts with coworkers or supervisors.

So the first thing you do is the job control. You are faced as many as status in your work place, bad dealing with employers, coworkers, and customers means bad situations which makes the feeling of stress more and more, so you must have the control on every single thing in your job. Their some strategies may help you to reduce work related stress given by Lazarus 1991 they are:

First thing is to alter the working conditions so that they are less stressful or more conducive to effective coping. This strategy is most appropriate for large numbers of workers working under severe conditions. Examples include altering physical annoyances such as noise levels, or changing organizational decision-making processes to include employees.

Second step is to help individuals adapt by teaching them better coping strategies for conditions that are impossible or difficult to change. A limitation to this strategy is that it is costly to deal with each individual’s unique transaction with the environment. Intervention strategies could include individual counseling services for employees, Employee Assistance Programs, or specialized stress management programs, such as cognitive behavioral interventions.

The third step is to identify the stressful relationship between the individual or group and the work setting. Intervention strategies might include changes in worker assignment to produce a better person-environment fit, or it could involve teaching coping strategies for individuals who share common coping deficits. (e.g., training in relaxation skills). (www.ericdigests.org)

Deep breathing for stress relief:

Sit comfortably with your back straight. Sit comfortably with your back straight. Put one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach. Breathe in through your nose. The hand on your stomach should rise. The hand on your chest should move very little. Exhale through your mouth, pushing out as much air as you can while contracting your abdominal muscles. The hand on your stomach should move in as you exhale, but your other hand should move very little. Continue to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Try to inhale enough so that your lower abdomen rises and falls. Count slowly as you exhale.

Muscle relaxation for stress relief:

Loosen your clothing, take off your shoes, and get comfortable. Take a few minutes to relax, breathing in and out in slow, deep breaths. When you’re relaxed and ready to start, shift your attention to your right foot. Take a moment to focus on the way it feels. Slowly tense the muscles in your right foot, squeezing as tightly as you can. Hold for a count of 10. Relax your right foot. Focus on the tension flowing away and the way your foot feels as it becomes limp and loose. Stay in this relaxed state for a moment, breathing deeply and slowly. When you’re ready, shift your attention to your left foot. Follow the same sequence of muscle tension and release. Move slowly up through your body-legs, abdomen, back, neck, face. (www.helpguide.org)

Conclusion:

Depending on the research; first stress is not hazardous but it is in chronic stress. There are many ways to over come or to cope with stress. Self helping is the most important way to deal with stress. Also dealing with stressors at work place, and practicing relaxation technique is an important factor to decrease stress level, unlike taking medicines which have many side effects on body.