Stress triggers your body to produce hormones that allow you to handle it. Still, prolonged production of these hormones can have detrimental effects on the body, leading to symptoms like headaches, depression, insomnia, high blood pressure, palpitations, and even an increased risk of a heart attack. It may cause your liver to produce too much glucose, leading to weight gain and an increased risk of diabetes. It may lead to digestive issues, heartburn, backaches, infertility, libido problems, and decreased immune system efficiency, you name it.

What Can You Do?

You should care about what stress does to your body. Certain changes in lifestyle and avoiding stressors may be of great help, but you will need to look at things from an entirely new perspective to achieve a measure of success:

Diet

Stress will often lead us to eat a terrible diet in greater quantities than we would normally, and they will often be foods that affect our mood. This leads us into a downward spiral of abusing food such as sweets and carbs, leading to weight gain, or maybe we’d starve ourselves due to how stressed we feel. This is a great place to start the changes. Try to shop outside your usual grocery store, don’t go to the aisles, but look for fresh food you can enjoy. Turn to vegetables and fruits, lean meats and a balanced diet to serve your needs.

Exercise

Exercise is an essential step toward dealing with stress. It will help your body flush your stress hormones, producing endorphins instead, replacing them and improving your mood. Many exercises allow you to find relaxation, such as tai chi, yoga and qigong. The exercises must be tailored to your individual needs and will differ at every stage of your life. They are great for anyone on many levels, so you can explore them at any stage, even when you grow older.

Meditation

Some people lack the patience for meditation, but it can benefit you if you try it out and bear with it. Although we focus on active exercises, some self-reflection and relaxation in a meditative state can help a great deal regarding stress. The brain changes as a result of your meditation practices; it helps you relax and wind down from the stresses of life, providing you with a solid foundation for dealing with stress in general. Many people take antidepressants for help, but you don’t need them in most cases. Meditation can help your brain’s ability to learn and memorise; it improves your attention and concentration, reduces anxiety and may even help with addiction. 

How Acupuncture Helps You Deal With Stress

Acupuncture is proven to reduce stress hormone levels in the body, but it also helps the brain release endorphins. It improves circulation in your body, cycling out stress hormones and oxygenating your tissues. As a result, your heart rate will decrease, your blood pressure will lower, and your muscles will relax after a session. In many cases, patients may even fall asleep on the table, waking up without realising where they are. Your body is truly healing only when you’re at rest. The reason acupuncture works so well is that it allows the body to enter a deeply restful state, reducing stress hormones and improving the body’s natural healing abilities, putting the patient in a state that helps recovery. You will find yourself completely relaxed and refreshed after a session.

©The Acupuncturists Ltd

Hypnotherapy, also referred to as clinical hypnosis, is all about focusing on a person’s subconscious and conscious mind to foster behavioural and emotional change. It can be used to treat a variety of different conditions, like phobias, stress and anxiety, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One session of hypnotherapy lasts about 60-90 minutes, while an entire course of treatment can vary anywhere between two sessions for several weeks to months, depending on the severity of the condition and the success of the treatment. 

Main concepts of hypnotherapy 

The treatment revolves around the model of the mind that features a conscious part and a subconscious part. They function differently and work in unison to navigate a person in their daily life. 

• The conscious mind – is where focus resides. This part of the mind is responsible for attention at any time. This means it notes things like lights, sounds, activities and various tasks the person is engaged with. A person can only engage their conscious mind to pay attention to a few things at a time. 
  
  
• Subconscious mind – it contains all of the memories, beliefs, habits and learnings of the past. It is tasked with keeping knowledge on important matters, from very simple ones like tying one’s shoes, to knowing how to speak a foreign language they have learned. It also hides the aftermath of traumatic events and experiences, which, in the case of PTSD, it is within the subconscious mind that painful memories and experiences get stuck. When it comes to hypnosis, it is the subconscious mind that therapists work on. This state of mind is more easily accessible and the therapist can make useful suggestions to it, to help a person overcome their past traumatic experiences. 
  
  

Who is this treatment right for? 

Anyone suffering from past trauma and struggling with PTDS symptoms can easily benefit from hypnotherapy. The symptoms often range from mild to severe and can sometimes persist from mere months to years. That is not to say hypnotherapy alone should be utilised for people with severe symptoms, but it can be a great addition as a complementary treatment. When added to psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, it can contribute a great deal in overcoming the negative symptoms and turning the impact of past trauma around. 

How does hypnotherapy help? 

• Pretty much everyone experiences a traumatic event in their life. That is when the brain’s ‘fight or flight response triggers and kicks the sympathetic nervous system into action. However, oftentimes with PTSD, a person hasn’t properly processed the stressful situation. When they are reminded of it, their fight or flight response triggers again, causing distress without actual need. This is what hypnotherapy aims to address. 
  
  
  • It introduces relaxation – the goal of hypnotherapy is to help the person enter a state of hypnotic trance through complete relaxation. This process acts as an antidote to many of the processes surrounding PTSD. 
    
    
  • Dealing with triggers – during hypnosis, the therapist will identify stress triggers. Sometimes these are non-threatening stimuli, which cause an overreaction. Knowing the triggers, the therapist can then start making suggestions to change the subconscious perception of these triggers and deem them in a non-threatening and non-stressful manner. 
    
    
  • Self-management tools – hypnotherapists often suggest a variety of self-management tools to help people with PTSD even further. This not only leads to effective treatment of the present issue but also recurring symptoms in the future. These tools can include self-hypnosis, deep breathing exercises and guided meditation. 
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© Zoe Clews & Associates

In the world of today, when stress, anxiety and depression threaten to overwhelm us and decrease our wellbeing, we need to pay attention to the various ways that prevent such a process. Everyone needs to take proactive steps to counter stress, and one such is acupuncture. 

The treatment has deep roots in Chinese tradition and Chinese Medicine practices. It has been used for thousands of years, although it has been mostly utilised in Western societies for a century. People have relied on acupuncture for a whole host of conditions, in addition to stress relief. It is based on the idea that essential energy (Qi) flows through meridians in the body. As these become blocked, the energy doesn’t flow freely, and so negative conditions follow. By working on specific points of the body to unblock the pathways of the Qi energy, acupuncture aims to restore balance and bring back emotional and physical wellbeing. 

The mechanism of work for acupuncture is inserting very thin needles in acupuncture points in the body. This process releases tension and there is a certain psychological aspect to it that makes it particularly effective for stress relief. There are many reasons to try out acupuncture for stress: 

• It helps the body release natural ‘feel-good’ hormones – one of the main reasons why acupuncture is so effective against stress lies with the main mechanism of action. As the needles are inserted, the body releases feel-good hormones, which instantly lead to relaxation and overcoming the negative effects of cortisol. This process occurs naturally with acupuncture, making it a very effective tool for combating stress. 
  
  
• It leads to relaxation – acupuncture is a process that leads to relaxation. The whole procedure is centred around the comfort that one needs to experience, to feel good. Usually, the person will lie down on a table, and then the acupuncturist will insert the needles into pressure points. The needles will then remain in place for a short time. The acupuncturist may also utilise essential oils and calming music to further contribute to the relaxation and feeling of calm for their client. 
  
  
• A fine alternative to medication – many people think the only way to address the issue of stress is to rely on some sort of medication. This is especially the case if they have reached a new level and are dealing with anxiety and depression. But medications are often associated with many unwanted side effects and that is what makes them questionable. Acupuncture, on the other hand, doesn’t have any negative side effects and that is why it is such a good option for stress relief. 
  
  
• It acts like physical therapy for the brain – because acupuncture works to release stress-combating hormones in the brain and the body, it is like doing physical therapy. And once a person has a regular acupuncture schedule, the brain learns to trigger this release of hormones daily. This can happen when a person is consistent with their acupuncture sessions and shows perseverance, to make the most of it. 
  
  
• Acupuncture teaches a person to make time for themselves – the beauty of acupuncture sessions lies with the beauty of spending time for oneself and not worrying about anything else. Acupuncture means self-care and that is the best strategy for combating stress anyone can adopt. It shifts the fight or flight response towards personal growth and wellbeing. 
  
  

There are many advantages to relying on acupuncture for stress relief. It is an effective solution to a notable problem. 

© The Acupuncturist Ltd