How can exercise help me reduce stress?

Exercise supplies the one ingredient in the whole stress-response system that has too long been missing from our high-pressure but sedentary lives, a burst of physical activity.

These days, much research on the link between stress and health is focusing on catecholamines, the hormones of stress that arouse the body and prepare it for fight or flight and may also mediate at least some of the relation between social connectedness and health.

Catecholamines depend on oxygen for their metabolism, and by revving up the metabolism through exercise and increasing oxygen supplies throughout the body, exercise literally burns off all of the chemicals released in response to stress.

In a study conducted at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, a group of men and women with diastolic blood pressures of 90 to 104 millimeters of mercury (anything higher than 90 is considered a threat to health) were put on a 16-week program of regular exercise involving walking, jogging, or running three or four times a week. After training, the subjects showed significantly lower catecholamine levels -- and blood pressures -- than a sedentary control group.

Of course, it's not as if you can always get up and go hang out with friends, or run around the block, or go for a swim when your boss dumps a weekend's worth of work on you on Friday afternoon. But the sooner you can get out and talk to others or work up a sweat, or better yet, do both, the better off you'll be.

Over time, the improved physical fitness that comes with regular exercise also works to directly counter the health impact of chronic stress. Aside from reducing platelet stickiness and thus the acute risk of heart attack resulting from stress, exercise strengthens the heart so it's less susceptible to the damage caused by stress. Exercise lowers blood pressure, strengthens the immune system to fight infection and perhaps some types of cancer, and increases insulin sensitivity and reduces the risk of diabetes.

Exercise helps stress in many ways.  Exercise helps reduce and helps release negative emotions such as anger, fear or worry and improves your mood. Exercise helps increase the production of endorphins, your brain's feel-good neurotransmitters.  Your resilience to stress increases with exercise and it also relaxes your muscles that have been tightened because of stress.

Chronic stress leads to increased appetite and abdominal fat as well as lack of sleep, bad combination! Exercise will increase blood flow to the brain creating a positive chemical reaction that will enhance brain function and reduce stress levels.

Exercise is probably the most effective way to manage stress. Exercise gives us energy to deal with stressors while providing an outlet for tension caused by stress. It also increases the natural mood-elevating chemicals in our brains and prepares us to deal with stressors in healthier ways. Often when we're stressed, it's not that we need more time but, rather, more energy. More energy increases our productivity by improving our ability to focus, concentrate, process new information, and elevate our mood.