journal

Life can be hard sometimes, and while it has many ups, it certainly has many downs as well. 

Stress and anxiety are common to experience, especially with the number of stressors we are all exposed to daily. Whether it’s a change, a demand, a conflict, or an unknown, the day-to-day can be scary, and it’s only natural to feel nervous or upset sometimes.

Stress and anxiety produce similar physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. How do you know if you’re stressed or anxious, and what can you do to manage these feelings? 

Today, we will discuss the difference between the two reactions and the best natural remedies to manage anxiety and stress from the comfort of your own home.

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a term that describes your body’s natural response to stress. Your body can respond in several ways, and the level and type of response are unique to everyone. 

However, common stress responses that indicate you have anxiety include persistent feelings of fear or worry, painful and intrusive thoughts, and trouble concentrating.  

Elevated heart rate and breathing, restlessness, nightmares, and panic attacks are all physical symptoms of anxiety. Many factors can lead to anxiety, including your surroundings, mental attitude and brain chemistry, and family medical history.

What Is the Difference Between Anxiety and Stress?

Anxiety and stress are both natural emotional responses and can present physical and mental components. The main difference between the two responses is their origin — anxiety is an internal response, whereas stress is an external response.

In cases of stress, the stress typically passes once the trigger has passed. However, in cases of anxiety, the anxious feelings generally remain and are persistent even when there is no stressor.

Our minds and bodies can blow things out of proportion with worry, and we may respond with anxiety that lingers long after the triggering concern has passed. Often, short-term anxiety can develop into a health condition, namely an anxiety disorder. 

Common anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and chronic anxiety. While you can often manage short-term feelings of anxiety through natural treatments, if you begin to have trouble with self-management, then it may be time to seek medical advice. 

How Do Stress and Anxiety Affect the Body?

Although stress and anxiety have different origins, causes, and persistent tendencies, these emotional reactions can affect the body in the same ways. They can both produce symptoms such as muscular tension, shortness of breath, hyperventilation, and an upset stomach due to increases in your levels of stress hormones like cortisol. 

Let’s explore each of these effects in more detail below.

Muscle Tension

When you experience stress or anxiety, your body responds with muscle contraction, and contraction can cause you to feel tension. The response is due to your fight or flight reaction in your nervous system, which activates any time you experience anxiety or stress.

Shortness of Breath

Shortness of breath is another effect of anxiety and stress that you can trace to your natural fight or flight response. Your brain reacts to try to protect your body from the internal or external trigger with an elevated heart rate as well as more rapid breathing so that your muscles can receive more oxygen in case you need to move quickly to get out of the situation.

Upset Stomach

Stress and anxiety can affect the balance of good bacteria present in our gut, and when this balance is thrown off, we often experience stomach pain or discomfort. Stress and anxiety also cause our brain to release hormones and neurotransmitters that can adversely affect how our body processes waste. This can result in an upset stomach.

What Are Some Natural Remedies for Anxiety and Stress Relief?

Fortunately, there are many different natural remedies for anxiety and stress that have little to no uncomfortable side effects compared to prescription medication. Let’s look at some of these home remedies and tips below.

Regular Exercise

Exercise is one of the best natural remedies for stress and anxiety and is a great way to stay physically and mentally healthy. Physical activity can work as a distraction that moves your attention away from the triggers or symptoms of your stress and anxiety.

In particular, cardio is a good form of exercise to help manage your stress and anxiety because elevated heart rate levels can increase the levels of feel-good chemicals, such as serotonin, that your brain releases into your body.

However, even less active forms of exercise such as yoga can help — yoga can help you stay grounded in the present moment and may be a beneficial method of soothing anxiety attacks.

Limiting Substances

You should try to limit your drug or alcohol consumption because substances can perpetuate anxiety and stress and heighten your symptoms. Limiting substances can also bring many other health benefits that contribute to your overall wellness and mental health as well, like benefits for your heart health.

High-Quality Sleep

Sleep is very important for our development during any stage of life, as your body and mind need sleep to recharge and stay healthy, which facilitates stress and anxiety relief.

High-quality sleep not only means getting enough hours of sleep but also making sure that these hours include good sleep and that you are not waking up repeatedly during the night. If you struggle with the quality of your sleep, try to minimize distractions and allow adequate time to unwind before getting into bed.

This means minimizing screen time or exercise and refraining from these events at least an hour before your bedtime. Speaking of bedtime, it’s important to try to keep a consistent bedtime so that your body is used to falling asleep at the same time every night.

Eating a Balanced Diet

A well-balanced diet is crucial for your physical, mental, and emotional health.

A well-balanced diet includes fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and lean meat options. 

Choose low-fat dairy and limit the number of processed foods that you consume. Try to include sufficient levels of vitamin D, magnesium, and omega-3 fatty acids with each meal — both of these nutrients can help support mental health and cognitive function.

Foods with refined sugar, as well as artificial flavors or colorings, may cause more prominent mood changes. In addition, if you skip meals, low blood sugar levels and dehydration will ensue, and these are both factors that can also cause mood changes and heighten stress and anxiety. Aim to eat at least three well-balanced meals each day.

Supplements

In addition to eating a well-balanced diet, you might consider adding natural supplements to your meal plan. There are various supplement options whose ingredients target stress and anxiety symptoms and are a great way to help you cope with your worry to mitigate your emotional response.

Herbal supplements such as lavender, lemon balm, chamomile, passionflower, and kava all have calming properties, and aromatherapy can soothe your symptoms to help you relax. Many are easy to incorporate into your diet or even skincare routine, such as chamomile tea or other herbal teas at night or lemon balm and lavender oil for healthier skin. 

Breathing Techniques

Deep breathing exercises are a very effective way to relieve your stress and anxiety. Simply closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths can have a strong calming effect when you feel stressed or anxious. 

In addition, guided meditations, imagery exercises, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT),  mindfulness, and yoga practices are all options that can help alleviate stress and anxiety, and you can incorporate breathing techniques into these strategies.

Is Ketamine Therapy Effective for Anxiety and Stress Relief?

Ketamine is an incredibly safe option to treat anxiety, stress, and other mental health struggles — it has a long history as a medication that hospitals use, and the psychedelic therapy it provides is a remarkable and innovative treatment. While ketamine isn’t “natural,” it has been shown to have fewer uncomfortable side effects than traditional antidepressants. 

Nue Life offers ketamine in the form of a simple pill. This way, you can have your ketamine experience in a comfortable and familiar environment so that you can have the best experience possible.

Nue Life can help you gather meaningful takeaways from your experiences. Consider Nue Life to help keep your healing alive so that you can have mental well-being in the long term. 

The Bottom Line

Stress and anxiety are both natural and normal responses that your body has when it feels a trigger from a stressor. Stressors can be external or internal, and if the stressor is external then your emotional response is stress, whereas if the stressor is internal, then your emotional response is anxiety.

Stress can cause anxiety, but these two responses are not the same thing because the trigger for stress is external. Additionally, stress usually goes away after the trigger dissipates, whereas anxiety involves persistent, intrusive worry and a sense of impending doom, even if there is no more identifiable trigger.

Fortunately, stress and anxiety are both relatively easy to address at home because there are many different natural remedies you can try to cope with your symptoms. 

However, if you feel that despite self-management, your stress or anxiety still feels uncontrollable and is lowering the quality of your life, then it might be time to supplement natural ways to cope with anti-anxiety medication. Talk to your healthcare provider about treatment options

Treatment at Nue Life

Nue Life believes in holistic treatment, which means that what happens before and after your ketamine experience is equally as important as the experience itself. We want to ensure you have meaningful takeaways from your experiences and help you establish positive new neural pathways.

That’s why we provide one-on-one health coaching and integration group sessions with each of our programs. We’re here to help map out the mind and body connections in your brain and help you discover the insights that lead to true healing.

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Sources:

Anxiety Disorders – Facts & Statistics | Anxiety & Depression Association of America

Neuroendocrinology of Stress | Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics

The use of essential oils as a complementary treatment for anxiety | American Journal of Nursing Science
Working out boosts brain health | American Psychological Association

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