6 Things You Can Do Right Now to Minimize The effects of Stress on Your Health

We talked about stress and the effects of stress on your health last time, now it’s time to talk about what you can do about it.

Remember, prevention is the best medicine, so even if you don’t feel like your health is suffering because of stress; it is time to take some action to prevent and minimize stress now so you avoid having health problems later.

Typically stress shows up in these 4 ways:

1. External Environment
2. Internal Environment
3. Emotional/Psychological
4. Habits

Today we’ll talk about external environmental stress and the ways you can minimize or avoid stress completely starting NOW!

What do I mean by external environmental stress?

To be honest, this is the most encompassing area of stress because it includes your entire physical environment which can be as broad as Planet Earth (or more likely the city you live in) all the way down to the smallest room in your house or even the clothes you have on your back.

Let’s look at it this way, anything that physically touches you in any way shape or form is an external environmental stress.

Because of the broad scope of this stress category, I’ll primarily focus on the most immediate and direct decisions you can make to lower the negative effects of stress on your health.

Meaning, I’m not going to suggest you move away from Los Angeles because of the smog or Boston because the extreme cold puts stress on your system…I’ll assume you live where you do because you have chosen to.

I’m also not going to get stuck on how you can save the environment and make it better on a global scale…I absolutely believe that the more you conserve water, recycle, bring your own bag to the grocery store etc. etc. etc. the better it is for the world and therefore for you and everyone that comes after you, but that isn’t what this is about.

What we need to focus on right now is what realistic and immediate choices you can make to help decrease or eliminate some of the external environmental stress from your life. Let’s not go crazy with this…simple changes will make a world of difference.

Here are some suggestions:

• Have live plants in your home – More oxygen mean less stress on your system, it’s as simple as that.
• Create a perfect sleeping environment: Block out the light, block out external noise and make sure the temperature is comfortable. The better the quality of your sleep, the better equipped you are to handle the effects of stress on your health.
• Get your 20 minutes of Vitamin D
• Protect yourself from the Sun – Protect your skin and eyes: hats, SPF clothing, sunglasses and sunscreen go a long way.
• Control your audio stimulus – too much audio stimulus at one time is extremely stressful for your system.
• Be aware of your lighting – Harsh lighting can take its toll, but so can too little lighting, make sure you adapt how much light you need for what you are doing.

You can immediately reduce the negative effects of stress on your health. Start with your external environment and in the next post we’ll talk about the stresses of your internal environment.

I would love to hear any other suggestions on how to minimize external environmental stress…leave a comment to let me know your ideas and together we’ll reduce the effects of stress on your health.

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