10 Natural Remedies For Dealing With Anxiety And Stress

Hello, Mark Testa here. In today's video, I want to share with you 10 natural remedies for dealing with anxiety and stress. Now, you don't have to do all of these. Pick one that you might like, that you can do on a regular basis, and see how it works for you. This is also not a substitute for seeing a professional. These are natural remedies that you can do at home. I hope you find some value in these and that you subscribe to our channel below. Let's get started. Number one, exercise. This is a great thing to do for our body anyway, but a 2015 review of 12 randomized control trials in the annals of behavioral medicine showed that regular exercise was a great way of reducing stress and anxiety in people's lives. We also know in similar research that it can be beneficial for depression, mild to moderate depression. So exercise, number one. Number two, meditation. I've always been a big fan of meditation, but this is mindfulness-based meditation. This was also published in the American Psychology Association Journal. It was a meta-analysis as well, and it suggested that meditation, mindfulness-based meditation, was highly effective for mood and anxiety. Now, number three is relaxation exercises. These also, mindfulness-based stress reduction, this was first pioneered 30 years ago at the University of Massachusetts by Jon Kabat-Zinn, shows that the body scan is a great way of relaxing and reducing stress and anxiety in our lives. This is just like getting into a comfortable position on the floor, eyes closed, and just breathing into different parts of our body. I'll walk you through it real quickly. Breathe into the foot and into the leg and into the thigh on the left side, and then the same thing on the right side, just breathing into those areas. And shifting our mental focus in this area can be very relaxing. It helps increase blood flow and general relaxation. And then, same thing, up the torso, up the chest, down the left arm, breathing down into the right arm, and breathing into your neck and into your head. This can take as little as five minutes or as long as an hour, depending how much time you have to do it. So, relaxation exercises. Number four, writing. Writing and finding a creative way to express anxiety can be very beneficial for getting it out of our nervous system, getting it out of our head, getting it on paper, having an ability to look at it and see if it really deserves all that much attention. I think also a technique that I learned that I use on a regular basis is asking the question, what am I getting from this? What am I getting from this? It's interesting when you look at that and ask that question, you realize nothing. I'm not getting anything except more anxious. And it helps at least break a pattern. Number five is time management. Sometimes we have so much on our plate that it's easy to get overwhelmed and anxious. And I always go back to Mark Twain's famous quote, eat that frog. And what he meant by that was do the thing you don't want to do first. Get it out of your way. Get it out of your day. Sometimes we hang on to these things till the end of our day, and it's like playing in our mind constantly. We've got something to do. There's also another technique called the Pomodoro method where you set a timer for 20 minutes of very focused work and then take a five minute break. So the Pomodoro method, you can look that up. Interestingly, this one's been around for quite some time, but it actually has a little bit of evidence. Aromatherapy. This was published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. And they looked at using lavender in middle-aged women who had stress and anxiety. And you can use lavender essential oils and aromatherapy. You can put it in a diffuser and let it go throughout your house. You can dab some aromatherapy essential oils on your neck, around your clothing, sometimes just lightly in the hair. It can be a nice calming smell. Our nose and sense are very sensitive to us, and so we can get a lot of mileage out of aromatherapy. Now, a little controversial here. There's not a lot of research on this, but CBD, cannabidiol, comes from the hemp plant. Nobody really knows the dose of this, or there hasn't been a lot of research on it. You've got to make sure that this is legal in your state. But there has been plenty of anecdotal evidence that this can help with stress and with anxiety. A couple others. Herb tea. Also a small paper published in 2018, the Journal of Psychiatric Research, showed that chamomile tea can be soothing. And maybe it's just the action of slowing down and sipping tea, but they found cortisol levels decreased when drinking this on a regular basis. Not a lot of research out there, but it certainly is a nice way to slow down your life and enjoy some time. Number nine, herbal supplements. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence for herbal supplements, but no real good scientific evidence. If you want to look down this road, I recommend working with a physician who's knowledgeable in herbs, or with a local herbalist who can help steer and guide you. Herbs can be as powerful as drugs. They can also have side effects or adverse effects with medications you're taking. So you don't want to just start doing some of this stuff without some supervision from a knowledgeable person. And lastly, time with animals. There's been a lot of papers published on people live longer and healthier when they have pets, when they have animals, depressed people feel better. This one was published, it was a 2015 paper published in Frontiers of Psychiatry, a systematic review that showed taking care of animals was helpful at reducing stress. So I hope these 10 ideas, one of them sparks your interest. Give it a shot. If this is helpful for you, please like this video. Please share it with somebody. And please subscribe to our channel for more helpful do-it-yourself type lifestyle tips that you can use today. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you in the next video.