Hoag
Effective Stress Management Techniques
Presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PEp6Ds7-51ZrL4IHRD-1uIT4TLcnHDrc/view?usp=sharing
Stress affects many of us daily, but why? This informative presentation from Hoag Medical Group physician, Catherine Nguyen-Loh, DO, will discuss the origins of stress, how it can negatively impact your health, and the role of exercise in coping with stress.
hi I'm Dr Catherine nuinlow I'm a family physician at Hogue in Fountain Valley today I'll be talking about effective stress man and just before I begin this lecture I just wanted to say to hold all questions till the end of the presentation and just go ahead and put those questions in the chat box okay all right so the reason why I wanted to talk about stress management techniques is because I am a family physician and I believe in preventing chronic diseases and there's been multiple studies that stress is something that is correlated with a lot of chronic diseases and I'll go further more into that in in the in the other parts of the lecture and who's who out there is stressed right everybody knows what stress is it's in your daily life from work from at home on the road when you're driving to work on the road when you're going home and so that's something that I wanted to talk about and I think it's a very important topic um and so if you're you are able to take anything away from this lecture I hope you are able to find at least one additional way that you can de-stress in your life um and to remember to take care of yourself all right so this is the lecture outline I'm going to talk about what stresses particularly what stress does and then we'll go ahead and kind of help you identify stress triggers and then um another thing is managing your stress before it's too much as well and then very very lastly I'll talk about the effect of stress management techniques such as deep breathing Focus breathing muscle relaxation exercise and creative Hobbies okay so what is stress stress is a normal phenomenon in your body um it's something that is released normally so stress is something that is physiological um usually it's a body's response to a challenge or demand I'm sure you've heard of something called fight or flight response so that's when stress hormones catecholamines such as norepinephrine and epinephrine are released and everyone experiences stress so it comes from a wide variety of events from small daily hassles to major changes in life small daily hassles again that person who honks at you on the on the road or major changes in life such as a promotion or something like or something like that and so when those chemicals are released into your blood you have an increase in heart rate and an increase in blood pressure and then sometimes you can also be elicited with emotions of worry anger fear worrisome thoughts and again these are all normal things but when your body is stressed for too long and too too high of amounts then that becomes a problem and I just wanted to say too that stress can also happen with positive changes in your life for example a work promotion that can be extremely stressful even though it's a good thing and then another thing is having a new baby getting less sleep and also having New Joys of a baby as well so the next slide these are just a few examples of what it can do to you some people have low appetite in the morning they have irregular bowel movements they have bloating they can have constant Cravings I know I identify with this one it says respond negatively to caffeine how many of you have drank a coffee in the morning and it does nothing for you or the exact opposite I've definitely had that in in the past as well so these are all signs that you can use to realize that you're probably having too much stress hormones in your body all right and then for the next slide um I wanted to talk about some tips to notice um when you're you're too stressed again you want to kind of sense what your body's feeling so so first off identify your stress triggers is it work is it at home is it that person whatever the cases you want to be aware of what your what Your triggers are so that you're able to manage them in your life and then a second thing is identifying what your body is feeling so oftentimes people I mean I find myself doing this too I go throughout the day I'm definitely stressed out all day multiple times and I didn't even realize what it was that stressed me out um and so I try to ask myself to sense what my body's feeling do I feel really hot in the face hot in the body do I feel like my shoulders are tensing up do I feel like I'm talking differently sometimes you know a loved one or a friend or a co-worker comes up to you and asks you a simple question you kind of answer kind of agitatively and so those are all all really important signs so just ask yourself if you're stressed out right now and try to take them this the correct measures to um to de-stress um so so here is just another picture of a little rundown of how to reduce stress so I will talk about deep breathing and meditation living in active Lifestyles such as exercise and then in the top right you'll see like some sports some footballs and then a guitar so your creative side is also very important to uh important as a stress reliever as well a massages of course everybody loves massages um yeah so another thing is to when you're feeling stressed out try to think positive try to reach out to family and friends try to keep to your hobbies and keep to your um your daily activities hanging out with loved ones those are all really important things as well um and do whatever works for you you know everyone's different everyone has their own knickknacks um I think just make sure you choose something that doesn't overstress you even more so in planning those activities make sure it doesn't stress you out more and it doesn't tie you up more as well okay so next I wanted to talk about a very important thing it's called deep breathing and I know everybody I don't know I'm sure everyone has told you that breathing is important but I really wanted to stress that during this lecture so I read um a seminar I went to a seminar once and they talked about how the breath is the very first thing you do when you're born and it's also the very last thing that you do before you pass away I found that very interesting um so I kind of connected it to the breath being a way to kind of bring you back to your Baseline when you're feeling you know whether it's angry whether you're anxious where you're stressed out or even when you're in there in your happy moments that breath can really take you back to your Baseline and kind of help you reflect and think about what your actual situation is and so yeah so deep breathing it's also called belly breathing or abdominal breathing I'm sure you've heard it in so many different ways but you basically want to lie down or sit down whatever works best for you so the main point about this type of breathing is that when you take a deep breath in the goal is to fill your belly with air so you know oftentimes people think of taking a breath and you raise your chest but in deep breathing you actually want to take a breath and actually increase the air in your stomach and the reason why this is important is because this gives you the most optimal error and when your brain senses that you're that has an increase in oxygen it actually tells the body and it releases less stress hormone into your blood and so that's basically a natural way to de-stress and then you do I don't know if you've also noticed this too when people are anxious or worried they take very short breaths very short and shallow breaths so they're actually causing a little vicious of a cycle for themselves so whenever you're feeling stressed out or angry or you know caught up with something think about you know that first breath and then I'll kind of bring you back to your um to your Baseline and so right now I don't know if everyone's stressed out right now but go ahead and put your hand on your chest and then another hand on your belly okay and when I say to take a deep breath in take a deep breath in and then feel the hand on your belly rise okay so you're going to breathe on the count of three one two three and deep breath out one two three okay and so that's a deep breath it's very basic but um you can try to do this for even two to five minutes a day some people have even more benefits when they're able to do meditation and breathing for 10 minutes or more um and then I also want to say another thing about breathing um some people have called it like meditation or relaxation mindfulness they're all basically the same thing but breathing is probably the most basic stage of it and then you can go go ahead and go higher into meditation and mindfulness okay and then there's there's two other things that you can add to this deep breathing Focus breathing is basically when you when you take a deep breath in you feel you think of that error as being peaceful and calm and then when you breathe out you're breathing out all of your stresses your tensions your deadlines and all those negative things basically so that's Focus breathing and then if you get a little bit more seasoned with this you can look into progressive muscle relaxation so in this type of meditation you are imagining that your bodies are tense so when you breathe in you tense your muscles and usually people work from the feet all the way up so feet legs fingers arms shoulders neck to face and so um when you take a deep breath out you're releasing that tension so yeah I really recommend that you know you try starting off with deep breathing and then you can add on focused breathing as well as progressive muscle relaxation um and then just to add a little bit further note to that um yoga Tai Chi and Qigong they use um this type of this type of I guess therapy so progressive muscle relaxation and focused breathing okay and next okay this is a huge topic I'm sure you've heard from your physician and probably everyone on Earth that you should exercise regularly but I really believe that you need to know why you're doing something and that's that's something that will probably motivate you more if you knew why and how it works and so when you exercise you release these brain basically proteins and neurotransmitters called endorphins dopamine serotonin I'm sure you've heard all these things before these are basically your feel good feel happy Brayden brain peptides okay and so when you work out you release these things and so you're happier you feel more content you feel a little bit less stressed out again your brain feels that it has more oxygen so the blood will actually release less stress hormones and so it also helps with learning and memory increases your brain production and exercise is a little tidbit it's the best way to lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia not not to say that the brain games aren't important but exercise is extremely extremely important for that um okay and so yeah again these neurotransmitters they also increase your heart rate and Supply more blood to the to the brain I know that sounds just like the stress hormone earlier but again this is a little bit different because this is like a normal phenomenon in your body that your body can adjust to and grow with okay and then it's also a powerful stressful lever besides that physical health benefits it'll um you know help with um with your muscles it helps with your heart helps with your GI system as well as your immune system as well okay so tips for exercise um choose something you enjoy you know the reason why a lot of people don't keep with keep up with their workers workouts or anything it's because they think it's like something to do to something on their to-do list and it's something that they're forced to do right it's like it's almost like a chore so it's something it's really important for you to choose a workout that you enjoy and then you also want to keep it diverse as well sometimes doing the same um the same workout all the time will will have you lose interest so keep diversity as well and even if you enjoy your workout um doing something over and over will allow you to allow you to lose interest um have multiple activities that you you enjoy you know um so for me I like to weight lift and then whenever I'm free I'm able I like to go hiking or backpacking um and then sometimes I like to play tennis too so yeah just keep it diverse and when you keep it diverse you're able you know maybe you can go out to Nature as well and so it kind of opened or open a lot of doors for you and then it's important to also set out a time for the exercise I know I said not to put it as a to-do list but it's important to have an appointment for yourself because otherwise you'll probably forget to work out or you say hey I'm gonna do it again tomorrow or I'll do it next week and it'll never happen Okay so it's very important to take out the time to exercise and then another thing is to take baby steps so many times people get really motivated and they work out and they work out so hard that they're so sore or you know they injure themselves and basically they end up not being able to work out again and so you want to take baby steps you know you never want to start running you want to start walking at first and you absolutely don't want to injure yourself it's very important to stretch before and after your exercise is it as well I'm actually a I actually completely ruptured my lumbar disc recently and so that was because I was not listening to myself and not taking baby steps so that's something that that you can take away from this and then the next thing is setting up your own goals and these are called smart goals so it stands for specific measurable achievable realistic and time-bound um so with these goals you want to make sure that you pick a very specific goal if you were to say something like oh I want to get toned I mean that's a good goal but at the same time there's no way of actually measuring that unless you're doing some type of fat density test or something like that but those cost money but you want to be you want to have specific goals such as like hey I want to be able to squat 150 pounds three reps by next January 2023 something like that and then yeah so that you can go ahead and read on that side slide to see furthermore how you can make smart goals and then the next thing is to exercise in short bursts and what I mean by that is if you don't have the time to do you know the hour and a half workout or the hour or even the 30 minutes just walk you know take it Take a Walk for about 10 minutes there's absolutely some days where you're just so busy where you just can't you just can't um do a whole 30-minute exercise let's go take the dog for a walk or something like that okay and then there's also other things you can do such as um deciding to take the stairs instead of the elevator deciding to drive to I'm sorry to bike instead of driving um or to hand wash your car or clean your house those are all really good exercises as well if you don't have time to exercise and yeah here's how many different options there are there's obviously so many more options out there I just wanted to um list some ones that stood out to me again yoga tai chi chi gong West weight training running and walking swimming dancing cycling hiking and backpacking my favorite and then Sports as well and this I just wanted to share it's a picture of me backpacking Mount Hood this was like a 44 mile trip in four days on the Pacific Crest Trail and yeah this is what I like to do in my my free time um okay and then the next thing is creative hobbies and I this is in an actual study but it doubles as stress Busters so they provide big stress relief um they and the thing the thing that's good about this is there's no limitations right it's all up to your imagination and when you're doing Hobbies you are also getting instant gratification so dance as you would know is like again all of these things release endorphins um but dancing you also get an exercise out of it and you also learn how to like choreograph and stuff like that and I'm sure people like to go to you know listen to music as well and go to concerts and stuff like that so that's all really good stress relievers as well um art is another big thing you can draw sketch paint color and the reason why this works for some people is that when you're doing your artistic artistic Masterpiece you're no longer thinking about your worries right some people would Define these creative Hobbies as like an escape and I think it's really important to to do even for like five minutes sketch something you know draw something and who knows if you don't feel like you're an artist maybe you'll pick something up and you'll you'll find that you really enjoy it regardless if you're good at it or not you know it depends on it all depends on how it how it affects you and can benefit you and then another thing is writing um this is really important I cannot stress it enough not just writing like writing novels and stuff but journaling journaling is extremely important I find that if you are to spend even five minutes right after you brush your teeth right before you start any chores or any work or before driving no work go ahead and write down things that you're you're you're grateful for they're called like affirmations um you can go on Amazon they sell it all over the place they're called like gratitude journals or daily journals and some of them ask you what you're happy for what what relationships are you thankful for and there's some where you can just write down whatever thoughts you had and you can really feel that you're a lot distressed a lot more distressed and another thing is that when you start off the day with positive affirmations it's a lot of Studies have found that you know you'll be a little bit less stressed throughout the day as well it'll kind of set the agenda for the day and yeah music I kind of talked about already but music you can listen to this anytime you know um you can listen to it while driving to work you can listen to it while cleaning your car you can listen to it while cooking which is something I like to do um but music has specific wavelengths that can actually calm you there's this YouTube video and a specific song that I use to to study or to relax it's called like the alpha waves so go ahead and go on YouTube and search that up as well that might help you focus might help you de-stress it might help you just relax in general and number five is photography um you don't have to be you know a famous photographer or anything or have expensive camera but um people nowadays have amazing cameras on their iPhones and pixels and Samsungs I didn't want to forget Samsungs and Androids um but yeah these pictures can really also help you realize the the things in your life that you're happy for like everyday snaps they basically help you improve your well-being as well it also helps you slow down when you're taking these pictures to kind of appreciate all the small things in life as well um and this one I just wanted to share this is a picture of um of us taking uh photography at Canada on during one of our backpacking trips as well okay I'm just going to talk about a few resources um this one is really great it's called the headspace app it used to be a little bit more expensive I think right now they're doing a promotion for 14 days free 5.83 a month after that this one's really great they give you basically guidance on meditation on sleep on stress and mindfulness this is really helpful because you can just do this on your phone wherever you'd like you can be at home you can be in the car not driving of course you can be out in the outdoors and so headspace is really good they even have a section for people that are stressed out with finances as well so I found that really really interesting and then this one's another good one this is called calm it's uh basically also plays certain sounds and music and helps you deep breathe and meditate as well this one's a little bit more expensive but go ahead and search these up on your store to see which ones work work for you and this one lastly is the new Mood app this one's a little bit more structured much much more expensive but basically you answer a series of questions and they help you decide how long of a program you need what areas you need to be be helped with and they have one-on-one coaching which I think is really interesting new Mood app was actually derived from the new Exercise app so if you're interested in exercise there's one for for that one as well okay and then very importantly this is my last slide um you're feeling stressed out you know if you're feeling anxious depressed um you know medical problems whatever the case is seek help seek seek help from your family and friends talk to somebody talk to Health Care Professionals your family doctor counselor therapist psychiatrists everyone's here to help you again this lecture the reason why I wanted to stress about stress management techniques is because life is getting busier we're we're faced with so many challenges throughout the day and I think it's extremely important to kind of just take a pause you know take care of yourself because you really can't really take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself first okay and so that that concludes my lecture thank you so much for uh for coming and I hope you enjoyed it oh and does everyone have any questions go ahead and put it in the chat box right is there a difference between acute versus chronic stress yes absolutely so acute is anything really short right and chronic is something that chronically goes on and on and on and so when you're acutely stressed I think that also depends on your resiliency as well so if I let's say I was stressed about I don't know the the car accident that I saw on the way in right if I continue to allow certain stress events to stress me out then it can turn into something chronic and when I'm chronically in that state of increased heart rate increased blood pressure increased uh you know stress hormones in the blood then that becomes more of the the chronic stress that we're talking that I'm talking about that can you know lead to all those medical problems can lead to anxiety depression and stuff like that I hope that answered your question go ahead and put in the chat box if that didn't answer what are some tips to not take it so personally when others are stressed when thin the work environment [Music] um I think you're trying to say how do you not stress out if someone else is stressing out right I think that's I think that's what you're trying to ask um so definitely do the stress technique as I was talking about but another thing is some you know you could really take two stances on this one if you are a person who gets stressed out by someone else getting stressed out sometimes you know sometimes talking to them can actually help you but if you feel that talking to them will actually stress you out more then you know just take a step back and kind of take care of yourself first as well another thing is that um when others are stressed out you can kind of how do I say this when others are stressed out kind of you know get them to breathe as well and then also realize that anything that's out of your control you just can't control right I think that's a big thing for stress is that people will stress about things that one they could control or two they cannot control but I think that's an important thing if you can't control how your co-worker feels at least control what you can control for yourself I hope that answered your questions at what level of stress would I need to see a doctor any level of stress you know so I as a family physician for myself even if my patient doesn't even come to me as you know with uh anxiety or stress as their Chief complaint I always ask them how they're doing if they're stressed out and you know 100 out of 100 basically 10 out of 10 times people you know my patients will open up to me right whether it's something small or something big whatever the case is um basically any level of stress you should you should talk about it because if you feel you're stressed and it's starting to affect you again feeling those things remember I told you about um what you sense in your body you know you answering your your loved ones differently or being a little bit more agitated those are definitely signs that you should you know go to a doctor but yeah you can talk to a doctor anytime about any of these problems how much is anxiety related to an actual disorder like generalized anxiety disorder that's a very good question so generalizing anxiety disorder I just wanted to point out that's when you're again generally anxious about everything right a lot of these things so generalized anxiety disorder is both genetic and environmental right so the fact that um you know you can have some genetics attributed it but at the same time you can also have environmental factors and those environmental factors are the this daily stress triggers that you're going through all of those things can add up right and you never know you can be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder so yeah these are very much related but you know it's not just generalized anxiety disorder there's acute stress disorder there's you know um you know even PTSD you can get stressed out from PTSD as well it affects your blood pressure hypertension right diabetes everything depression yeah so all of these things are extremely related to each other okay so that concludes uh the session I hope you enjoyed it remember seek help we're here for you and just yeah just remember to take a deep breath thank you
#Effective #Stress #Management #Techniques
source
Nice presentation