Ways to Manage Your Stress and Anxiety

With all the craziness in the world, people are having a lot of anxiety and stress. So, what can you do about it besides hiding under the bed or in a closet until it all goes away?

An article in Nutrition Action had an interview with Elizabeth Hope (good name). Dr. Hope is a board-certified psychiatrist and director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program at George Washington University School of Medicine.

She has been researching and analyzing a number of different approaches to reducing stress and anxiety.

On the talk therapy side, she has looked at Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and found that it was three times more effective than typical counseling sessions. CBT changes the way you think, and it works within 8 to 12 sessions. It even has the client doing homework. If the person does their homework, then they may finish therapy in eight sessions.

Dr. Hope compared CBT against Yoga. By the end of the study, both the CBT and Yoga folks felt better than the control group. However, the anxiety relieving benefits didn’t persist after stopping yoga while CBT’s effects did.

So, my comment on this aspect is simple - keep doing yoga because it’s also keeping your body limber and toned!

On meditation, Dr. Hope looked at mindfulness meditation. She found that meditation also helped the meditators verse the control group handle their anxiety. It seemed that meditation also made the meditators more resilient to acute stress by comparing them to a control group where both groups had to give a speech in front strangers who were all wearing white lab coats and holding clip boards. (No judgment there, right!)

The meditators experienced less anxiety and stress during the speech compared to the controls.

Exercise is another way to reduce stress and anxiety. In one study, older sedentary men were assigned to either lift weights or ride a cycle three times a week. After six months, they had better mood and lower anxiety levels than non-exercisers.

So…the moral of the story is that there are a lot of drug free ways to reduce your stress and anxiety. You just need to do one of the approaches she covered and to get yourself in gear. You also need to realize you’re not hopeless or helpless in the face of the stress and anxiety that we’re all facing!

PS I waited until the end of the blog to crack this line – Yes, there is Hope when you need her!
(Reported Nutrition Action, January/February 2022)