Can Micro-Stressing Improve Your Mental Health & Immune System?

When you hear the word stress, I am sure you think of something negative. In many cases is a negative feeling we feel. However, stress is a healthy thing to experience in small doses. Our body is designed to handle specific amounts of stress to enhance immunity and our body's ability to adapt to challenging situations. In today's article, I will share with you how using a method called micro-stressing can enhance your mental health and immune system.

How does stress improve our health?

Small amounts of stress are not unhealthy. It is actually how our body becomes better at adapting to stress. Similarly, you make a diamond with a lot of pressure to make it strong. Specific exercises or tools that can create a small amount of stress can benefit your immune system and mental health. For example, people who exercise regularly release feel-good endorphins, which enhance their overall well-being. Manageable stress increases alertness and performance. In addition, pressure improves memory by encouraging the growth of stem cells that become brain cells. The increase in stem cells and neuron generation makes sense from an adaptive point of view. As an animal escapes, a predator will remember not to go that way again. Or if you are walking down a dark alley and someone is threatening you, you will remember not to go down that alley again. Our brain is constantly responding to stress, from exams at school to avowing dangerous parts of town; these types of focus are what help us survive. Now, it's a different story when we stress too much.

What does too much stress do to your health?

Have you heard the saying too much of a good thing can be bad for you? Well, that is true for stress. There are many forms of stress, but an excess amount of stress can begin to destroy our health. Stress can slow our metabolism, increase inflammation, compromise our immune system, and cause extreme fatigue. Too much is when you feel in a constant state of stress or worry. Self-awareness is key to stepping back and realizing when you need to disconnect and relax your mind to return to a normal state of mind. Over time if the stress progresses, you can cause chronic illnesses, such as chronic fatigue, inflammation, and anxiety disorders. I always recommend having a journal with you wherever you go so that when you feel stressed or overwhelmed, you can write down your emotions and process them more healthily.

What is mental toughness, and why is it essential for our health?

Mental toughness is not a state of mind as much as it is durability created by your mind. When faced with adversity, we have a choice to either embrace the fear we have around it or conquer it. On the other hand, we can allow misfortune to just run all over us, making it harder and harder to deal with adversity over time. When stressed, we release a hormone called cortisol, our fight-or-flight hormone, which controls how our body responds to stress. When we don't choose to fight through the stress of certain situations, it can become even more inflammatory because your body takes a lot longer to return to normal when you are stressed for too long. So how do we get better at dealing with stress or adversity? Doing uncomfortable tasks that create small amounts of stress can help build confidence and mental durability in times of stress. An example of doing something painful is doing the most challenging task you have for the day; first, choosing to do the more stressful job can help build mental toughness over time.

How does our immune system deal with stress?

As you learned above, when our body is in a state of stress, we release stress hormones, like cortisol, and our immune system sends our immunological cells to try and repair the damage done by the pressure. This is why you can feel a headache after a stressful day at work, tense neck muscles, tight hips, aching joints, constipation, and much more. These symptoms occur because our body slows down every organ in the body when it is stressed for too long. When our body has small amounts of stress, it acts as a piece of steel. When heated and cooled repeatedly, it becomes even stronger over time. It's the same with our immune system; by generating large amounts of stress in our body, your immune system becomes more robust over time.

What forms of stress are the healthiest to include in your life?

Cold exposure: We all know this is probably the least enjoyable on the list of things to do, but I would have to say it is the most effective at helping you with both mental toughness and a more robust immune system. Just 11 minutes of cold exposure a week can help reduce body fat and inflammation. In addition, taking cold showers can boost our endocrine and lymph systems, improving our immune system and blood circulation. Starting each day with a 3-5 minute cold shower can help get your energy up and build your immune system.

Heat exposure: Along with the cold, we also need heat for the opposite durability effect. Adapting to the cold can help your body acclimate when it's hard. The same is true with heat exposure; sitting in a sauna, hot bath, or hot tube can help kill free radicals in the blood and rejuvenate skill cells, making you feel and look younger over time. Now it can reverse aging, but it can slow it down. The best form of heat exposure is an infrared sauna which contains the proper UV rays our body needs for proper detoxification, and the heat also helps with secreting certain toxins from the body. Just 10-15 minutes at 180-200 degrees is recommended for the best results. If you don't own a sauna, try finding a local studio with a sauna. Or, even if you are interested, click the link below to check out an inexpensive sauna that takes up very little room.

- Higher Dose Sauna Blanket

Exercise: It is nothing new that training is excellent for mental toughness and your immune system. Making time to exercise every day will allow your body to deal with stress because of the amount of pressure you put yourself through when you exercise. In a 2019 research review, moderate-intensity exercise can stimulate cellular immunity by increasing the circulation of immune cells in your body. This helps your body better prepare for a future infection by detecting it earlier.

Challenging tasks: Doing complex tasks or tasks that make you uncomfortable can build self-confidence around challenging tasks. Over time doing this will give you control over how you react to challenging tasks. Instead of becoming anxious or nervous, you will be strategic and confident in yourself. Try doing the most challenging job at the beginning of the day to boost your confidence going into the rest of the day.

Journaling or talking about your true feelings: I would have to say this is the most challenging form of stress you can do to improve your mentality and immunity. I say that because we as humans want to survive, and we will do anything to stay. Trying to survive can also mean pushing our feelings and emotions to the side because we must be tough and keep moving forward, but that is not true. Being able to acknowledge your feelings and feel them is the most challenging thing we as humans can do. A great way to know precisely what we think is to write it down or talk to a professional that can help you process your emotions. Being able to do this effectively, you will be able to process your feelings and feeling easier. This will build self-awareness around your emotions, and you will be able to cope with them more efficiently over time. Try having a notebook just for your thoughts at your desk and when you feel stressed, sad, mad, or any noticeable emotion and write down what you are feeling or thinking. It can help get those thoughts out on paper giving you power over them. The more you can journal your emotions, the stronger your mind will become.

We were designed to handle small amounts of stress in our lives. Especially now more than ever, doing things that improve how our body adapts to stress is essential. Give some of these things a try and see how they favor you.