Stress and anxiety can be common culprits behind insomnia, increased heart rate, and overeating. But mental health issues can also hinder some of the body’s vital physiological processes, including digestion and hormone level management.

Following a few of these simple strategies could ease your mind and benefit overall health.

How to Find Balance

• Reach for Social Connections, Not Social Media

  Social connections with loved ones or colleagues can help avoid feelings of stress and loneliness. But beware of making your main connections on social media. Social media might provide temporary entertainment, but studies show that it can take a large toll on the mind.

  In a 2017 survey of Britons aged 14 to 24 suggests that more social media time on platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X), and Instagram could result in feelings of anxiety and depression. They also reported struggling with issues like poor sleep, body image, fear of missing out (a.k.a FOMO), and bullying.

• Limit Screen Time

  Spending too much time in front of a computer or phone screen, especially at night, can fatigue your eyes and make it hard for the brain to relax. When lying in the dark, experts say that blue light associated with phone and laptop screens can keep the brain awake and alert. This may make it hard to sleep or put your late-night thoughts into overdrive.

  TIP: Some IPhone or computer apps, like the Screen Time app, built in to IPhone’s with IOS 12 or higher. Before you tune out for the day, checking an app like this can give you a real idea on how much time you’re spending in front of a given screen—and what you’re spending it on. Some of these apps also allow you to limit the use of apps you spend too much time on. This has been popular for parents of children with smartphones, but adults can place limits on themselves too.

• Jog or Run

  A 2019 JAMA Psychiatry study found that participants who regularly exercised presented less risk of developing major symptoms depression than those who did not. Yoga, one popular workout style which combines physical activity with meditation strategies, is also often used by people looking for a spiritual and physical balance.

• Accept Hugs

  Studies show that regular hugs are linked to lower blood pressure and heart rates in post-menopausal women. In 2018, researchers suggested that hugging a loved one or partner shortly after an argument can help both parties ease negative moods caused by the conflict.

• Mindfulness and Meditation

  While meditation, used around the world for centuries, has been seen to reduce blood pressure and strengthen the mind, its sub-strategy, mindfulness, has also been gaining steam in the world of Western medicine. In a 2013 study, mindfulness activities were seen to have reduced stress levels in participants with post-traumatic stress disorder.

• Embrace Your Hobbies

  Hobbies can be a way of expressing yourself while letting off steam. While some enjoy spending time working out, others might get a natural mood boost from something more artistic, like coloring.

• Try Vitamins and Supplements

  Research has shown that some supplements and herbs can naturally boost your mood. This list includes vitamins B, C, and D; magnesium; and curcumin.

• Get a Good Night’s Sleep

  While getting eight hours—or more—of sleep each night is recommended by most doctors, it’s also necessary for your brain. When you enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, your brain replenishes neurotransmitters that help you retain information and manage your mood.

  Sleep rituals can be a helpful way to get you in the habit of winding down after a certain hour. For example, if stress from your job gets in the way of sleep, set a hard-stop time on any at-home work.

• Don’t Be Afraid of Your Doctor

  Sometimes, you may need more than a friend or a vitamin to get on the right track. Your doctor might be able to help you come up with a mental health strategy that’s personalized to you.

Once again, it’s an overtime day and a fast-food dinner.

You’re so frazzled, even days off feel like work, and forget about a decent night’s sleep.

If only you could wind down and unplug!

Enter qigong (say “chee-gong”), a type of moving meditation.

What Is Qigong?

Similar to yoga, this practice from traditional Chinese medicine combines thousands of simple and repetitive postures and slow gestures with relaxed and purposeful breathing and a present-focused mind.

While doing qigong, you can remain perfectly still or you can move—from ever so slightly to dancerly.

How you position your body informs your state of mind (and vice versa), while your body and breath improve your physical health.

You can do qigong anywhere, whether sitting, standing, or lying down. And yes, you can make time for it!

Benefits of Qigong

Just two minutes of qigong here and there throughout the day can reduce stress and help with depression and anxiety. It also helps you manage chronic conditions and prevent illness, and it encourages healthy aging.

“Qigong creates functional changes within the body to produce the most profound medicine ever discovered,” says Roger Jahnke, a doctor of Oriental medicine and director of the Institute of Integral Qigong and Tai Chi, in Santa Barbara, CA. He’s the author of The Healing Promise of Qi: Creating Extraordinary Wellness Through Qigong and Tai Chi.

For starters, qigong (qi for “life force” and gong for “practice”) mobilizes the blood and other body fluids, including those related to the lymphatic system, joints, brain, and spine. It also increases blood-vessel elasticity, so the heart pumps more easily.

“The blood carries in more oxygen and nutrition, and lymph more effectively flushes out toxic byproducts through the elimination system,” Dr. Jahnke explains. This, in turn, enhances the immune system, cell metabolism, and tissue regrowth.

How Does Qigong Work?

The body loves qigong. It’s why millions of people worldwide do this practice that originated before recorded history. You can’t help but feel calmer, given your relaxed yet alert posture, abdominal breathing, and mindful attention.

“These are the ‘three treasures,’ in an internal conspiracy of cooperation that the Chinese call ‘the qigong effect,’” Dr. Jahnke says. “When you slow down to the length of a deep breath and link it to the gestures, it triggers the body’s relaxation response.”

Instead of the fight, flight, or freeze typical of the sympathetic nervous system when you’re under stress, qigong releases parasympathetic hormones. Heart rate and blood pressure decrease, immediately calming you and sharpening your mental focus.

“When you do qigong, you stop doing everything else,” Dr. Jahnke said. “You stop being busy and worrying about the past or future, and you tend not to catastrophize or ruminate."

"You also are, then, more aware of what your body is doing, in movement or stillness, and how you feel within your body.”

Getting Started with Qigong

You can try qigong right now:

1. Stand or sit upright, or lie down stretched out.
2. Like a tree rooted firmly in the ground with its leaves fluttering, imagine being pulled from the base of your spine down into the center of the earth with your head lifted way up into the sky.
3. Slowly breathe in through your nose into your belly, hold for several seconds, then slowly exhale, letting yourself increasingly relax. Picture clouds drifting by or a stream bubbling through the forest.
4. Then notice what your body is doing and how it feels.

It can begin that simply!

In the midst of racing around and getting stressed out, qigong invites you to ease up and chill out. Enjoy those moments of quietude and relief, and get to know the healer within.

Improve Brain Health with Controlled Breathing 

Controlled breathing—a key part of meditation and mindfulness practices directly affects a key chemical messenger in the brain, according to a new study from Trinity College Dublin. The finding suggests that controlled breathing can enhance attention and improve brain health.

Respiration Influences the Mind

“Practitioners of yoga have claimed for some 2,500 years that respiration influences the mind,” said lead author Michael Melnychuk. “We looked for a neurophysiological link that could help explain these claims by measuring breathing, reaction time, and brain activity.”

The Link Between Breathing and Focus

The researchers determined that the chemical messenger noradrenaline is affected by how we breathe. “When we are stressed we produce too much noradrenaline and we can’t focus,” Melnychuk said. “When we feel sluggish, we produce too little and again, we can’t focus. There is a sweet spot of noradrenaline in which our emotions, thinking, and memory are much clearer.” He said that attention is influenced by our breath, and that “it rises and falls with the cycle of respiration.”

We’ve all done it at one time or another: reached for a bag of chips, box of cookies, or candy bar to satisfy not just hunger, but an inner emotional need. Whether it’s boredom, anger, fear, guilt, worry, loneliness, or sadness that we’re experiencing, we let food comfort us.

But it’s not emotions alone that can cause this type of hunger. Physical and mental strain, sleep deprivation, poor diet, and nutritional deficiencies are also triggers for emotional eating.

The problem is what we eat during these moments of emotional and physical distress (hot fudge sundae, anyone?).

“When we eat in the absence of physical hunger cues, regularly choose unhealthy comfort foods, or eat when we’re already full, something is out of balance somewhere,” writes psychotherapist Julie M. Simon in The Emotional Eater’s Repair Manual.

So how do we know if what we’re feeling is emotional hunger or true hunger? Emotional hunger generally needs to be satisfied quickly, even instantly. Emotional hunger also tends to create cravings for specific foods (often comfort foods such as sweets).

Taming the beast

“Most overeating is emotional eating,” says Denise Lamothe, PsyD, HHD, author of The Taming of the Chew: A Holistic Guide to Stopping Compulsive Eating. The emotional eating roller coaster starts with feeling emotionally uncomfortable. Eating sugary or fat-laden foods acts as an anesthetic, temporarily helping you feel better. You then feel remorseful about what you’ve eaten and grab more food to feel better again. “It’s a continuous cycle that must be broken,” adds Dr. Lamothe.

Turning mindless indulgences into mindful eating is no easy task. However, there are several strategies that can help.

Susan Albers, PsyD, stresses the need for an awareness of why you are eating. So when you find yourself reaching for something to eat when you’re stressed or upset, take a moment to be present and mindful. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. What are you really feeling? If it’s true hunger, eat something nourishing.

She advises paying attention to how your hunger and fullness change with each healthy mouthful. And with each bite you take, try engaging the other senses: Start by smelling the food. Mindfully doing so can produce a feeling of fullness and may make you less likely to eat everything in front of you. Chew food thoroughly. This slows down consumption, enhances the experience of the food, and aids in digestion.

Nourish body and soul

You’ve had a bad day at work. Your family is driving you crazy. You just found out your car needs brakes—and a new battery. Life is full of stress.

But before you reach for the cookie jar, stop. Do something else. Go for a walk, call a friend, write in a journal, tackle a household chore, take a bath.

Don’t use food as a reward or stress reliever. Instead, indulge in a manicure or massage, read a book, or just allow yourself to sit down and relax for 10 minutes.

Try meditation. It’s a great way to deal with stress. It can also help you feel balanced and less anxious. Harvard University-affiliated researchers looked at magnetic resonance images of the brains of 16 people before and after they participated in an eight-week-long mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction program. They determined that meditating for about 30 minutes a day not only significantly reduced the participants’ stress, it also literally made changes in their brains, decreasing the density of gray matter in an area related to stress and anxiety.

If you don't have 30 minutes a day to meditate, don't worry. A study conducted with college students shows that as little as 5 to 12 minutes of daily mindfulness meditation can significantly decrease stress and anxiety.

It’s inspiration enough to make room in your life for this mindful practice.

Most smokers are aware that they should stop, but they also know that it’s easier said than done. It usually takes more than one attempt to succeed, and many smokers relapse—even years after kicking the habit.

“The limited success of current smoking cessation therapies encourages research into new treatment strategies,” write the authors of a study of alternative approaches.

“Mind-body practices such as yoga and meditation have the potential to aid smoking cessation and become an alternative drug-free treatment option.”

Smokers have also found success through such practices as acupuncture, homeopathy, and the use of herbal remedies.

Antismoking Strategies

Lifestyle

• Diet & Nutrition

  Heavy smokers tend not to eat as many fruits and veggies as nonsmokers. Unfortunately, that dietary lapse deprives smokers of antioxidants that could improve respiratory health.

  In a three-month, double-blind placebo study, researchers found that heavy smokers who took supplements made from fruit and vegetable juice powder, plus a berry juice concentrate powder, improved their pulmonary parameters, folate status, and cardiovascular risk factors.

  In another, researchers from the University of Buffalo polled 1,000 smokers from around the country about their diets and use of tobacco. In follow-up interviews 14 months later, researchers determined that those who ate the most fruits and vegetables were three times more likely to have been tobacco-free for the previous 30 days compared to those who consumed the fewest.

  Smokers with higher fruit and vegetable intakes:

  • smoked fewer cigarettes.
  • waited longer to have their first of the day.
  • scored better on a test of nicotine dependence.

  Former Smokers

  A 10-year study found that former smokers who ate two or more tomatoes or more than three servings of fresh fruit per day saw slower declines in lung function.

  “Lung function starts to decline at around age 30 at variable speed depending on the general and specific health of individuals,” said researcher Vanessa Garcia-​Larsen, PhD.

  She said her study suggests that eating more fruit on a regular basis can help slow the decline and might help repair damage caused by previous smoking.

• Hormonal Cycles

  Rising and falling levels of hormones can affect nicotine cravings in women.

  “Uncontrollable urges to smoke are stronger at the beginning of the follicular phase that begins after menstruation,” said neuroscientist Adrianna Mendrek, PhD. “Hormonal decreases of estrogen and progesterone possibly deepen the withdrawal syndrome and increase activity of neural circuits associated with craving.”

  Fewer than 10 percent of smokers who quit stay smoke-free for more than a year. Women have a harder time quitting than men, even if they smoke the same number of cigarettes, according to Dr. Mendrek.

• Debit Cards / Campus Cash

  Parents are often unaware that some “campus cash” debit cards can be used to buy cigarettes. A study from the University of Colorado Cancer Center found that of the top 100 universities as ranked by US News and World Report, 11 allow tobacco sales and 13 allow e-cigarette sales on such cards.

  “Parents put money on these debit cards and kids spend the money,” said researcher Robert Dellavalle, MD, PhD. Previous research has shown that nearly half of college students who smoke have used campus debit cards to purchase cigarettes.

  “Cracking down on this ‘campus cash’ is a major opportunity for these colleges to take a step toward preventing tobacco use on their campuses,” said lead author Lindsay Boyers.

Practices

• Meditation

  One study compared meditation to a relaxation-training program for their effects in reducing smoking. After two weeks:

  • Those in the meditation group had lowered their cigarette consumption by 60 percent.
  • Those in the other group did not see any reduction.

  Brain scans of the meditators showed increased activity in areas related to self-control.

• Yoga

  Several studies have shown that yoga and other forms of exercise help deter the urge to smoke.

  One trial found that women in an eight-week, twice-weekly yoga class combined with a smoking cessation program had better results than those who participated in the program but did not include yoga.

  Abstinence was higher for the yoga practitioners after six months.

Treatments

• Acupuncture

  A review of a dozen trials found that acupuncture provided short-term benefits for quitting.

  For sustained abstinence from smoking, acupuncture was no more effective than traditional methods, but it does appear to help jump-start the process.

  One study concluded that acupuncture “should be considered as an alternative to help smokers in quitting, especially for those whose past attempts using conventional methods were in vain.”

• Therapy

  A promising treatment known as positive psychotherapy has provided some smokers with the psychological tools to increase their likelihood of quitting.

  According to the Journal of Positive Psychology, “Participants reported very high levels of satisfaction with the treatment, especially with its positive focus.”

  The smokers—who were identified as having a low “positive affect” (the manner in which we experience or express positive moods)—participated in six sessions “designed to boost positive mood” as part of their more traditional cessation therapy.

  Their success rate was significantly higher than the general success rate for smoking cessation programs. Nearly a third of the participants were not smoking after six months.

Supplements

• Herbal Remedies

  Many herbs and plants have been used to reduce cravings for tobacco.

  The daily ingestion of an oat extract was effective in dropping cigarette consumption from 20 per day to fewer than nine in a Japanese study. A tea made with 11 herbs reduced withdrawal symptoms in 100 male smokers over four weeks.

  Those participants were three times more likely to succeed in quitting than a group that did not drink the tea.

  St. John’s wort, lobelia, and black pepper have also been studied for their use in smoking cessation, with mixed results.

• Homeopathy

  To reduce cravings for tobacco, homeopathic practitioners recommend Lobelia inflata.

  Irritability caused by withdrawal can be treated with Nux vomica, while emotional upset linked to quitting may be soothed with Ignatia amara.

Some may think of meditation as navel-gazing, a waste of time, or even boring. When it comes to medicine, Westerners often favor chemistry over contemplation, but what if meditation is medicine?

A Study on Heart Benefits of Meditation

Robert Schneider, MD, a lead researcher on a study that looked at meditation and blood pressure, said that, “It appears that Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a technique that turns on the body's own pharmacy to repair and maintain itself.”

The Design of the Study

In Schneider’s study, participants with heart disease were given a choice between attending a health education class over the course of five years or a TM stress-reduction program.

Those practicing meditation sat with eyes closed for about 20 minutes twice a day, practicing the techniques of Transcendental Meditation. By contrast, the health education group was asked to spend 20 minutes a day practicing such heart-healthy behaviors as exercise, nutritious meal preparation, and nonspecific relaxation.

The groups were assessed at various stages, with researchers taking into account their body mass index, diet, blood pressure, and cardiac hospitalizations.

The Results of The Study

The meditation group fared better.

• Fewer Cardiac Events

  Only 20 “end point events”—such as stroke, heart attack, or death—occurred in the meditation group while 32 occurred in the health education group.

• Reduced Blood Pressure and Stress

  Blood pressure and anger were reduced significantly among the meditators.

• Reduced Substance Use

  While both groups showed beneficial changes in exercise and alcohol consumption, the meditation group also showed a trend toward reduced smoking.

A similar result was seen in a study involving teenagers at risk for cardiac complications. The teens who meditated in the study showed lower left ventricular masses, an indicator of future cardiovascular disease, than the control group.

How Does Meditation Help Our Hearts?

One researcher in these studies compares meditation to a “period of deep rest where the activity of the sympathetic nervous system decreases and the body releases fewer-than-normal stress hormones. As a result, the vasculature relaxes, blood pressure drops, and the heart works less.”

Additional Health Benefits of Meditation

The benefits of meditation extend beyond the heart to other parts of our body and spirit.

• Increased Productivity

  In the study with teenagers, there was another interesting side effect: improved behavior at school.

  In addition to relaxing us, meditation can make us productive. The journal Emotion found that a disciplined meditative practice trains the mind not to wander, giving it unusual focus and sharpening memory. Improved focus and memory help the brain manage information and solve problems.

  These results emerge with just 12 minutes of meditation per day!

• Increased Pain Tolerance

  The good news doesn’t stop there. Want to kick painkillers? Meditation works on this level, too.

  A 2010 study discovered that Zen meditation—the meditation favored by Buddhist monks—can thicken the part of the brain that regulates pain, lowering our sensitivities to it. This even extends to women who might be battling symptoms associated with menopause, such as hot flashes.

• Overall Well-Being

  But mostly meditation is proving itself in the realm of general happiness and well-being. A study in the journal Neurology asked people with mild to moderate multiple sclerosis to take an eight-week meditation class. Participants saw a 30 percent reduction in depressive symptoms and lower levels of fatigue.

  The data suggests depression is averted not only because meditation can teach us to focus away from negative thoughts, but also because meditation stimulates electrical activity in our brain’s left prefrontal cortex, an area associated with positive mood.

What are you waiting for? Ommmm…