Relieve stress naturally: proven ways to protect your health during life's unpleasant pressures.

Everyone gets stressed. Problems arise where you work; you lose money with a bad investment; you have an argument with your spouse; your child gets injured or sick; you do poorly on an exam; you strain your back. The possibilities are endless.

Very few of us live perfect, stress-free lives. Stress, like the air we breathe, is part of the journey. The bad news is that you're going to experience periods of high anxiety in your life. The good news? You don't have to let your health be governed by what goes on around you. You can stack the deck in your favor. You can become much more stress-resistant.

Besides preparing your body to be more resilient, you can also create a plan to relieve stress in advance so you can bounce back, retain your good health, and not magnify the incurred stress by your response. It's not unusual for the reaction to the stressful situation to cause more damage than the original problem. This is more unlikely to occur in those with solid coping skills, adequate nutrition, and good sleep and exercise habits.

So the best approach to stress is to build your lifestyle around health practices that make you more stress-resistant. If possible, these practices should be set into place before you're forced to deal with highly unsettling events.

Nutrition Is the Key

Good nutrition is both complicated and simple. Most of our population (including physicians and dieticians) are thoroughly confused about the subject. Allow me to simplify it.

Americans eat a diet rich in calories, but far too low in micronutrients. Calories spring from fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The vast majority of people are getting far too much of all three. It's not a matter of changing the ratios of one to the other because an excess of any is damaging.

Since the population in general eats an abundance of animal products, grains, sugar, oil, and processed foods and very little fruits, vegetables, beans, and raw nuts and seeds, we're deficient in antioxidants and phytochemicals that naturally-grown produce provides. It may surprise you to know that neither processed foods nor animal products supply the antioxidants and phytochemicals for which we're starving. When we're deficient in these needed micronutrients, we're more vulnerable to the damaging effects of stress.

Many unhealthy, low-nutrient foods are nothing more than a slow-working poison. Countless ailments related to food take years to develop. These ailments often won't display visible symptoms until we're well advanced in life. Our nutrient-poor bodies are struggling in a fragile state when along comes a serious disease spawned by added stress. To make matters worse, most people, when facing a stressful situation, grab their favorite "comfort food," which is usually nutrient-poor "junk" products. This magnifies the problem even further.

Time to Change

To resist stress and not let it do its damage to our bodies, we need to change the nutritional balance of our diet, reducing the intake of processed foods and animal products and eating larger amounts of vegetables, beans, raw seeds, nuts, and fresh fruits.

To maximize our disease resistance, we need to achieve adequate levels of all known vitamins and minerals, sufficient phytochemicals, and the correct balance of fatty and amino acids. Supplements alone cannot supply complete nutrient coverage. We must consume nuts and seeds, beans, cruciferous greens, fruits and berries, and other plant foods in abundant quantities.

Not only must we make our bodies as healthy as possible to prepare for a stressful event, but we need to choose comfort foods that don't make matters worse. (See sidebar on next page for tasty and nutritional alternatives.)

Relaxation and Sleep

Sleep allows your body to recover from everyday wear and tear. If you can relax and sleep well, your body can withstand great amounts of stress with little or no damage. Some of the most important hormones for body repair and healing (growth hormone, cortisol, testosterone) as well as hormones for weight loss and immune function are released during sleep cycles. When your mind is not at peace, it becomes difficult to enjoy a good night's sleep.

If you find it hard to get adequate shut eye, try this: Create a sleep-promoting environment that's quiet and completely dark. Engage in a relaxing activity in the hour leading up to bedtime such as reading, watching TV (nonviolent programs, of course), or listening to soothing music. Hop into bed only when you're tired. If you don't fall asleep in about 10 to 15 minutes, do some meditation exercises or create positive visualizations. This is also a perfect time to commune with God, thanking Him for His many blessings.

Relaxing deeply--even if not sleeping--is healing and can help you fall asleep after a stressful day. Here is a simple and effective visualization you might try. Concentrate on one section of your body at a time to see if you can maximally relax the muscles there. Start with your forehead, eye muscles, and face. Then work your way down to your neck and shoulders. Continue around the rest of your body. Imagine that your muscles are so heavy, weak, and relaxed that you can hardly move. While doing this, imagine that you're lying under a shady palm tree on a warm tropical beach and sinking limply into the sand. Visualize the waves smoothly lapping at the shore and a seagull swooping lazily overhead in the warm breeze.

Exercise

Exercise is also an effective way to counter stress and build up your resistance to disease. Plan it into your weekly schedule. Set aside time during three days a week to walk, jog, hike, visit the gym, or enjoy a spin on the treadmill. Keep these appointments at all costs. If you don't have a plan and a consistent weekly schedule, it can become difficult to balance the time you need for yourself with all your responsibilities. Also, don't forget to shop for healthy foods and cook some nutritious soups and meals. Make extra helpings that will serve as handy leftovers during the following days.

React, but Don't Overreact 

Our first reaction to stress is usually an overreaction. That's why we shouldn't make major decisions either in response to or because of immediate stressful events. Permit yourself a few days to put together a more appropriate reply. Always keep in mind that long-term solutions are best. You want to please as many people as possible--not just yourself in your future plans.

Try to be a conflict solver and come up with solutions to problems instead of focusing on the problem and letting it overwhelm you. Begin by building a consensus among trusted friends, enlisting their help whenever possible. The best way to care for you is to care properly for the interests of others. Your goodwill toward them will fill you with the foundational pride and inner strength you need to withstand any stress.

When it comes to stress management, think outside the box. Many people become unhealthy and stressed out as they age. Why? They're following the crowd; eating like others eat, drinking like others drink, working like others work, and thinking like others think. Well, guess what? They also get what others get: heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and those demeaning so-called "age-related" diseases. When it comes to your health, it's perfectly OK to be different.

Ideas That Work for You

Don't get fixated on thinking the same way all your life. You can make favorable changes even if it causes you to stand out from others. We often behave in a manner consistent with how we were schooled by society.

Ideas seem more believable when more people believe them. This is because we're social animals and think that ideas require social proof before they gain general acceptance. Under these conditions, ideas--especially bad ones--suddenly generate a life all their own. They gain inertia and, once they become popular, are almost impossible to displace. For example, lots of what is now widely accepted as nutritional gospel is based on scant evidence, mistaken old notions, bad science, and myths marketed by a collusion of food manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and the government.

Scientists and physicians alike accept nutritional myths and gaps in critical information. Many popular dietary notions boast questionable origins. If they've been around a long time, they generally go unquestioned. The unfortunate end result of this "blind leading the blind" mentality is a nation filled with people suffering from chronic diseases, where people die of cancer or heart disease far too early.

As you gather ammunition for your battle with stress, what criteria do you use for accepting new knowledge? It's OK to question conventional wisdom, resist social pressure, and accept only what can be proven with empirical scientific evidence to help you change to a more stress-resistant you. Be flexible. Keep learning. Seek out enjoyable pursuits of your own liking as you develop that all-important perspective and peace in your life.

A long, healthy life free of diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and common age-related disability is obtainable with the right mind-set and a body built from long-term healthy habits. While we can't stop stresses from happening, we can surely arm our bodies and minds to cope with them through positive interaction with others, and with God.

Healthy, Nutrient-rich COMFORT FOODS

Try these tasty treats the next time you need a little emotional hand-holding.

Strawberry Sorbet

Whip up in a high-powered blender or food processor one 10-ounce bag of frozen strawberries, 1/2 cup of orange juice, and one slice of dried pineapple.

Carob Spinach Smoothie 

Whip up in a high-powered blender 1 tablespoon of carob powder, 3 ounces of organic baby spinach, 1 ounce of raw kale, 1 banana, 2 dates, and 1/2 cup of soy milk.

Apple Crunch With Banana Ice Cream

Steam apple slices (from 10 apples) and 1 cup raisins for about 7 minutes; and chop up with 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseed, 1/2 cup of ground walnuts, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1 tablespoon of date sugar. Top with frozen bananas whipped with a little vanilla soy milk to make a creamy ice cream.

Blueberry Cashew Cream Salad Dressing

Make a great salad dressing by blending 1 cup of frozen blueberries, 2 tablespoons of spicy pecan vinegar (or other fruit vinegar), 2 tablespoons raw cashew butter, and 1/4 cup pomegranate juice. Pour over a mixed green salad sprinkled with sliced strawberries, sliced kiwifruit, and banana.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D., is a New Jersey-based author and family physician specializing in nutritional medicine. He's the author of Eat to Live (Little Brown & Co.) and Disease-proof Your Child (St. Martin's Press) and a frequent guest on television and radio talk shows. He has shared his insights on Vibrant Life On Air on several occasions. Visit him at www.drfuhrman.com.