8 Way How Music Reduces Anxiety
Anxiety is what you feel when you are tense, afraid or worried. It can be experienced through both your thoughts and feelings, as well as physical sensations. While anxiety can be a natural human response, sometimes symptoms can be acute enough to qualify as a generalized anxiety disorder. This may include constant worrying that is accompanied by difficulty concentrating or an ongoing sense of dread.
Many are already aware of music’s ability to impact their mood, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it has been found to calm the body and mind in a number of different ways.
So, how does music reduce anxiety? Here are a number of ways in which using music to relieve stress and anxiety can be effective.
Cortisol Reduction
The body responds to stressful situations by releasing hormones like cortisol. While this is helpful in the short-term and in the face of physical threats (such as jumping out the way of a moving car), cortisol can also be released chronically in response to mental stressors such as a break up or losing your job. In these cases, excess cortisol is not only unhelpful, it also increases your anxiety levels and can lead to physical issues such as a compromised immune system and excess inflammation.
So, does music reduce anxiety through cortisol reduction? The short answer is yes. Listening to music has been shown to decrease cortisol production, which can help reduce the body’s fight-or-flight stress responses and subsequently minimize feelings of stress.
Increase in Dopamine
Music can help boost the feel-good chemicals in your brain. Listening to or making music activates the reward center of your brain, releasing dopamine: a neurotransmitter associated with reward and motivation. When pleasure responses such as these are increased, feelings of stress and anxiety conversely diminish.
Calming of the Nervous System
If you are wondering how music can reduce anxiety, some of its power can be found in its rhythm. The tempo of music you listen to can affect your breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. Quicker musical beats can be energizing, while slower music, with a BPM of 60 to 80, can moderate your physiological responses to have a more calming effect.
Non-Verbal Release
Individuals sometimes need to express emotions or compressed energy. This is particularly needed when experiencing an extended fight-or-flight state, which may produce symptoms such as tense muscles, sweating and a quickened heart rate. How does music reduce anxiety in this regard? Creating, listening to or moving to music can help expel stored stress from the mind and body when language isn’t enough.
Rooting You in the Present
Rumination – worrying about the same events in your past or future over and over – is a key player in stress and anxiety. These thoughts can make you feel as if you lack control, as the mind tends to feel calmer in situations where some level of control is possible. Using music to relieve stress and anxiety helps pull the mind out of its overthinking state. Listening, dancing or clapping to music brings the body into the present, which in itself can help reduce stress, as well as allowing you to have agency over your body.
Form of Distraction
Does music help reduce anxiety simply by serving as a distraction? Well, listening to and interpreting music is a complex process in the human brain, and it also triggers a pleasure response. For these reasons, it serves as an absorbing activity, allowing the brain to focus on music signals and naturally exclude other thoughts, including sensations of stress and anxiety. A musical distraction is more calming than others because of its finite nature: a song has a beginning and an end, whereas other activities such as scrolling through social media are endless and therefore still stress-provoking.
Bolsters Creativity
When you’re anxious, your nervous system shifts into its reactive fight-or-flight mode, and out of its creative gear. Engaging with music helps shift the body back into its default rest-and-digest mode, which allows for more feelings of relaxation as well as focused and creative thought.
While music can be a powerful tool for shifting and regulating emotional states, it is only one of many ways to address stress and tension.
If you are relying on music to relieve your stress and anxiety, consider activities such as exercising, reducing substance use, medication and different modes of therapy, which can also help you address your symptoms.
12 Products for Stress Relief
Stress is your psychological or physiological response to situations that you find overwhelming. It is an evitable part of life that is almost impossible to fully remove, and even positive situations such as moving house or getting married can be sources of great stress.
It is important to find strategies and products for stress relief that help you to cope better with ongoing stress.
This list of stress relievers for adults provides options for you to consider that may positively impact your overall well-being.
Weighted Blankets
One of the more popular products for stress relief in recent years, weighted blankets can help to calm you down by activating your parasympathetic nervous system. This lowers your heart rate when you’re feeling stressed and provides “pressure therapy”, similar to the feeling of being held, hugged, or swaddled. Weighted blankets can be helpful to those with anxiety, sleep disorders, ADHD, or autism.
Adult Coloring Books
No longer only for kids, the benefits of coloring books are earning them credibility as stress relievers for adults. When used as products for stress relief, coloring books can help you to creatively channel anxiety. A simple act like coloring helps to direct focus into the present, subsequently calming the mind and relaxing the body. Engaging in hobbies such as knitting or putting together puzzles works in the same way.
Aromatherapy Diffusers
The olfactory system – responsible for your sense of smell – is a powerful tool for influencing the nervous system. Thanks to the powerful mood-enhancing effects of essential oils, aromatherapy diffusers double up as products for stress relief as well as an easy way to add beautiful aromas to your home. Aromatherapy recruits essential oils in different modalities for their therapeutic benefits. When inhaled, scent molecules within essential oils travel into the amygdala – the brain’s emotional center – from olfactory nerves. Essential oils such as chamomile, lemongrass, lavender, and bergamot may help you to relax and reduce stress.
Essential Oil Rollers
If you want to recruit the benefits of essential oils but don’t have access to a diffuser, essential oil rollers make excellent portable products for stress relief. Rollers containing essential oil blends can be applied to the back of the neck, earlobes, temples, or wrists, to help ease tension and stress.
Epsom Salts
Magnesium is an important mineral that helps to produce mood-elevating serotonin in the brain. Replenishing depleted levels of magnesium in the body can help create feelings of relaxation and calm. Epsom salts are often used as products for stress relief thanks to their high magnesium content.
Fidget Toys
If you battle to sit still when nervous or stressed, particularly when you’re required to be stationary, such as in Zoom meeting, you may benefit from a fidget toy. No longer only for children, fidget toys are proving themselves effective as stress relievers for adults. All generating pleasant but purposeless/mindless activity with the hands (think of clicking a pen or squeezing a stress ball), these toys can help to calm you when your mind is stressed.
Journaling
Forming a writing habit either daily or when you need to express emotions can help you process worrying thoughts and reduce stress. Some people find it helpful to “mind dump” before bed, writing down anything that may be concerning you about the next day or future.
Herbal Teas
Herbal teas that are free from caffeine are widely regarded as effective products for stress relief. Ingredients such as valerian root, passion flower, chamomile, or lemon balm are known for their calming properties while sipping on tea can also help regulate the breath.
Cooling Masks
Some people may feel as if they’re overheating when stressed, or their tension may induce headaches. If you experience these sensations, a cooling mask can help you unwind, as well as soothe tired eyes.
Meditation Apps
If you frequently experience restlessness, rumination, or racing thoughts, you may find meditation apps to be one of the more effective products for stress relief. Amongst its many benefits, including improving immune function and slowing mental aging, meditation can help quieten your mind and lower stress.
Massager Tools
Often only considered as a luxury activity, different types of massage can also relieve tension in tight muscles and reduce levels of cortisol in the body. Different massage products for stress relief may appeal to you more, such as headscratchers, spiky massage balls to use against your own body resistance, massage guns with multiple vibrating rollers for a more powerful massage or foam rollers to loosen tense muscles all over the body, including the lower back and tight hip areas.
Stress Gummies
There are a number of supplements that have been designed to assist with stress relief, including palatable stress gummies. Featuring different combinations of calming ingredients such as hawthorn, l-theanine, ashwaghanda, and GABA, gummies are an easy form of stress reliever for adults as well as kids.
Ongoing stress can interfere with both your physical and mental well-being. Take time to address your symptoms, uncover the root causes of your stress, and find strategies to manage it effectively.
8 Foods That Reduce Anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health conditions, taking many different forms such as generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, or phobias. It is generally characterized by continuous feelings of worry, tension, and nervousness, and symptoms can become severe enough to interfere with daily life.
Anxiety can be managed through medication, psychotherapy, and lifestyle changes. In addition to staying physically active and getting enough quality sleep, taking in plenty of nutrient-rich foods that reduce anxiety can serve as a powerful contributor to managing symptoms.
If you want to learn more about the best foods for anxiety, here is a list of recommended ingredients to add into your diet, generally containing anti-inflammatory properties, antioxidants, healthy fats, plus key vitamins and minerals.
Oily Fish
Fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, mackerel, and trout sits high on the list of foods that reduce anxiety. They are rich in omega-3s: fatty acids that have a strong correlation with cognitive function and mental health thanks to their potent anti-inflammatory properties. Salmon is also high in an amino acid called tryptophan, which has been associated with lower anxiety levels. Both salmon and sardines are amongst the few foods containing vitamin D, where lower levels are associated with mood disorders such as anxiety.
Avocados
The high vitamin B content in avocados earns them a ranking amongst foods that reduce anxiety. Foods rich in B vitamins have been linked to lower feelings of anxiety, and a single avocado contains multiple B vitamins such as riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6 and folate.
Eggs
Free-range eggs (the yolks, specifically) are another great source of vitamin D when seeking out foods that reduce anxiety. They also contain mood-regulating tryptophan.
Nuts and Seeds
Thanks to their rich and varied supply of nutritious ingredients, different nuts and seeds offer nutrients that make them some of the best foods for anxiety and stress. Cashews are rich in zinc, where deficiencies have been associated with anxiety, while Brazil nuts are high in selenium – an ingredient that may lower anxiety by reducing inflammation. Both pumpkin and chia seeds are listed amongst foods that reduce anxiety due to their rich supplies of magnesium: a mineral that may help regulate emotions. Pumpkin seeds also contain zinc as well as potassium, where deficiencies are associated with high levels of cortisol.
Dark Chocolate
Often renowned as one of the best foods for anxiety, dark chocolate contains a wealth of anxiety-busting ingredients. These include antioxidants, tryptophan, and minerals such as magnesium, zinc, copper, and manganese. Low levels of these minerals have been associated with increased symptoms of anxiety.
Yogurt
Yogurt contains healthy bacteria known as probiotics. Sources of nutrition that contain probiotics are generally recognized as foods that reduce anxiety. Including yogurt and other fermented foods, such as sauerkraut and kimchi, in the diet supports the gut microbiome, which is known to be closely connected to the brain – including emotional wellbeing. In addition to probiotics, prebiotics – ingredients that fuel probiotics in the gut – are also considered to be foods that reduce anxiety. You’ll find prebiotics in high fibre foods such as oats, barley, bran, fruits, vegetables, and beans.
Chamomile & Green Tea
In addition to eating more foods to reduce anxiety, there are certain drinks you can try too. Chamomile is widely regarded as a calming tea that promotes sleep, potentially due to anxiety-lowering antioxidants called flavonoids. Green tea is also packed with antioxidants that not only help to reduce inflammation but may reduce symptoms of anxiety in those with stress-related conditions. One of the main active ingredients in green tea, l-theanine, is an amino acid that interacts with the body’s neurotransmitters and may lower anxiety.
Turmeric
Those exploring the best foods for anxiety often seek out ingredients with powerful anti-inflammatory properties such as turmeric. The active ingredient in turmeric, called curcumin, is responsible for reducing the inflammation and oxidative stress that is often increased in those with mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.
If you are struggling with anxiety and stress, it is important to seek the guidance of a healthcare professional. While adjusting your diet to include more foods that reduce anxiety may prove helpful, nutritional strategies should be seen as a complement to conventional treatment methods rather than an alternative.
12 Natural Stress Relief Strategies to Try
Individuals worldwide are no strangers to stress, yet we would all be much better off – both mentally and physically – if we could get a better handle on it. When stress is experienced over a long period of time without being controlled it is considered chronic, and can increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, mental conditions, digestive issues, obesity and even cancer.
If you want to get your stress levels under control without using medication, here are a handful of natural stress relief strategies to consider.
Keep Moving
Exercise is a proven form of natural stress relief that helps to improve all processes in the body and mind. Considered the body’s built-in painkiller and mood-lifter, exercise releases powerful endorphin chemicals in the brain, helping to ease anxiety.
Eat Nutrient-Rich Foods
A healthy body supports a healthy mind. And much like the benefits of exercise, sound nutrition is one of the most effective natural stress remedies available to us. Taking in a steady supply of essential vitamins and minerals, healthy fats, amino acids, electrolytes and antioxidants will equip your brain to handle stress better when it hits. Stress can also deplete certain nutrients, including vitamin A, C, E and B complex vitamins, so it is important to keep replenishing them for natural stress relief.
Get Some Fresh Air
Spending time outdoors in a scenic natural setting, even for just a few minutes, is linked to improved wellbeing – lifting your mood, reducing stress and benefitting sleep. Try “forest bathing” as a form of natural stress relief; immersing yourself in naturally beautiful and health-boosting forest surroundings has been shown to provide various health benefits, including decreased stress hormone levels.
Write it Down
If you are exploring natural stress remedies, you could try writing down your thoughts and feelings. Keeping a stress journal can help you identify stressors, how you they made you feel, how you responded and what you did to make yourself feel better. All of which can contribute to you managing your stress better overall.
Practice Meditation
Meditation is touted as one of the most helpful practices for those seeking natural stress relief. Regularly following guided meditations has been shown to lower the body’s responses to stress, improve mental alertness and help individuals overcome mental and physical issues such as anxiety, depression, poor eating habits and disrupted sleep.
Take a Deep Breath
Controlling the breath is another leading form of natural stress relief. Systematic deep breathing is an effective way to reduce the activation of the sympathetic nervous system – responsible for the body’s fight or flight responses – and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for the body’s “rest and digest” responses. If you want to explore natural stress remedies, try breathing in slowly and deeply for a count of five, holding the breath for two, and exhaling slowly and fully for a count of five or more.
See a CBT Therapist
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is renowned as one of the most effective therapies for lowering anxiety, stress and other mental disorders. It is useful for training us to avoid internal sources of stress, such as pessimism, jumping to conclusions, and having “all-or-nothing” thinking. This type of treatment can also serve as a form of natural stress relief by helping individuals to react better in situations they find stressful.
Sniff Essential Oils
Certain adaptogenic herbs and essential oils are considered natural stress remedies because they have been shown to lower anxiety by reducing the effects of stress and cortisol on the body. Adaptogens such as ginseng, maca and ashwagandha can help make stress more manageable by regulating hormones and physiological functions. Essential oils such as lavender, bergamot and myrrh are often used to provide natural stress relief, as they can improve immunity, reduce inflammation and balance hormones, aiding with stress, sleep and digestion.
Connect
Meaningful connections are tied to longevity, helping individuals to feel supported and create a sense of belonging. Seeking out social connectedness can help us cope with stress better and simultaneously boost resilience. Sharing laughter with others – or even laughing at a funny video – is another powerful antidote to stress.
Manage Your Commitments
It’s easy to feel anxious if you have too many commitments, whether those are personal or work-related. Effective time management or having a game plan of action steps for pending commitments can help turn stressful anticipation into productive action, helping to keep your stress at bay.
Prioritize Sleep
Quality sleep is one of the most underutilized forms of natural stress relief. We are more prone to irritability, mental cloudiness and stress when under slept. Research suggests that following a similar sleep routine each night as well as getting enough quality sleep can help us to manage stress far better.
Try Progressive Relaxation
This method of natural stress relief involves tensing or squeezing one part of the body at a time, holding it, then releasing it. Moving through the body and systematically tensing and relaxing in this way helps to calm the body and mind. This is a great strategy to help you fall asleep too.
Anxiety or stress that is chronic or interferes with your ability to function day to day warrants treatment. Talk to your healthcare provider if stress is becoming too overwhelming to manage alone.
How Stress Meditation Can Help You Manage Anxiety and Stress
We can’t eliminate stress, but we can learn how to reframe its role in our lives so we manage it better. With an increasing number of studies exploring the benefits of meditation for stress and anxiety, research is pointing to it as an effective stress-management tool.
Stress meditation can induce a sense of peace and calm that benefits both your emotional and general wellbeing. It may also help you to manage symptoms of certain medical conditions. In fact, when stress meditation is a daily practice, individuals may be able to counter the effects of stress hormones like cortisol and reduce systemic inflammation in as little as eight weeks.
What is Meditation?
Meditation is a set of techniques designed to offer a number of integrative benefits to the body and mind, including producing a deep state of relaxation and a more tranquil mind.
Practiced for thousands of years across many different cultures, meditation was originally designed to help deepen our spiritual understanding. Today, individuals more commonly use meditation for stress and anxiety reduction, managing insomnia and pain, and other chronic conditions.
Regular meditation can help enhance attention and focus, mental clarity, emotional awareness, kindness and compassion, calmness, and overall physical and emotional wellbeing.
Benefits of Stress Meditation
Regularly practicing meditation for stress and anxiety offers a variety of well-documented benefits. Even a short, simple stress meditation, when undertaken routinely, can enhance physical and emotional wellbeing in the following ways:
Improving Emotional Wellbeing
Stress meditation can help you to maintain a positive outlook during stressful situations, become more self-aware and live in the present moment. It may also help to minimize negative emotions and improve your coping skills, while increasing imagination, creativity, patience and tolerance.
Regulating Neurotransmitters
Some of the positive emotional benefits of stress meditation are due to its ability to regulate neurotransmitters in the brain. Meditation for stress and anxiety has been found to increase serotonin levels – associated with reduced symptoms of depression – and decrease norepinephrine, where high levels have been linked to anxiety. Stress meditation can also increase the “happy” hormone oxytocin.
Offering Physiological Benefits
Stress meditation may help to lower your resting heart rate and blood pressure, improve sleep quality and reduce insomnia, and support immune function too.
Preventing and Managing Stress-Related Diseases
A regular stress meditation practice has been found to reduce cortisol levels. This can make it a beneficial tool in preventing or managing stress-related conditions such as weight gain and diabetes, plus autoimmune and cardiovascular issues too.
Types of Meditation
There are many different varieties and forms of meditative practices. Most types of stress meditation will include elements such as focused attention, relaxed breathing, a quiet setting, a comfortable position, and an open, non-judgmental mind-set.
Breath Focused Meditation
This form focuses mostly on the breath, calling on you to regulate your breathing with techniques such as boxed breathing, alternate nostril breathing, or pairing body tension with an inhale and body release with an exhale.
Movement Meditation
Movement in the body may help to focus the mind better than stillness. A moving stress meditation could include simply walking, or structured practices such as qi gong, tai chi, or yoga, which combine meditation, relaxation, a sequence of physical postures, and synchronized breathing together.
Body Scan Meditation
These types of meditation involve focusing attention on to different parts of the body, simultaneously increasing self-awareness, learning to observe rather than identify with negative sensations in the body, increasing focus, and promoting relaxation.
Mantra Meditation
A mantra meditation uses a repeated calming word, thought or phrase (e.g. “Relax” or “I am strong”) that is either thought or said aloud to support focus and prevent distracting thoughts.
Guided Meditation
A guided meditation involves visualization – creating mental pictures to calm and relax you. The meditative narrative may call on you to imagine smells, sights, sounds and textures associated with the visualization, training the body to recruit its own imagination and promote relaxation from within.
If you are regularly feeling anxious, stressed or worried, consider trying stress meditation. Even a few minutes at a time can support a more calm and relaxed state. Meditation is not only available to everyone, inexpensive, and equipment-free, it has been proven to offer an array of emotional and physical benefits that may help you to better manage and reduce your stress.
Medicine for Stress Relief
While stress can help you cope in the short-term, the effects of chronic stress can have negative mental and physical consequences in the long run. Stress is mostly subjective: often only the person experiencing it can confirm if it is present and how severe it is.
Since there is no specific family of medication used to decrease stress, a wide variety of options might be considered when seeking medicine for stress relief. Many of these may also be used to address related conditions such as anxiety or depression.
Consider the following prescription and natural remedies if you are seeking medicine for stress or anxiety.
Sedatives (CNS Depressants)
Sedatives slow down central nervous system activity, reducing tension and anxiety, inducing relaxation, and slowing the breath.
Benzodiazepines
These are one of the most regularly prescribed groups of sedatives, including names such as diazepam (Valium), lorazepam (Ativan), and alprazolam (Xanax). They work by enhancing the effects of an inhibitory neurotransmitter known as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). This substance has a calming effect and can counteract the overstimulation in the body associated with anxiety.
Recruiting benzodiazepines as medicine for stress comes with the risk of addiction and overuse long-term.
Other prescribed drugs with a sedative effect include antihistamines (medication to reduce allergic reactions) and sleeping tablets.
Bupropion
Known as BuSpar, bupropion is an anti-anxiety medicine used to treat the physical symptoms of anxiety e.g. racing heartbeat, tension, or dizziness. It is typically prescribed for short patches of time and is not recommended as a long-term form of stress relief medicine.
Antidepressant Medications
Used primarily to address major depression, antidepressants are also prescribed as medicine for stress and anxiety relief.
SSRIs
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a particular family of antidepressants most frequently utilized as anxiety and stress relief medicine. One of the brain’s neurotransmitters, serotonin, is thought to play an important role in susceptibility to depression, anxiety, and stress. By slowing down a process in the brain known as reuptake, SSRIs are able to increase levels of serotonin to help increase mood and decrease anxious feelings. Unlike benzodiazepines, SSRIs tend to be prescribed as a long-term medicine for stress, anxiety, or depression.
Beta-Blockers
Beta-blockers are prescriptions drugs that are typically used to manage high blood pressure and treat some heart problems. For some people, they also help control the body’s fight or flight stress response by blocking certain nerve impulses. Beta-blockers are not approved by The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a medicine for stress or anxiety relief as they do not prevent symptoms. However, they may help reduce some symptoms, such as shaking, sweating, or an increased heart rate.
Pregabalin
Pregabalin (Lyrica) is a form of anticonvulsant medication typically used to treat epilepsy. It may, however, also be recommended as an off-label form of medicine for stress relief – usually when individuals have not responded to antidepressants and benzodiazepines. If pregabalin works well, it can be prescribed as a medicine for stress, anxiety, or depression long-term.
Nutritional Supplements
Nutritional deficiencies in GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), vitamin D, and vitamins B6 and B12 can contribute to increased levels of stress, anxiety, or depression. Meeting your daily recommended allowances of these nutrients may help to support symptoms.
Then, a handful of nutritional supplements may assist with symptoms of stress or anxiety:
- Ashwagandha is an adaptogen that regulates the effects of stress on the body.
- L-theanine is an amino acid found in green tea believed to have relaxing effects while improving cognitive function.
- Lemon balm is considered a natural form of medicine for stress and anxiety, also assisting with sleep and gastrointestinal issues.
- Magnesium is an important mineral used to help regulate dozens of processes. Adequate intake can have a calming effect.
- Passion flower and chamomile are well-known for their benefits as calming agents and are included in many natural forms of medicine for stress.
- Valerian root and melatonin are widely touted as natural forms of sleep support, also contributing to reduced feelings of stress.
While these ingredients occur naturally, they still need to be used with care as they could interact with other medications or have unwanted side-effects. Stress can have negative mental and physical effects on a person’s health. However, both prescription and natural options may help if you are considering taking medicine for stress. It is advised that you proceed with caution under the supervision of a healthcare practitioner when taking stress relief medicine, as prescription options in particular incur side-effects and are often addictive.