Can you remember a time when you felt stressed leading up to a big life event and then afterwards felt like a weight had been lifted? This process – the ramping up of the stress response and then feeling this settle back down – shows completion of the “stress cycle”.

Some stress in daily life is unavoidable. But remaining stressed is unhealthy. Chronic stress increases chronic health conditions, including heart disease and stroke and diabetes. It can also lead to burnout or depression.

Exercise, cognitive, creative, social and self-soothing activities help us process stress in healthier ways and complete the stress cycle.

What does the stress cycle look like?

Scientists and researchers refer to the “stress response”, often with a focus on the fight-or-flight reactions. The phrase the “stress cycle” has been made popular by self-help experts but it does have a scientific basis.

The stress cycle is our body’s response to a stressful event, whether real or perceived, physical or psychological. It could be being chased by a vicious dog, an upcoming exam or a difficult conversation.

The stress cycle has three stages:

• stage 1 is perceiving the threat
• stage 2 is the fight-or-flight response, driven by our stress hormones: adrenaline and cortisol
• stage 3 is relief, including physiological and psychological relief. This completes the stress cycle.

Different people will respond to stress differently based on their life experiences and genetics.

Unfortunately, many people experience multiple and ongoing stressors out of their control, including the cost-of-living crisis, extreme weather events and domestic violence.

Remaining in stage 2 (the flight-or-flight response), can lead to chronic stress. Chronic stress and high cortisol can increase inflammation, which damages our brain and other organs.

When you are stuck in chronic fight-or-flight mode, you don’t think clearly and are more easily distracted. Activities that provide temporary pleasure, such as eating junk food or drinking alcohol are unhelpful strategies that do not reduce the stress effects on our brain and body. Scrolling through social media is also not an effective way to complete the stress cycle. In fact, this is associated with an increased stress response.

Stress and the brain

In the brain, chronic high cortisol can shrink the hippocampus. This can impair a person’s memory and their capacity to think and concentrate.

Chronic high cortisol also reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex but increases activity in the amygdala.

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for higher-order control of our thoughts, behaviours and emotions, and is goal-directed and rational. The amygdala is involved in reflexive and emotional responses. Higher amygdala activity and lower prefrontal cortex activity explains why we are less rational and more emotional and reactive when we are stressed.

There are five types of activities that can help our brains complete the stress cycle. https://www.youtube.com/embed/eD1wliuHxHI?wmode=transparent&start=0 It can help to understand how the brain encounters stress.

1. Exercise – its own complete stress cycle

When we exercise we get a short-term spike in cortisol, followed by a healthy reduction in cortisol and adrenaline.

Exercise also increases endorphins and serotonin, which improve mood. Endorphins cause an elated feeling often called “runner’s high” and have anti-inflammatory effects.

When you exercise, there is more blood flow to the brain and higher activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is why you can often think more clearly after a walk or run. Exercise can be a helpful way to relieve feelings of stress.

Exercise can also increase the volume of the hippocampus. This is linked to better short-term and long-term memory processing, as well as reduced stress, depression and anxiety.

2. Cognitive activities – reduce negative thinking

Overly negative thinking can trigger or extend the stress response. In our 2019 research, we found the relationship between stress and cortisol was stronger in people with more negative thinking.

Higher amygdala activity and less rational thinking when you are stressed can lead to distorted thinking such as focusing on negatives and rigid “black-and-white” thinking.

Activities to reduce negative thinking and promote a more realistic view can reduce the stress response. In clinical settings this is usually called cognitive behaviour therapy.

At home, this could be journalling or writing down worries. This engages the logical and rational parts of our brain and helps us think more realistically. Finding evidence to challenge negative thoughts (“I’ve prepared well for the exam, so I can do my best”) can help to complete the stress cycle.

3. Getting creative – a pathway out of ‘flight or fight’

Creative activities can be art, craft, gardening, cooking or other activities such as doing a puzzle, juggling, music, theatre, dancing or simply being absorbed in enjoyable work.

Such pursuits increase prefrontal cortex activity and promote flow and focus.

Flow is a state of full engagement in an activity you enjoy. It lowers high-stress levels of noradrenaline, the brain’s adrenaline. When you are focussed like this, the brain only processes information relevant to the task and ignores non-relevant information, including stresses.

4. Getting social and releasing feel-good hormones

Talking with someone else, physical affection with a person or pet and laughing can all increase oxytocin. This is a chemical messenger in the brain that increases social bonding and makes us feel connected and safe.

Laughing is also a social activity that activates parts of the limbic system – the part of the brain involved in emotional and behavioural responses. This increases endorphins and serotonin and improves our mood.

5. Self-soothing

Breathing exercises and meditation stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system (which calms down our stress responses so we can “reset”) via the vagus nerves, and reduce cortisol.

A good cry can help too by releasing stress energy and increasing oxytocin and endorphins.

Emotional tears also remove cortisol and the hormone prolactin from the body. Our prior research showed cortisol and prolactin were associated with depression, anxiety and hostility.

Action beats distraction

Whether it’s watching a funny or sad movie, exercising, journalling, gardening or doing a puzzle, there is science behind why you should complete the stress cycle.

Doing at least one positive activity every day can also reduce our baseline stress level and is beneficial for good mental health and wellbeing.

Importantly, chronic stress and burnout can also indicate the need for change, such as in our workplaces. However, not all stressful circumstances can be easily changed. Remember help is always available.

If you have concerns about your stress or health, please talk to a doctor.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

Theresa Larkin, Associate professor of Medical Sciences, University of Wollongong and Susan J. Thomas, Associate professor in Mental Health and Behavioural Science, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

According to the World Health Organization, about 280 million people worldwide have depression and about one billion have a mental health problem of any kind.

People living in the ancient world also had mental health problems. So, how did they deal with them?

As we’ll see, some of their insights about mental health are still relevant today, even though we might question some of their methods.

1. Our mental state is important

Mental health problems such as depression were familiar to people in the ancient world. Homer, the poet famous for the Iliad and Odyssey who lived around the eighth century BC, apparently died after wasting away from depression.

Already in the late fifth century BC, ancient Greek doctors recognised that our health partly depends on the state of our thoughts.

In the Epidemics, a medical text written in around 400BC, an anonymous doctor wrote that our habits about our thinking (as well as our lifestyle, clothing and housing, physical activity and sex) are the main determinants of our health.

2. Mental health problems can make us ill

Also writing in the Epidemics, an anonymous doctor described one of his patients, Parmeniscus, whose mental state became so bad he grew delirious, and eventually could not speak. He stayed in bed for 14 days before he was cured. We’re not told how.

Later, the famous doctor Galen of Pergamum (129-216AD) observed that people often become sick because of a bad mental state:

It may be that under certain circumstances ‘thinking’ is one of the causes that bring about health or disease because people who get angry about everything and become confused, distressed and frightened for the slightest reason often fall ill for this reason and have a hard time getting over these illnesses.

Galen also described some of his patients who suffered with their mental health, including some who became seriously ill and died. One man had lost money:

He developed a fever that stayed with him for a long time. In his sleep he scolded himself for his loss, regretted it and was agitated until he woke up. While he was awake he continued to waste away from grief. He then became delirious and developed brain fever. He finally fell into a delirium that was obvious from what he said, and he remained in this state until he died.

3. Mental illness can be prevented and treated

In the ancient world, people had many different ways to prevent or treat mental illness.

The philosopher Aristippus, who lived in the fifth century BC, used to advise people to focus on the present to avoid mental disturbance:

concentrate one’s mind on the day, and indeed on that part of the day in which one is acting or thinking. Only the present belongs to us, not the past nor what is anticipated. The former has ceased to exist, and it is uncertain if the latter will exist.

The philosopher Clinias, who lived in the fourth century BC, said that whenever he realised he was becoming angry, he would go and play music on his lyre to calm himself.

Doctors had their own approaches to dealing with mental health problems. Many recommended patients change their lifestyles to adjust their mental states. They advised people to take up a new regime of exercise, adopt a different diet, go travelling by sea, listen to the lectures of philosophers, play games (such as draughts/checkers), and do mental exercises equivalent to the modern crossword or sudoku.

For instance, the physician Caelius Aurelianus (fifth century AD) thought patients suffering from insanity could benefit from a varied diet including fruit and mild wine.

Doctors also advised people to take plant-based medications. For example, the herb hellebore was given to people suffering from paranoia. However, ancient doctors recognised that hellebore could be dangerous as it sometimes induced toxic spasms, killing patients.

Other doctors, such as Galen, had a slightly different view. He believed mental problems were caused by some idea that had taken hold of the mind. He believed mental problems could be cured if this idea was removed from the mind and wrote:

a person whose illness is caused by thinking is only cured by taking care of the false idea that has taken over his mind, not by foods, drinks, [clothing, housing], baths, walking and other such (measures).

Galen thought it was best to deflect his patients’ thoughts away from these false ideas by putting new ideas and emotions in their minds:

I put fear of losing money, political intrigue, drinking poison or other such things in the hearts of others to deflect their thoughts to these things […] In others one should arouse indignation about an injustice, love of rivalry, and the desire to beat others depending on each person’s interest.

4. Addressing mental health needs effort

Generally speaking, the ancients believed keeping our mental state healthy required effort. If we were anxious or angry or despondent, then we needed to do something that brought us the opposite of those emotions.

This can be achieved, they thought, by doing some activity that directly countered the emotions we are experiencing.

For example, Caelius Aurelianus said people suffering from depression should do activities that caused them to laugh and be happy, such as going to see a comedy at the theatre.

However, the ancients did not believe any single activity was enough to make our mental state become healthy. The important thing was to make a wholesale change to one’s way of living and thinking.

When it comes to experiencing mental health problems, we clearly have a lot in common with our ancient ancestors. Much of what they said seems as relevant now as it did 2,000 years ago, even if we use different methods and medicines today.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, researching Greco-Roman antiquity, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.