You are what you eat, and if you’re feel like you need some sort of stress relief or you experience anxiety attacks it may have something to do with your diet. 

Let me explain … there are several factors that determine the level of stress and anxiety you experience daily.  They include: your environment, your psychological status, your methods for releasing stress and your diet. Diet has shown to impact how we handle stress at work, our level of concentration and the ability for our bodies to function normally.

There are several parts of your diet you may believe help to relieve stress, but few people are aware that these are the same things that actually cause stress.  Take for instance, smoking.  Many people believe that smoking helps to relieve stress.  But if you read this article you’ll understand smoking is one of the main causes of stress.

Here are some of the foods and drinks you should take in moderation to reduce your stress and experience natural stress relief:

—> Foods that contain caffeine – This is found in coffee, non-herbal tea, chocolate, coke, etc.  Caffeine causes the release of adrenalin which increases the level of stress.  Too much caffeine has the same effect as long term stress on the body. 

—> Alcohol – Excessive consumption of Alcohol stimulates the secretion of adrenaline and is shown to result in nervous tension, insomnia and irritability.  Excess alcohol will deposit fat around the heart and in excess limits the liver from removing toxins from the body.  During stress your body produces several hormones that are normally filtered by your liver.  If your liver isn’t functioning properly, then your body can’t remove the toxins resulting in serious damage

—> Sugar – Sugar has NO essential nutritional benefits what so ever. Sugar provides short burst of false energy that can not sustain the body.  These short bursts of false energy result in irritability, poor concentration and depression.  High consumption of sugar can also result in diabetes.

—> Fat – Avoid foods rich in saturated fats as they place unnecessary stress on the cardiovascular system.  These include: deep fried foods, bacon, sausages, cakes and pies. 

—> Salt – Foods high in salt increase the blood pressure affect the adrenal glands and cause emotional instability.  Look for salt substitutes that contain potassium to still enjoy the flavor of salt without all the nasty side-effects.

These foods mentioned are all Ok in moderation, but should never be used solely as a method of stress relief as they will result negative side affects.

Of course diet is essential in stress relief, but nothing can beat well chosen stress relief techniques like exercise, yoga, a stress relief CD, meditation, relaxation breathing techniques or other beneficial stress management activities.

Many of us dream to have a lot of it and very few of us have more than we think we need.  It’s one of the 3 main stressors that keep many people awake at night.  Whether you’re living beyond your means or wondering how you’re going to have enough income for retirement all comes down to Money.

When you’re feeling financial pressure it can affect so many other areas of your life.  It can cause stress at work, anxiety attacks, insomnia, arguments, alcoholism, gambling and relationship break-ups just to name a few.

But there has to be something you can do about it, to manage your money and experience real natural stress relief.

With that in mind, here are 5 money management tips for Stress Relief:

—> Understand your worth – before you can live within your means you need to understand what your means are.  Gather a record of all your money, assets, investments and current cash (N.B. although credit cards and lines of credit are additional resources to make purchases, when we tap into them we decrease our spending power over the long haul with bank charges etc.)

—> Track your income – Really take a look at your income.  Measure it over the last 4 weeks or even better the last 13 weeks (the number of weeks in a quarter). Average it out by totaling your overall income and dividing by the number of weeks.  (N.B. Don’t just take 1 weeks wage as an average as you may miss out on overtime, sick days, etc.)

—> Measure your expenses – Once you understand what you are worth and what your income is begin to measure where you money goes.  Carry a small notebook you can pop in your pocket or handbag and make a record of every purchase you make.  Do this for a month to get a real understanding of where you’re spending your money.  Record everything including bills, repayments, where you shopped and the amount you spent.  After the month prioritize your expenses into different categories; essential (food, shelter, rent or mortgage), utilities (heat, water, electricity), loans and leases (car loans), insurances ( home insurance, car insurance, life insurance) and discretionary expenses (other loans, credit card repayments and low priority expenses)

—> Manage Money – Calculating your average monthly income (13 weeks wages divided by 3) and minus your different expenses (if some of your expenses are yearly, then divide the amount by 12 to calculate monthly payments).  This will give you your disposable income.  Use this figure as a baseline for spending.  Ensure you keep at least this much of your wage aside each month (multiply it by 12 and divide by 52 to understand it weekly) and try to put aside a little more each week for that rainy day.

—> Learn to Relax – Financial stress can be a result of the feeling of discomfort over using other people’s money, being in debt, or concerned you may not be able to grow your wealth.  Whatever the case it is important to improve how you can handle money stress.  A good stress relief CD or other relaxation techniques like exercise, relaxation breathing techniques or stress relief programs can help build that threshold and show you how to release and handle unnecessary stress.

Remember, even if you’re stuck in financial stress and your living beyond your means you have the power to change it.  After all, money comes and goes but your health is important.

Is your child stressed out? Some people think only adults experience stress, but it affects our children too. Helping your child to get through the tough times is easier when you have some targeted stress management tips to fall back on.

We often view our kids as happy-go-lucky beings without a care. But children can also experience stress with no idea of how to get immediate stress relief . Not only do they get anxious about things in their own young world– school, friends, peer pressure–but they also can be deeply affected by outside factors such as war, natural disasters and other unsettling world events.

In fact, the list of contributors to childhood stress can be quite long. Many stressors are the result of family problems, like divorce, a death or a parent's job loss but there are also less obvious triggers such as moving to a new city or the birth of a new sibling.

More on 5 Easy Stress Management Tips for Children

If you’ve ever experienced an Anxiety Attack or Stress Attack you’ll understand how down and out they can make you feel.  Although Anxiety Attack symptoms vary from person to person the end result is still the same.  It’s important to find some method of relaxation techniques for anxiety  to overcome any long term effect your anxiety attacks may cause. 

But at times it can all seem too much. I mean you want to fix the issue, yet the goal posts can seem so far away from where you are right now.  This is where the baby steps principle comes in handy.  When you step back and you look at where you would like to be then you can break it down into smaller, easier to achieve tasks.  Rather than focussing on the huge task of making it to the end, you only need to focus on the next step, which makes it less daunting. 

For example – If you had a fear of flying and you wanted to feel calm instead of experiencing an anxiety attack every time you even visited an airport you could begin by practicing relaxation breathing techniques and visualization techniques for relaxation for 10 mins everyday.  During this time you would meditate on the thought of flying and use other stress management techniques to address the issue of flying.  Then after 1 week, visit an airport and watch the planes.  Note: you are not going there to fly; you are simply watching the majestic planes flying overhead.  Once you master the first small step then move onto the next step and so on.

Remember: To overcome the fear, break the fear down into smaller pieces, handle each smaller piece and complete the overall task by putting all the pieces back together again.

Consider for a moment how stressful it would feel to carry a heavy weight around with you every time you went in public.  After walking around for just a short time this weight would be so unbearable that you’d want to drop it.  But you can’t put in down, you have to carry that burden every where you go. 

This is the reality for millions of people everyday that experience an Anxiety Panic Attack.  To make it worse when you experience an Anxiety Attack you can feel so alone and isolated from the rest of the world.  For those that are unaware the symptoms of an anxiety attack include; shortness or uncontrollable breath, sweaty palms, the feeling of panic, depression and a limitless pressure that feels like your going to burst.  This is the reality for many people that experience anxiety attacks.

There are many situations where people can experience an anxiety attack and for many different reasons.  The key to overcoming these anxiety attack symptoms is by replacing the existing symptoms and behaviours with new positive experiences.  Effectively they must find a way to break the cycle.  Understand, for some people this is not simple and as a previous sufferer of Anxiety Attacks I am aware how crippling it can feel at times. The key as a friend or family member is to understand no matter how little or ridiculous it may seem, this is the reality for many people suffering these attacks. The most important thing is to offer support and understanding, to help them to find a positive structured method to overcome their anxiety attacks, to regain that control and move forward.

Flying scares so many people and there are several different reasons why. It could be the fear of heights, fear of falling, fear of death, fear of confined spaces, fear of pain and I’m sure there are more but these are the main ones. There are even some people that feel the start of an anxiety attack when they think of flying. We all know those anxiety attack symptoms I’m talking about – increased heart rate, sweaty palms, increased breathing, butterflies and for many that feeling of pressure pushing down on them. But do you want to overcome this fear? Even if your answer is Yes, there are several steps you need to take to overcome your Fear of Flying and get rid of that nasty anxiety panic attack.

One instant step is to approach your fear with logic. Ask yourself – is this a rational fear? What is the actual chance you will be harmed by flying? Sure there are a lot of Tv shows that show plane incidents, but how many are safe? How many incidents are there with cars compared to planes?

These are some of the questions you need to answer when looking at tackling that fear of flying. Like most fears that cause anxiety attacks you will find they are irrational. Don’t think for a second I’m trying to bag you, I also had a fear of flying. I used to experience an anxiety attack every time I flew. My symptoms of an anxiety attack were similar to everyone else’s, but one of the steps I took to overcome this fear was by understanding

Is it a rational fear? Of course this is only one step and alone may not help you to overcome the fear of flying the any further anxiety panic attack.