De-stress with Ease by Eating These

Are your palms sweaty?  Has your blood pressure elevated?  Head pounding?  Muscles tense?  Sounds like your stressed.

Stress presents itself in any number of ways, some of the signs more obvious than others. But all too often, our coping mechanisms for stress relief are counterproductive; they increase our stress levels rather than allay them.  Mindless eating is one such example, as many people use food to cope.

While mindless eating is OK every once in a while, the problem with it is not just the fact that it encourages weight gain, but the foods people choose to eat are stress promoting, increasing stress levels by ratcheting up our blood pressure levels.

And you guessed it, they’re the foods that we usually associate with mindless eating:  the fried foods, the alcoholic beverages, the sugary sweets and the salty snacks. These wreak havoc on our blood pressure levels, blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels and adrenaline levels.

But eating doesn’t have to be a stress-promoting activity.  As I’ve written elsewhere, many foods promote stress reduction.  Here are five more, as compiled by Marie Claire magazine:

Oranges

I haven’t done any articles on oranges specifically, but I’ve done a lot on what oranges are known for:  vitamin C.  As most of us know, oranges are chockfull of vitamin C and besides its ability to boost the immune system, vitamin C also helps to allay stress levels.  A 1999 rat study conducted by researchers from the University of Alabama found that vitamin C helped reduce typical indicators of stress (e.g. reduced size of adrenal glands, thymus glands and lowered weight levels by reducing cortisol production).

Sweet Potatoes

I did a story on back in January on sweet potatoes, so I’m pleased to see it here.  While it’s true, sweet potatoes are high in carbohydrates, they’re the slow burning kind, meaning they don’t cause blood sugar levels to spike.  This makes them the ideal food to eat for blood pressure regulation.

Salmon

I don’t eat out often but when I do eat out, I can’t help but get the salmon.  Salmon is among the best foods you’ll ever eat, never mind the best seafood.  It’s one of the world’s richest sources for heart healthy omega-3s, which are also great for regulating stress hormones, according to the medical journal Diabetes & Metabolism.

Avocado

The avocado is something of an anomaly in the vegetable world (yes, I know that botanically it’s a fruit, but come on, who in the culinary world thinks of the avocado as a fruit?).  Besides being one of the few vegetables with a pit, the avocado has something else that most vegetables don’t have:  fat.  One-fifth of an avocado has about five grams of fat, three grams of which are the monounsaturated kind.  And thanks to the avocado’s monounsaturated fat—combined with its potassium—it’s a great blood pressure reducer (Interesting fact:  Avocados have more potassium than bananas—700 mg vs. 467 mg).

Spinach

For energy, Popeye couldn’t have picked a better food to fuel his fury.  Spinach has a lot of magnesium, which is essential for energy production.  And nothing saps energy levels like stress.  Just one cup contains more than 155 milligrams of magnesium.

There you have it; five foods to help you cope when life has you on the ropes.  So the next time you’re feeling stressed and need something to decompress, give some of this grub a go.

Sources
whfoods.com
sciencedaily.com
ud.ayushveda.com
marieclaire.com