Between meetings and conferences, between working nine to five or planning your marketing strategy for your next entrepreneurial endeavor, the stress of it all will quickly start to mount up in a cumulative build-up that, if you’re not careful, will eventually get the better of you.
Being tough is all very well, sure, but unfortunately, that’s not actually how stress works. Stress is like water building up inside a container. It doesn’t matter how strong the container is; if the water keeps building and it isn’t released at any point, then eventually, it will overflow. As such, get yourself a spa day! It’ll help; science says so.
Cortisol
Cortisol is a stress hormone, along with adrenaline, triggered in response to a threat, regardless of whether that threat is physical or statutory. Cortisol is very important as part of any animal’s survival instincts, as it helps to heighten things like sensory perception, reflex time, and mental alertness. However, like any emergency device, it is not supposed to just be left on all the time.
Chronic stress, manifesting in a cumulative build-up of cortisol, comes with serious adverse effects both on a physiological and a cognitive level, leading to all sorts of health complications ranging from cardiovascular diseases, weakening of the immune system, or mental health disorders. However, there are empirically verifiable ways to reduce a substantial build-up of cortisol.
Thermal Treatments
Exposure to extreme heat or cold can have beneficial effects on the release of endorphins in a number of different ways. Saunas, for example, work by drastically reducing the humidity of a room so that one can safely enter it at temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) for between 10 minutes to half an hour at a time. The intense dry heat opens the pores of the skin and triggers the sweat glands, flushing out biotoxins trapped within and relaxing muscle tissue throughout the body.
Steam rooms, which are technically cooler at around 45 degrees Celsius on average (113 Fahrenheit), but are extremely humid, have a similar effect on the muscles while also helping to clear congestion of the throat. Cryotherapies work the opposite way via exposure to extreme cold, leading to an enormous rush of endorphins and adrenaline. These either come in the form of ice baths, which lower the core temperature, and must, therefore, be treated with extreme caution, or liquid nitrogen chambers, created via a nitrogen generator, which target the temperature of the skin at below -120 Celsius (248 Fahrenheit). In fact, a nitrogen generator is used in a huge array of industries – not just therapies and healthcare.
Massages
Muscle tissue also responds to applied pressure. Physiotherapists train extensively to feel for and identify tension in the first three layers of muscle tissue and apply pressure to those areas very gradually or, in the case of deep tissue, very firmly. Again, heat can be used in the form of hot stones.
Skin-on-skin contact with another person is also a deeply intimate affair, and the closeness of this naturally triggers endorphins also, albeit some can find the experience a little intrusive. Unfortunately, massage therapy only deals with muscle pain and pain resulting from trapped nerves, like sciatica, which is a separate issue and not one that can be treated via the same principles of applied pressure.