Stressed up! Change your food.
“Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness”
Do you have susceptibility of illness? Do you feel problems with sleep, headache, poor judgment, weight gain, depression, anxiety or other type of physical irritation but no reasons behind? Does your child lack concentration while doing regular activities? Do you shout and feel angry without any dependable reason? One of my friends recently informed me about his sleeping sickness causing a number of problems. My friend staying in north east reported the change of food habit of his little child of 14 years. Answer may be the sufferings from stress. Stress may be the most explored word in Google in the recent times because of the unfortunate CoViD 19 outbreaks. Stress is inevitable due to ever changing situation and the story of the stress goes back to the time immemorial. It is your body’s reaction to the certain pressure generated due to the individual issues or the mass issues manifested in the form of physical, mental or emotional reaction. We are supposed to deal with the stress at certain times and most of the stress bears negative impact of the health & hygiene of the victims. The most common issues are the happenings in and around you that make you uncomfortable along with the other issues like illness of family members or anything else which you are directly or indirectly associated either consciously or sub conscious mind. Feeling butterflies in the stomach is the concern of acute stress and this may be overcome within a short span of time but you may suffer from the chronic stress that may affect your physical, mental and emotional outbreak. If you have unoccasional headache, trouble in sleeping, muscle pain without reason, indigestion issues and lack of desire for doing anything else –you may be in stress. Moodiness, anxiety, restlessness, irritability and sadness feelings are some of the stress related symptoms making you in physical isolation. Sometimes panic attack, worried all the time, overeating or loss of appetite, depression and detachment from the family members may cause your hardships day to day in this context .What can you do in this consequences? The answer lies in the understanding of the mood and food that can give sorts of relief from your stressful event. Mood can influence the foods. As told earlier-over eating or less. When we feel stressed, we will try to take food that will make us more comfortable as a response to emotional stress. Stress generally expedites the hormone –cortisol from the adrenal glands and this hormone may be either virtuous or vicious to manage to overcome the stress condition in one hand and may cause a serious danger to the other. When cortisol discharges and mixes up in the blood streams, it increases the sugar level of the body. In addition to the sugar level increases to accommodate more energy production, it also enables to other physiological responses like regulation of sleep cycles, reducing inflammation, controlling blood pressure and other events. So, cortisol is healthy for short period of time. The regulation of the cortisol is very indispensible. Lowering stress, eating good food, sleeping well, use of relaxing techniques, hobby, taking fun, exercising, avoiding caffeine at night arte some of the practices that can reduce the cortisol level in blood. The food plays an important role in this regard. Chicken , eggs, fortified cereals, flax seeds, olive oils, bananas, broccoli, dark chocolates, pumpkin seeds, spinach, almonds, lentils, peanuts are some of the foods that deserve high potentiality to optimize the cortisol level in blood and to get relief from the stress and stress related issues. A number of plants like Aswagandha (Withania somnifera), Holy basil (Ocimum termiflorum), Gulancha ( Tinospora cordifolia), Amla ( Embelica officinalis) saffron ( Crocus sativus) etc can act as supplements to reduce the stress and stress related health hazards. In addition to the cortisol episode, there is a concept-Serotonin theory having a strong impact on mood. Neurotransmitters and neuromodulators are the basic units that have the4 pleasure of chemical coordination within the nervous system. Serotonin produces from the amino acid, tryptophan and this tryptophan derived from the food substances like oysters, squid, octopus, bananas, pineapple, plums, nuts, milk, turkey, spinach and eggs. Serotonin regulates multiple functions like regulation of sleep, appetite, impulse control. So lack of tryptophan in desired amount indirectly affect upon the unavailability of tryptophan in the cellular pool and as a consequence, the serotonin production is being delayed. The issues and the problems of CVD patients are very important to be addressed and the CVD patients experiencing the depression and the depression may share certain psychiatric issues and this may have an effect upon the cytokines, endothelial dysfunction along with other type of the physiological issues. Omega-3 fatty acids in the diet can play a crucial role to retain the mood swing in the desired form. Salmons, sardines, oysters, tuna like fishes; eggs, margarine, milk, soya milk, yogurt, bread, cereal, flax seed, flour, pasta are some of the food that have the potentiality to enrich omega-3 fatty acids in the living bodies. Some peoples also crave for chocolate consumption in order to overcome the stress related nuisance. The constituents of chocolate trigger a ‘feel good’ reaction due to richness with tryptophan and phenylethyalmine and these feel good factors are one of the important attributes to overcome the boredom of the mood depression. Stress is undoubtedly inevitable due to urge for money, work and poor health in the time of staying in the global village. If you want to detoxify yourself from the inevitable stress, the food habit can show a ray of hope in this regard by changing your endocrine and neural signals that directly or indirectly regulate your physiological behaviors. Stresses are like the bumps of the road of life and they may cause the episodes of mourning, crying or even the unfortunate mishaps. But “When there is a pain, pleasure is to be strived for” (Gautama Buddha) and we have to believe the stress and pain of life but the good food garnished with sound habit can minimize our tears in the way of eventful journey.
