People have different thresholds for how much caffeine they can tolerate. If caffeine makes you jittery or anxious, consider cutting back by replacing coffee or energy drinks with decaffeinated coffee, herbal tea, or water. If you’re currently inactive, start with gentle activities such as walking or biking.
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Relaxation techniques are a great way to help with stress management. Relaxation isn’t only about peace of mind or enjoying a hobby. It’s a process that lessens the stress effects on your mind and body. Using ways to relax can help you cope with everyday stress. And these options can help with long-term stress or stress related to many health problems, such as heart disease and pain. Counselors and mental health therapists are trained professionals who can help you cope, reduce the effects of emotional stress and get you back to feeling good during your day-to-day.
Spend time in nature
Some suggest that sibling relationships play a more meaningful role in well-being than is often recognized (Cicirelli, 2004). Parental favoritism and disfavoritism of children affects the closeness of siblings (Gilligan, Suitor, & Nam, 2015) and depression (Jensen, Whiteman, Fingerman, & Birditt, 2013). Similar to other family relationships, sibling relationships can be characterized by both positive and negative aspects that may affect elements of the stress process, providing both resources and stressors that influence well-being.
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A reassuring voice, even for a minute, can put everything in perspective. We recommend cello master Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach, but if classical really isn’t your thing, try listening to ocean or nature sounds. It may sound cheesy, but they have similar relaxing effects to music. “If you’re new to meditation, try following a guided meditation https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/alcohol-and-aging-does-alcohol-make-you-look-older/ first.
- It reduces the stress hormone norepinephrine and can produce a sense of relaxation.
- When you’re feeling stressed, take a break to call a friend and talk about your problems.
- In addition to having physical health benefits, exercise has been shown to provide natural stress relief.
- And these options can help with long-term stress or stress related to many health problems, such as heart disease and pain.
- Another study found that people who engaged in proactive coping were better equipped to manage their type 2 diabetes.
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From the power of mindfulness to embracing new routines and prioritizing self-care, Dr. Chan offers practical ways to face life’s challenges and prepare for what lies ahead. Ever notice how taking more walks or drinking enough water suddenly makes you feel more clear-headed? Your overall health is deeply tied to how you deal with stress. The healthier you feel, the better you’ll cope with stress.
Family relationships are enduring and consequential for well-being across the life course. We discuss several types of family relationships—marital, intergenerational, and sibling ties—that have an important influence on well-being. We highlight the quality of family relationships as well as diversity of family relationships in explaining their impact on well-being across the adult life course. We discuss directions for future research, such as better understanding the complexities of these relationships with greater attention to diverse family structures, unexpected benefits of relationship strain, and unique intersections of social statuses. Sibling relationships are understudied, and the research on adult siblings is more limited than for other family relationships. Yet, sibling relationships are often the longest lasting family relationship in an individual’s life due to concurrent life spans, and indeed, around 75% of 70-year olds have a living sibling (Settersten, 2007).
- Managing stress can help you lead a more balanced, healthier life.
- Moreover, there is some evidence that strain in relationships can be beneficial for certain health outcomes, and the processes by which this occurs merit further investigation.
- The changing landscape of families combined with population aging present unique challenges and pressures for families and health care systems.
Certain habits can promote resilience to stress and increase overall wellness. For example, those who exercise or meditate regularly tend to become less stressed in the face of a difficult challenge. It reduces the stress hormone norepinephrine and can produce a sense of relaxation. The best news is that no one around you will know you’re doing them.
Norms of filial obligation of adult children to care for parents may be a form of healthy ways to cope with stress social capital to be accessed by parents when their needs arise (Silverstein, Gans, & Yang, 2006). The rapid aging of the U.S. population along with significant changes in marriage and families indicate that a growing number of older adults enter late life with both complex marital histories and great heterogeneity in their relationships. These results suggest that marriage may promote the well-being of same-sex couples, perhaps even more so than for different-sex couples (Umberson et al., 2016). Including same-sex couples in future work on marriage and well-being will garner unique insights into gender differences in marital dynamics that have long been taken for granted based on studies of different-sex couples (Umberson, Thomeer, Kroeger, Lodge, & Xu, 2015). Moreover, future work on same-sex and different-sex couples should take into account the intersection of other statuses such as race-ethnicity and SES to better understand the impact of marital relationships on well-being. Caregiving for aging parents is also distributed differently by gender, falling disproportionately on female siblings (Pinquart & Sorensen, 2006), and sons provide less care to their parents if they have a sister (Grigoryeva, 2017).