March 6, 2024

Relaxation: The Ultimate Relief For Your Hectic Life

Do you schedule down time for relaxation in your life? No? Then something seriously needs to change. If you view relaxation as a waste of productivity hours, you have no idea what you’re missing.

Not only should relaxation be mandatory, but regularly scheduling breaks for yourself will only improve productivity over the long haul, as you are fully able to dedicate to your work when you resume.

Need to be sold as to why you need relaxation in your life? Then let’s check out the following!

Relaxation Boosts Your immune System

When you lead a busy life, chances are you don’t take good care of your health. The result may end up being the exact opposite of what you wanted — sick days, for example, that leave you unable to do anything. Luckily, some regularly scheduled time for R&R can offset this. We all have hectic periods of our life, but the important thing is to deprogram.

Crazy hectic lives that cause sleep deprivation, and high stress is manageable up to 3 months, but after that things can go horribly bad. Take the weekends off, or sleep in at least one day per week. Your immune system will thank you.

Relaxation Improves Your Working Memory

The longer you work at a high intensity, the poorer your working memory becomes. You will find yourself making silly mistakes, or getting a little too forgetful for comfort. Even short periods of high stress affect the memory centers of the brain, which shows up in how forgetful you become when under pressure.

Relaxation allows cortisol levels to return to baseline, as there are no pressing matters for you to deal with. Chronically high levels of stress that result in constant streams of cortisol coursing through the body may also contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease over many years, as it is known to have a strong inflammatory component.

Relaxation Restores The Motivation Centers Of The Brain

Do you ever notice how your drive to work decreases significantly after doing it repetitively for a period of time? In fact, under the prolonged influence of stress, the motivation center of the brain becomes desensitized to dopamine, limiting your ability to feel motivated, or experience pleasure.

This also explains why you have no desire to eat, and may resign yourself to hopelessness. Luckily, a well-timed break for relaxation will recharge your batteries. Just keep in mind that there is only so much you can handle under pressure. Everyone has a breaking point — don’t wait to find out what yours is.

Relaxation Keeps Your Heart Healthy

People don’t appreciate the danger that running a hectic life can pose to your heart until it’s too late. Not taking time off to relax increases your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke to name a few. Plus, cortisol results in greater retention of sodium and water, putting the heart and blood vessels under stress to pump and move blood.

Relaxation is well established way to reduce blood pressure, decrease your risk of stroke by promoting vasodilation, and decrease the inflammatory processes in blood vessels.

Relaxation Will Keep You Young

Living a hectic life day after day is a surefire recipe to run yourself down quickly. The greater the impact of the hormones cortisol and adrenalin, the harder and faster your body works to regenerate cells. This faster turnover of cells causing hastened aging cuts down your youth. This is why it is important to live life, especially while you’re young — go on vacations, throw your feet back, read a book and just relax. Work will still be there tomorrow waiting for you, so take your time getting back.

Relaxation doesn’t cost you anything, but its benefits are priceless.

dhf

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