How To Break A Sweat To Break Your Stress - Part 1 by Lynsey Carter

Do you feel swamped at work? Feel that you are always 'one-step-behind' on your 'to-do list'? Unable to catch up with your chores? Are you restless in bed, tossing and turning, without getting a good night's sleep fretting over the things you didn't accomplish that day? Do you find that have to break a sweat to break your stress?

We all experience a somewhat hectic lifestyle, or testing circumstances in our life at one point-or-another. Perhaps you feel that stress is a permanent fixture in your life? The stress caused by these situations can lead you down the road to sickness, depression, or just make you feel overwhelmed. How do you combat this overload of daily stress? Well, one way is by doing exercise.

Stress can come at you from both a physical and a mental direction. Stress that comes at you physically can depend on your family, your job, or just your life obligations. Performing exercise will benefit 99% of the population, from a working mother down to a single 'go-getter' professional. You should be able to find a particular type of exercise to suit your needs and lifestyle, whether you have just 10-15 minutes a day or whether you can hit the gym for a good workout, regularly. Exercise is well known as a terrific and effective stress reliever.

So, how does performing exercise affect your body? Will it make you feel tired? Contrary to popular belief, exercise is well known to increase a person's production of endorphins. These are the chemicals that make you feel good, and are linked to creating an elevation in your mood. The 'high' that endorphins create is akin to the 'high' attained from eating chocolate. Chocolate works because it has caffeine and that goes to the pleasure center of your brain. Exercise is similar because it makes your blood pump faster through your body, increasing the supply of oxygen to your brain. This 'endorphin rush' is why a lot of exercisers become addicted to exercising.

Because of the endorphins, exercise has long been an antidote to stress, it takes your mind off your daily stresses while you run, walk, lift weights, or engage in those physical activities that elevate your heart rate. One added benefit of exercising is that it will assist you in sleeping better at night.

For many people, stress will cause havoc to their lives by them developing insomnia, thereby adding to their stress levels knowing they may not get enough sleep. You do need to make sure that you do not exercise to close to going to bed, at least three hours before retiring for the evening is an appropriate time frame to work within. Everybody reacts differently to their exercise program, so you should be able to experiment with different exercise routines and exercise times to find what is best suited to you and your life.

By exercising above your resting heart rate, will cause your body to heat up, and of course, when your body heats up, you will automatically begin to sweat to cool yourself down so that you do not overheat. Exercising will cause you to sweat in most parts of your body, inclusive of you having -

* sweating underarms;

* sweating head;

* a sweating back;

* sweating legs;

* a sweating groin area;

* even sweating palms and sweating feet.

Hopefully, all of you will sweat do keep your body temperature stable, and to remove some of the stored toxins in your system.

And from all of this, you will too hopefully find that some, if not all, of your stress will have eased or abated, and you will feel better and livelier than you did before you started your exercises.

Copyright (c) 2010 Lynsey Carter