Relaxation Boosts Immunity
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Exposure to chronic stressors can negatively impact your health, quicken age-related diseases, impair immunity, and increase the risk for depression. Health factors can correlate to stressors. When chronically stressed, the body reserves its resources to combat the stressor. The problem is that the body does not distinguish between a physical threat to your life and exhaustion, emotional stress, and repercussions from traumatic events. Caregivers for family members with dementia have an increased risk of respiratory infections (Everly & Lating, 2019). Grief increases the risk of depression (Everly & Lating, 2019). PTSD increases the risks of cancer, chronic pain, heart disease, digestive illnesses, and respiratory diseases (Everly & Lating, 2019).
A daily relaxation practice can help. Daily relaxation is not an alcoholic beverage at the end of a stressful day, even if it makes you feel better. It makes you feel better because substances like wine increase dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with feeling good. Wine can improve how you feel in the moment, but it can impair judgment and disrupt sleep. Unfortunately, alcohol is a stressor. When chronically used, alcohol can imbalance the nervous and endocrine systems and deplete immunity (Rachdaoui et al., 2017).
Elicitation of the relaxation response stops the stress response. The body can get back to homeostatic balance, which improves overall wellness. Real relaxation produces positive physiological effects like slower respiration, decreased heart rate, increased heart rate variability, and lower blood pressure. Practices that elicit a relaxation response result in a mind at rest, a body at ease, and biological stability. Meditation elicits a relaxation response. Can daily relaxation boost immunity? Yes, it can. Daily mindfulness meditation improves “pro-inflammatory processes, increases cell-mediated defense parameters, and increases enzyme activity that guards against cell aging (Black & Slavich, 2016, p. 9). So, mindfulness meditation improves immunity and guards against aging factors. A mindfulness practice could be breath work, a movement practice like Tai Chi, sound meditation, or anything that narrows your focus and elicits the relaxation response.
References
Black D. S., Slavich, G. M. (2016). Mindfulness meditation and the immune system: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1373(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.12998
Everly, G. S., & Lating, J. M. (2019) A clinical guide to the treatment of the human stress response (4th ed.) Springer.
Rachdaoui, N., Sarkar D. K., & Phil, D. (2017). Pathophysiology of the effects of alcohol abuse on the endocrine system. Alcohol Research:Current Reviews, 38(2), 255-276.
Video: Relaxation Boosts Immunity
Relaxation Boosts Immunity
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