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Stress is one of the deadliest poisons for our body and mind. It's a major factor in nearly all of the modern chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, depression, and even suicide. But don't worry, I'm going to share three natural, free strategies that you can use to combat stress and regain your health.

Now when you're stressed, your brain sends an alert signal to your adrenal glands, and this triggers the release of cortisol, the major stress hormone. Cortisol then triggers the release of adrenaline, which stimulates our heart rate and breathing rate, constricting our blood vessels to send more blood to our muscles and our brain. This is to mobilize us for action and is known as the fight or flight response. This is to prepare us to fight or to flee danger.

This physiological reaction was very useful hundreds or thousands of years ago when the majority of stresses required us to do exactly that, either fight or flight, whether that was a warring tribe or escaping a predator. However, the evidence has now shown that when we're stressed and unable to take action against it, it actually has a detrimental effect on our physical and mental health.

Unfortunately, in our modern lives, this is the case the majority of the time, where we create stresses for ourselves based on our perception of future events. This is something that we don't need any energy for whatsoever. So to avoid the harmful effects of excess stress, here are three powerful natural tricks.

First up is move your body, if possible. This is the best way to relieve stress because containing it can be harming you internally. This helps release the pent-up energy that the stress fight or flight reaction has caused. You can take a walk in nature, go for a run, do some squats, push press. There is nothing more effective than doing some physical activity.

The next tip when you're stressed is to do a double inhale followed by a long exhale of your breath. Physiologically, doing this for just a few minutes can decrease stress, decrease anxiety, and improve your mood. All you need to do is one deep inhale, followed by another sharp inhale, and then a long, slow, sighing exhale. Repeat this several times over, and it's one of the quickest ways that you can reduce your stress.

There's a lot of backing for this method too. It's one that's been studied by Dr. Andrew Huberman, who's one of the world's leading authorities on neuroscience.

The last tip is to keep present. This is because a lot of the times that we're stressed is because we're perceiving a future event. We imagine these scenarios over and over in our head, which causes our body to create this fight or flight response in anticipation of these completely imaginary events. Being present is an opportunity to break those ruminating thought patterns.

A great way to start if you're new to it is by simply focusing on your breath. This is just focusing on all of the unique bodily sensations that you experience while taking deep, rhythmic breaths. That might be the air coming in through your nostrils, the sensation of your clothes tightening around your chest and midsection as you breathe. Just focus on whatever you can feel.

You can go for as long as you need to reduce the stress. If you can combine this by breathing deep into your midsection using diaphragmatic breathing, you'll further increase its benefits on stress reduction.

If you found this video useful and you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button for daily videos on health and wellbeing optimisation. Let me know below in the comments which tip you found most useful and I'll see you in the next video.