Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing stress? For many of us the an­swer is a def­i­nite yes. Every­one at some point goes through the ef­fects of stress. It is not a myth it is re­al­i­ty. Learn­ing how to man­age stress is a mile­stone on the road to ma­tu­ri­ty and we must be able to deal with it, if we are to grow and de­vel­op as a bal­anced in­di­vid­ual. Stress is a nat­ur­al re­sponse to nerve-rack­ing sit­u­a­tions. Stress is what gives us that ex­tra push to go the ex­tra mile be­cause it leads to the re­lease of adren­a­line in­to our blood stream. Think about it for a minute, you have a math quiz and you just can't seem to mem­o­rise all the for­mu­lae or you are study­ing French and not even the dic­tio­nary seems to help. That's where stress comes in. Some of us get sweaty palms or a mil­lion and one thoughts race across our minds at dev­as­tat­ing speeds; the point is, peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence stress in dif­fer­ent ways and re­act dif­fer­ent­ly to dif­fer­ent types of stress. There is no way to let stress all out. What is cru­cial though is to not let stress get the bet­ter of you. Re­mem­ber stress is nat­ur­al but it must be man­aged.

These tips should help you cool off

TIP ONE: Take a deep breath - Breath­ing ex­er­cis­es re­al­ly help in deal­ing with stress. Try in­hal­ing and ex­hal­ing a cou­ple times and see if it helps. Do­ing yo­ga may al­so help with deep breath­ing.

TIP TWO: Eat prop­er­ly - Good nu­tri­tion is vi­tal in deal­ing with stress and tak­ing all your vi­t­a­mins equips your body to fight off the ex­ces­sive de­mands of stress.

TIP THREE: Stay pos­i­tive - It is good for any in­di­vid­ual when deal­ing with stress to con­front it. We can do this by ex­press­ing the way we feel. Talk to a friend, a fam­i­ly mem­ber or some­body you trust about the way you are feel­ing. If you do not feel like talk­ing, write stuff in a jour­nal or grab the near­est set of head­phones and lis­ten to some mu­sic. Once your be­hav­iour is pos­i­tive and you feel that it helps, by all means do it.

TIP FOUR: Watch Aquar­i­um Fish - Re­searchers have com­pared the ef­fects of hyp­no­sis ver­sus an aquar­i­um, fish­less ver­sus fish filled aquar­i­ums, and no aquar­i­um ver­sus hav­ing an aquar­i­um. In all cas­es, hav­ing some sort of aquar­i­um re­duced blood pres­sure. In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, greater re­duc­tion in blood pres­sure oc­curred when there were fish­es in the tank ver­sus pleas­ing­ly dec­o­rat­ed, but fish­less, tanks. Even watch­ing a video tape of fish has been proven to have ther­a­peu­tic ef­fects.

TIP FIVE: Laugh­ter - Re­search has shown that the health ben­e­fits of laugh­ter are far-rang­ing. While more stud­ies need to be done, stud­ies so far have shown that laugh­ter can help re­lieve pain, bring greater hap­pi­ness, and even in­crease im­mu­ni­ty. Here are some of the stress man­age­ment ben­e­fits of laugh­ter:

Hor­mones: Laugh­ter re­duces the lev­el of stress hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, ep­i­neph­rine (adren­a­line), dopamine and growth hor­mone. It al­so in­creas­es the lev­el of health-en­hanc­ing hor­mones like en­dor­phins, and neu­ro­trans­mit­ters. Laugh­ter in­creas­es the num­ber of an­ti­body-pro­duc­ing cells and en­hances the ef­fec­tive­ness of T cells. All this means a stronger im­mune sys­tem, as well as few­er phys­i­cal ef­fects of stress.

Phys­i­cal Re­lease: Have you ever felt like you "have to laugh or you'll cry"? Have you ex­pe­ri­enced the cleansed feel­ing af­ter a good laugh? Laugh­ter pro­vides a phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al re­lease.

In­ter­nal Work­out: A good bel­ly laugh ex­er­cis­es the di­aphragm, con­tracts the abs and even works out the shoul­ders, leav­ing mus­cles more re­laxed af­ter­ward. It even pro­vides a good work­out for the heart.

Dis­trac­tion: Laugh­ter brings the fo­cus away from anger, guilt, stress and neg­a­tive emo­tions in a more ben­e­fi­cial way than oth­er mere dis­trac­tions.

Per­spec­tive: Stud­ies show that our re­sponse to stress­ful events can be al­tered by whether we view some­thing as a 'threat' or a 'chal­lenge'. Hu­mour can give us a more light­heart­ed per­spec­tive and help us view events as 'chal­lenges', there­by mak­ing them less threat­en­ing and more pos­i­tive.

So­cial Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter: Laugh­ter con­nects us with oth­ers. Just as with smil­ing and kind­ness, most peo­ple find that laugh­ter is con­ta­gious, so if you bring more laugh­ter in­to your life, you can most like­ly help oth­ers around you to laugh more, and re­alise these ben­e­fits as well. By el­e­vat­ing the mood of those around you, you can re­duce their stress lev­els, and per­haps im­prove the qual­i­ty of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion you ex­pe­ri­ence with them, re­duc­ing your stress lev­el even more!

With ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion from about.com