Let’s fire up the love not fear.
Feel good hormones or Love hormones – oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin – help ward off anxiety and depression, as well as support your immune system. They have the opposite effect of the fight, flight, freeze response.
Fear, anxiety and worry increase cortisol, stress the adrenal gland and decrease immune function. Stress, overwhelm, fight or flight, trauma. Our fearful, isolated, stressed-out society is not helpful. Stress hormones are high, which is not helpful for our immune function.
Get some Physical and Social Contact
Positive social connection, socializing, laughing, meaningful conversations. Trust, sharing and gift giving. Hugs, cuddles, making love. Self-care, massage, acupuncture. All of these things release feel-good hormones, which aren’t just helping you feel better, but be healthier, too.
Not only in women related to labor and lactation, but also the love hormones help the male reproductive system by supporting the production of testosterone.
Regular physical activity can kick stress hormones to the curb and increase the love hormones.
Cardio like walking, running, hiking, biking, aerobic classes. Muscle building exercise is especially good for the over-40 crowd.
Yoga, meditation, deep breathing and mindfulness training. Obviously, great for reducing stress. Start small. Short and frequent meditation, or moving meditation, like walking meditation or Tqi Chi, is an alternate to sitting or lying down meditation.
Laughter lowers stress hormones. Jokes lower cortisol levels! Make movie night all about the comedies.
Music Listening to music you love lowers cortisol levels and increases happiness. Do you have an instrument collecting dust? Play it. It is good for your brain.
Acupuncture can help as well. I’ve been helping relieve the trauma on our bodies and minds that has come with the pandemic. Some feel it in their gut and it shows up as digestive issues. Others have anxiety and panic, depression, fatigue, body aches or irritability. Depending upon where we have deficiency or stagnation, we will see the effects in different areas.
Spring is a great time to get acupuncture, as this time of year it is easy for Qi to get stuck.
Check out my added session combo options.
I had COVID last month and I’m glad that I’m over that hump.