Stress booster

Serotonin can stave off depression and provide a feeling a euphoria. When you feel happy and all seems right with the world, you’re feeling the effects of serotonin. This hormone is responsible for boosting mood, as well as a host of other functions. Where is serotonin produced? An area in the center of the brainstem produces serotonin, which then acts on many different parts of the brain to affect a variety of functions and behaviors, including: • memory • fear • the stress response • digestion • addiction • sexuality • • breathing • body temperature How to increase serotonin Low levels of serotonin are linked to depression. The most commonly used antidepressants, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ( It’s also possible to increase serotonin levels without taking medicine. One natural way to increase serotonin is by Exposure to either the sun or to the bright light meant to replicate it is another way to naturally increase serotonin levels. Light therapy is one of the main treatments for Getting extra serotonin from foods is a bit trickier. Protein-rich foods such as turkey are high in tryptophan, but our bodies don’t convert it to serotonin very efficiently. And when you eat turkey together with other high-protein foods, the protein breaks down into amino acids, which compete with tryptophan to get across your blood-brain barrier (the border that prevents potentially harmful substances from reaching your brain). As a result, less tryptophan gets in. One way to sn...

Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services. Dietitian Courtney Barth, MS, RDN, LD, CPT, explains how certain foods can help reduce your levels of cortisol — the primary hormone responsible for stress. What cortisol does Cortisol plays a number of roles in the body, including: • Regulating sleep cycles. • Reducing inflammation. • Increasing blood sugar. • Managing how the body uses carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. • Controlling blood pressure. Importantly, cortisol is sometimes known as the “stress hormone” because your adrenal gland releases it when you’re in a stressful situation, or when your body is under physical stress (like inflammation). It’s the key to helping your body manage its fight-or-flight instinct — which is a good thing. “Cortisol is healthy for a short period of time as a protective mechanism,” Barth says. “It gives your body the energy you need to respond to a short-term stressful scenario.” In the long-term, though, too much cortisol actually creates stress in your body, leading to more inflammation and increasing your blood pressure — essentially, the opposite of all the good things it does for you in short-term scenarios. “Managing stress is the number one treatment for lowering cortisol levels,” Barth says. Stress-relieving foods Foods that are promoted on the “The best way to lower cortisol in the body is to focus on an ant...

Was this helpful? Everyone has stressors in life, with factors related to job pressure, money, health, and relationships tending to be the most common. Stress can be acute or chronic and can lead to fatigue, headaches, upset stomach, nervousness, and irritability or anger. Exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and eating a nutritious diet are some of the best ways to better equip your body to handle stress, but several vitamins and supplements can also help. Here are the 7 best vitamins and supplements that may help you manage stress. There’s a lot of noise when it comes to supplements for stress. To help you identify products that are worth purchasing, we first considered the types of ingredients included. All the ingredients featured were selected using the following criteria: • Research quality: We chose supplements that have been the focus of high quality scientific studies called randomized controlled trials. These are less biased than other types of studies and result in higher quality, more reliable data. • Effectiveness: In addition, we chose only vitamins and supplements that these high quality studies have deemed effective. Other types of studies can be helpful, but the data they produce is not as reliable as data from randomized controlled trials. In addition to ingredients, we considered the following factors when selecting products: • Dose: We chose products that included the effective doses mentioned in research studies. • Trustworthiness: We selected p...