Self-Care Important In Farm Country

Stress.  

Whether it comes from one or several sources; life, home health, work, relationships, finances, uncertainty, messages...well, you get the idea. Most of us have some level of stress we deal with occasionally, if not regularly. That's why David Brown of Iowa State University extension suggests: 

“It's really, really important for everyone to really start thinking a little bit more about what they need to do to take care of themselves.

“We're all pretty good at maybe helping others or maybe helping your friend or family member, so we forget about ourselves sometimes, and so there's some really great research based strategies out there that we can do and take part of that really help us take care of ourselves as well,” Brown said. 

Brown added perhaps the best way to help reduce stress is increase physical activity. 

“If you're not getting 150 minutes a week of good aerobic activity, you might want to look at buying a treadmill, joining a gym, things like that, because there's so many great benefits of physical activity, you know, improves sleep quality, reduces blood pressure, reduces risk of developing dementia," Brown noted.  "It actually reduces eight different types of cancers or risk rate, different types of cancers.” 

More aerobic activity as Brown just mentioned can be one contributor to another stress reduction technique, a good night's sleep. 

“Now I know there's certain times of the year that that may not be possible, but we really recommend getting 7-9 hours of sleep," he said.  "The benefits of doing that, it improves mood, helps with memory, cognitive thinking helps to manage stress.  So, I can't really emphasize the importance of getting a good night's sleep.” 

To some, improving social connectedness may seem counterintuitive in reducing specific stresses in their lives. 

“Spending time with family, friends, volunteering at different sites, working with the churches, schools, volunteering, different places. We need to belong to different groups to get our social connectedness, because that's one of the primary ways to reduce risk of suicidal behavior is being connected with other people.” 

Possessing and expressing a positive attitude also is a stress reducer. 

“That means expressing gratitude not only to others, but also we need to be grateful for ourselves, keep our perspective about all the good things that we do and we're about,” Brown said.

And not what Brown calls catastrophizing worrying about the worst-case scenario of a situation that most likely never occurs. One other self-care tip; implement relaxation strategies. 

“It could be having a hobby that we simply enjoy, maybe doing some deep breathing and mindfulness meditation, some repetitive prayer. What do we do that we can utilize that helps us to relax kind of lower blood pressure, relax our body a little bit because that reduces the levels of frustration, improves focused mood, improves the muscle tension and all those things.”

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