There are times at the office when you lose nerves on fast-approaching deadlines, important presentations, client-handling, etc. This gets you a lot of stress and may even burn you out.
When in the grip of stress, your body experiences a host of physiological changes. For instance, you may witness racing heartbeat, high pressure, sweating, changes in your facial expression, and so on.
This is nothing but the stress response that automatically releases adrenaline and noradrenaline and triggers the HPA axis, which results in the release of the stress hormone cortisol.
Cortisol gets directly into your bloodstream, increases blood sugar levels, boosts energy, and puts you in fight-or-flight mode.
Once this mode gets activated, you experience emotions like anger, mood swings which impact both your physical and mental health.
This is where some of the best stress balls help. These squeezy balls are fidget toys that help you reduce stress. You squeeze and release these stress balls made of gel, foam, clay, etc between your fingers to reduce tension in muscles when in the grip of stress.
5 Reasons Why You Should Use Stress Balls
There are a host of benefits of using stress balls. And this is why using stress balls is useful.
- Relieve Anxiety and Stress
Not just work, but other facets of life too can prove to be really stressful. These may include health issues, low income, poor relationships, and others. Such stressors interfere with normal functioning, prevent you from concentrating, and lead to anxiety and mood swings.
Now, some amount of stress is good as it pushes you to do important tasks in the best way. However, stress that stretches over longer periods becomes pathological, turns into chronic stress, and impedes overall health.
Health issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart strokes, diabetes, etc all are the result of continued stress. Stress balls help you deviate all anxiety and negative energy to the stress ball, as you squeeze, squish, and release repeatedly.
This squeeze and release motion deviates your mind and helps you vent out all the amped-up energy on the stress ball. Further, it also helps you to relax. Although it may not serve as a permanent remedy, it does help in releasing the momentary muscle tension.
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- Helps in Rehabilitation
In addition to helping you reduce stress, stress balls also help in rehabilitation or recovering from illness or addiction. For example, if you suffer from symptoms of Carpal Tunnel, have undergone surgery, or need muscle strengthening, stress balls can help in restoring health.
Thus, as you squeeze and release the stress balls, you develop your muscle strength. In fact, some of the stress ball exercises are helpful in strengthening grip and muscles.
- Enhances Blood Circulation
It is suggested that using stress balls improves blood circulation. As per studies, the squeeze and release motion during using a stress ball increases your heart rate and raises the oxygen levels in your brain.
Due to this, the heart will pump better and help in improved blood circulation. And as the blood circulation improves, the chances of heart strokes, high blood pressure, and heart attack also reduce.
- Improves Attention
Some individuals need to attend to their compulsive needs of movement and distraction. This is commonly seen in children and adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
These are individuals who are fidgety and witness shorter attention spans. Difficulty with focusing and concentrating impedes their productivity, engagement, and learning. Stress balls help to divert attention from fidgety behavior and help improve concentration levels.
A pilot study conducted on sixth-graders exhibiting frequent distracting behaviors used various methods like the teacher maintaining frequent eye contact, ignoring misbehavior, etc to reduce distractions.
Nothing worked to improve the attention levels of the students. However, on giving a stress ball to one of the students showing fidgety behavior, the student was seen maintaining better focus on the lesson and participating in a proper way in the classroom.
- Reduce Arthritis Pain and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Arthritis severely affects your joints and results in fragile muscles, challenges in movement, and fatigue. Arthritis is of various types and there is no specific treatment for it.
In fact, in cases where it is severe, doctors recommend surgery to manage arthritis. But one can certainly regulate symptoms of arthritis by exercising regularly.
This is where stress balls shine. By undertaking various exercises through stress balls, you can lower inflammation, reduce pain, strengthen fragile muscles, all of which helps in stimulating mobility.
Likewise, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a commonly occurring condition that results in numbness, pain, and fragility in the hand and wrist. This is the result of heightened pressure within the wrist on the median nerve which is responsible for giving sensitivity to the thumb, middle finger, and half of your ring finger.
Therefore, the squeeze and release motion of the stress ball helps in reducing carpal tunnel symptoms like tingling in fingers, difficulty in writing, holding, handling objects, etc.
- Builds Muscle Memory
We perform various muscle actions of which our brain forms a memory. These include running, walking, talking, playing piano, etc. Repetitive performance of such actions enables the brain to learn them and keep a memory of the same so that you can perform such actions easily without involving much thought.
For example, when a musician plays an instrument, his fingers seem to move automatically, pulling the right string or hitting the right beat. These movements become reflex actions out of long hours of immense practice. However, one needs to maintain such muscle memory as insufficient practice can impact their performance.
This is where stress balls come handy. Exercising using stress balls help in improving hand flexibility and coordination which is really helpful to musicians to bring out amazon music.
Conclusion
Although stress balls may not be a permanent remedy, they certainly help in passing on the negative energy so that you can relax and calm down. They help in increasing your attention levels and also aid in reducing arthritis pain and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Thus, using some of the best stress balls like MindPanda and Serenilite can help you manage stress.