If you’re feeling stressed, these 7 ‘rescue remedies’ can help: expert

Do you sigh when you’re stressed? You’re already on your way to regulating your emotions.

Kandi Wiens, an author and University of Pennsylvania researcher specializing in stress, resilience and burnout, shared her stress-busting tips with The Post.

“People think that when we distract ourselves from stress, that’s a bad thing, but not necessarily,” Penn’s master’s in medical education program director explained.

She has a series of stress distraction techniques, which she calls “rescue remedies,” designed to counter the effects of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These strategies — ranging from sighing to exercising to looking at a photo of a loved one — are all outlined in her book, “Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Your Relationship with Work,” out next month.

Sighing

Wiens said that the breathing technique — taking two inhalations through the nose and a long exhalation through the mouth — helps people lower their stress response.

As an anxiety-relieving practice, sighing pops open the air sacs in the lungs called alveoli and maximizes the amount of oxygen people take into their lungs.

“When we’re stressed and when our stress response goes off, we’re accumulating carbon dioxide,” she explained.

“[Sighing] allows us to take in quite a bit of oxygen all at once. Then, that long exhale allows us to offload that carbon dioxide,” she added.

Look at a photo of someone you love

In her research, Wiens said study participants have reported that looking at a photo of their kids or another person they love calms them down.

The simple act of looking at a picture can produce oxytocin, also known as “the love hormone,” which can offset stress hormones.

In stressful moments, the body “is offloading a lot of, cortisol and adrenaline, and it’s causing all kinds of bad things to go on in our body.”

“Our heart rate goes up, our oxygen intake goes down,” she explained.

However looking at a photo of someone you love “turns on the parasympathetic nervous system,” which activates when the body is in a state of relaxation.

Physical touch

Holding someone’s hand or hugging them works similarly to looking at a photograph when it comes to reducing stress.

“Looking at a photo and touch elicit oxytocin,” she explained.

Cuddling with a pet can have the same benefits. And if there isn’t a person you love or an animal nearby, massaging your temples, or putting your hand on your heart can put you in a state of equilibrium.

You can also calm yourself down by massaging your neck by the base of your skull. This stimulates your vagus nerve which is full of oxytocin receptors.

Exercise

Wiens said that exercising produces dopamine, a neurotransmitter and hormone that gives people feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.

“When you exercise, you get a little bit of a physical high. You feel like you might have a little bit more energy afterward,” she explained.

Like other stress relief exercises, exercise can help “tame the sympathetic nervous system and activate your parasympathetic nervous system.”

“You’re training your body to manufacture the right hormones in the right levels,” she explained.

Spend time in nature

Spending time in nature boosts dopamine production as well as the production of endorphins.

Endorphins are chemicals released by the body in response to pain or stress and are also released during pleasurable activities like spending time in nature, exercise, sex, laughing, meditation and eating chocolate, according to Harvard Health.

Wien’s book said that the stress-reducing effects of being in nature occur in as little as 10 minutes.

Cry

Crying releases oxytocin and endorphins and can help people self-soothe and regulate their mood.

Calculate, Locate, Communicate, Breathe and Exhale (CLCBE)

Another stress-busting technique she suggested is one called Calculate, Locate, Communicate, Breathe and Exhale (CLCBE), coined by Dr. Howard Stevenson, also at the University of Pennsylvania.

For the calculate portion, she said people can ask themselves their stress level on a scale of one to 10.

The locate part of the exercise has people locate where the stress lives in their bodies. The communication part has people evaluate what self-talk is going through their head and the breathe and exhale portion has people focus on their breath.

She said this practice helped her immensely when a CEO she worked with yelled at her in front of a group of people for around five minutes.

“I did the CLCBE because my stress response was going off. I could feel my blood pressure just skyrocketing and that calmed me down, almost immediately,” she explained. “It’s getting yourself to focus on the breathing that really tames the stress response and that the physiological response.”