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Your body naturally produces a range of hormones that can both help and hinder you. People commonly look towards cortisol as a hormone that can hinder you, by causing many bodily functions to perform poorly.
In order to combat that, you need to help your body produce more endorphins, one of the two main chemicals associated with happiness and pleasure that can help you suppress feelings of stress.
Endorphins are the much more excited version of serotonin, another hormone that’s commonly associated with happiness. While serotonin makes you feel relaxed and calm, endorphins are the ones that make you feel excited, like being out and about with a group of friends and having a good time.
There are plenty of benefits that come along with endorphins, and if you’re not producing enough, there are ways to get your body to start producing more. The main benefit associated with endorphins is the extreme pleasure you feel when they’re released.
This is the same chemical that gives runners their “runner’s high,” and it makes you feel like you’re on top of the world. By making you feel super happy, it definitely helps suppress the mental effects of stress, which would otherwise cause things like depression and anxiety.
Another benefit of endorphins is that they help you a lot with pain. Studies have found that endorphins are so good at reducing pain, they’re more effective than the commonly used morphine.
This helps with some of the physical aspects of stress, such as aches and soreness, by helping you not feel or focus on it nearly as much. Unfortunately, our bodies don’t just release endorphins on command.
It takes some signals to get them to release, but if you know what those signals are, then you can use them to your advantage to help pick yourself up. If you can do something specific to get your body to produce more endorphins, then you’re not going to be as likely to succumb to the effects of stress.
The main source of endorphins is laughter. Finding something funny and having a good laugh about it really ramps up the production of endorphins. However, it’s not the only method.
You can also produce them by working out, as seen with the runner’s high. If you’re really low on options, then even eating chocolate will get your body to release some of this hormone.