Prior to starting her own company, Tevis Trower was a corporate executive for 13 years who traveled 80 percent of the time. “I knew the thrill of working and traveling, but I also experienced the stress,” admits Trower, president of Balance Integration Corp in New York. Over time, she began to realize that her effectiveness during presentations, meetings and conference calls depended directly on how she managed the remainder of her time. “Generating the mental requirements and the positive adrenaline rush I needed to succeed when I was ‘on’ depended on how well I was able to refuel in between,” she says.

There’s no question that the 24/7 lifestyle so many executives live is exhausting—especially if you don’t find ways to effectively manage stress through nutrition, exercise, and relaxation.

Nutrition
While a healthful diet—including keeping animal fats and sugars to a minimum—is a key component in reducing stress, how much you eat can also determine your stress level. “I was raised believing that you have to clean your plate at every meal,” says Deborah Grubbe, PE, corporate director of safety and health for DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. “However, I eat out a lot, and I find that the portions served by restaurants are much too large.” As such, Grubbe now uses a program that her father-in-law, who is 82 and in excellent health, calls the “50 percent and push-back routine.”

“I eat only 50 percent of the portions in front of me,” Grubbe says, which is a good rule of thumb. In fact, research conducted on laboratory mice showed that those limited to 80 percent of a diet that would be considered “full” lived 30 percent longer than mice allowed to eat 100 percent or more. Researchers surmise that the more food you eat, the more energy your body must use to process the food and waste, leading to overwork and early exhaustion of some functions. (For more information, see “Low-Calorie Longevity,” BN, December 2002, p. 38.)

Hydration
While Grubbe has been reducing the amount of food she eats, she has also been increasing the amount of water she consumes. “Keeping well hydrated is one of the most important strategies I utilize to minimize stress,” she says. A fitness coach at DuPont explained to her that when she experienced what she had always thought to be stress-related headaches, the real culprit was probably dehydration. “Something as simple as drinking more water has made a big difference in my stress levels,” she says. But how much water is enough? Research suggests that if you’re urinating at least once an hour during the day, you are sufficiently hydrated. Anything less is symptomatic of at least partial dehydration—not too hard to believe when you realize that the body is 80 percent water that needs to be replenished as energy is used throughout the day.

It’s important to emphasize that the drink of choice for hydration should be water—not sugared drinks or corporate America’s favorite pick-me-up, coffee. “With the beginning of the Information Age, as well as all of the downsizings in recent years, executives are struggling to keep up with so much more,” says L. John Mason, PhD, founder of the Stress Education Center in Cotati, California, and author of Guide to Stress Reduction. “One way they attempt to do so is to give themselves a boost with caffeine.” In fact, according to Mason, there has been a dramatic increase in the consumption of coffee and other highly caffeinated products in recent years. “Just look at the explosion in the number of coffee shops and espresso stands,” he says.

While caffeine is meant to boost alertness, it’s one of the most disruptive substances available if you’re trying to manage stress because it can contribute to a rapid and irregular heartbeat, insomnia, muscle tension and pain, and even digestive disorders. “In fact, some people are so sensitive to caffeine that even one cup early in the morning will disrupt their ability to sleep that night,” Mason says. So if you’re using caffeine to help keep you alert and productive, it can end up having the opposite effect. That is, by cutting into your sleep, causing muscle tension, or triggering the jitters, coffee can reduce your productivity. And since discontinuing caffeine “cold turkey” can have side effects, Mason recommends reducing consumption gradually. (Or try tea, see p. 23.)

Exercise
Aerobic activity can also help reduce muscle tension and improve sleeping patterns. Mason recommends at least 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, of swimming, walking, biking and/or jogging. But can you make your exercise time more productive by multitasking—for example, reading while sitting on an exercise bike? Mason recommends against it. “One of the results of exercise that really contributes to stress reduction comes from ‘being in the present moment’ with your body movements,” he says.

While Grubbe exercises moderately when at home, she has found ways to stay active when she travels. With the help of the fitness coach at DuPont, she has been able to come up with several exercises that are conducive to travel, even while waiting in lines at airports. One involves raising up and down slowly on her toes. “This reduces muscle tension and improves my balance,” she says. Another is knee bends, although she admits having to be careful doing this in line so as not to attract too much attention. (For more simple exercises, see “Get Fit with Jorge Cruise,” BN, August 2002, p. 26.)

Relaxation
While Mason is a strong proponent of proper nutrition and exercise as strategies to reduce stress, he emphasizes that the most important component of stress reduction may well be deep relaxation techniques. He recommends at least 20 minutes a day of relaxation, visualization, meditation or autogenic training.

Can’t find 20 minutes to relax? According to Mason, it actually saves you time. “There have been studies suggesting that 20 minutes of deep relaxation can take the place of as much as 2 hours of sleep,” he says. When he first learned about relaxation during his training in the 1970s, however, he had a hard time believing that it could actually substitute for sleep. But he forged ahead on faith and found that, after about 3 months of daily deep relaxation techniques, his need for sleep decreased from 81/2 hours a night to 7. More recently, he was working with an executive vice president of a financial firm who claimed that he didn’t have time to relax. Mason finally convinced him to do so. The result? “He found he was able to get his 8 hours of work completed in 61/2 hours, freeing up time to start working on some ‘back burner’ projects that he enjoyed so much more.”

The Bottom Line
Grubbe learned the importance of personal stress management strategies 3 years ago when she was asked to take on a new project for her employer. “I was asked to look at the direction the company needed to head in for the next 5–10 years to help make our employees safer at work,” she says. While many executives might focus their efforts on finding ways to directly improve on-the-job safety, Grubbe took a different approach. She teamed up with the company’s medical department, and together they began looking for ways to improve employee health, which they believed would ultimately improve safety.

It didn’t take the team long to realize that one of the most significant factors in determining overall health was the impact of stress. “This led us to start looking at wellness issues such as nutrition and exercise,” she says.

As a result of a number of new health programs in the company, DuPont has seen tremendous reductions in the costs of injuries over the past 3 years—on the order of 50–60 percent. This is quite an accomplishment for a company whose name has been synonymous with employee safety for more than 200 years. The company’s safety program began in 1802 when top management, tired of its gunpowder plants exploding and killing employees, started requiring plant managers to live in apartments built directly above the plants. With that one simple move, the number of explosions decreased to almost nothing. Since that time, DuPont has been a leader in employee safetya trend that Grubbe’s stress-relieving techniques help continue today.

William Atkinson has been a full-time business writer for 27 years, specializing in workplace health and safety. He is also the author of Eliminate Stress from Your Life Forever: A Simple Program for Better Living, due out from AMACOM Books in March 2004.

William Atkinson