Move Your Body to Reduce Stress

Our Bodies are Made to Move. Exercise is the best way to prevent health issues and disease. It seems as though after several, several years people are starting to see this. From an evolutionary perspective, our bodies are made to move, and if we do not, the body will generate free radicals that eventually (and sooner rather than later for some) create and cause disease, cancer, illness, etc. The flight or fight response is still ingrained in our bodies from the beginning of time. Although our stressors are not running from dinosaurs and fighting prey for food for the family, we still do have our share of stress. Bosses yelling at us, kids yelling and screaming or getting bad grades, a peer that tries to make life miserable for you.....this is all called distress, or bad stress.
Eustress is good stress and examples are laughter, exercise, etc. Both kinds of stress give us an adrenaline response, some greater than others, and with that comes a higher heart rate and cortisol levels.
Here's the question: when our heart rate does go up, how long does it take after that stressful situation to go back down to a resting level? This is one of the things that tells us how fit we are, how fast our heart can recover after going up to a much higher heart rate. Exercise is a way to ensure that our stress responses and recovery are great, thus lowering our risk for several diseases and cancers, and overall free radical generation.