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Stress management: a GP's guide

key points

  • Stress that doesn't let up has real, measurable effects on your heart, sleep and mood — it isn't just a feeling.
  • Slow, paced breathing for a few minutes a day genuinely calms your nervous system, and it works quickly.
  • Structured mindfulness programs help with anxiety, though the benefit does fade somewhat after a few months — worth knowing before you start.
  • Regular exercise, good sleep and strong relationships all reduce how hard stress hits you, and they reinforce each other.
  • "Adrenal fatigue" isn't a recognised diagnosis, and HRV gadgets don't add anything the breathing itself doesn't already do.

Most people I see describe stress as a feeling to push through. It's more than that. Stress that goes on for months, not days, leaves a mark on the body you can actually measure: higher blood pressure, worse sleep, a flatter mood, and over years, a higher risk of heart disease. One large study found people in high-strain jobs had about a 23 per cent higher rate of coronary heart disease than people without that strain, and high perceived stress on its own has been linked to a similarly raised risk. That's not a reason to panic about every stressful week. It's a reason to take the ongoing kind seriously, the way you'd take blood pressure seriously.

What actually helps?

Slow, paced breathing is the simplest thing on this list and the one I'd start with. Ten to twenty minutes a day, breathing at roughly six breaths a minute (about five seconds in, five seconds out), measurably calms your nervous system within minutes. You don't need a gadget to track your heart-rate variability while you do it — the breathing is doing the work, and a device measuring it afterwards adds nothing extra.

Structured mindfulness or relaxation programs, usually run over 8 to 12 weeks, have real evidence behind them for anxiety. I'll be honest about the catch: the effect is moderate at the end of the program and fades somewhat over the following few months. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing, it means it works better as an ongoing habit than a one-off course. A single weekend retreat with nothing after it tends not to leave much behind.

Exercise helps here too. Roughly the amount in my physical activity guide measurably blunts how strongly your body reacts to stress, on top of everything else it does for you.

Sleep and stress run in both directions: poor sleep makes you more reactive to stress, and stress makes sleep worse. Fixing one tends to help the other, so if you're only going to work on one thing, sleep is a reasonable place to start.

And don't underestimate people. Strong relationships and a sense of connection genuinely buffer the effect of stress on your health — it's one of the more consistent findings in this area, and it's worth reading alongside my social connection guide if that side of things has slipped.

What isn't worth your time

"Adrenal fatigue" gets used a lot online to describe burnout-type symptoms, but it isn't a diagnosis recognised in medicine — if you're feeling that way, it's worth talking to your GP about what's actually going on rather than chasing a label that doesn't exist. Heart-rate-variability wearables and biofeedback devices are popular too, but the evidence says the breathing itself is what helps, not the gadget measuring it. And a retreat or intensive course with no ongoing practice afterwards tends to fade quickly, for the same reason a single gym session doesn't build fitness.

When it's more than stress

Everyday stress comes and goes with what's happening in your life, and it usually eases once the pressure does. Anxiety and depression are different: they tend to stick around regardless of circumstances, colour how you see everything, and get in the way of daily life. If that sounds like you, please don't try to manage it alone with breathing exercises. Beyond Blue and Head to Health are good starting points, and it's worth asking your GP about a Mental Health Treatment Plan, which gives you subsidised sessions with a psychologist. If things feel unsafe right now, Lifeline is 13 11 14, any hour of the day.

try this week

Pick two or three: five minutes of slow breathing each morning, a short walk most days, an earlier bedtime three nights running, or reaching out to one person you haven't spoken to in a while.

Dr Ahmed Al-Obaidi

Dr Ahmed Al-Obaidi · FRACGP

General information only, not personal medical advice. Talk to your own GP about what suits you.

Where this comes from

All free to read in full, accessed 27 August 2026.

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