Whenever you are feeling anxious or stressed, the first thing you are told to do is control your breath. There are many different breathing techniques that you can try, like yoga breathing practices like Ujjayi breath, alternate nostril breathing, and deep diaphragmatic breathing.

Diaphragmatic breathing, often called belly breathing, is a simple way to use your diaphragm muscle to breathe more effectively. The Cleveland Clinic explains that the diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle at the bottom of your lungs. When you inhale, it moves down, making space for your lungs to fill with air. Your belly pushes out as this happens. When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up, pushing the air out. This type of breathing is different from chest breathing, where only your chest moves. You can do this breathing technique anywhere, anytime, and no one will even notice. It's a great tool for calming down quickly.

Why Do You Need Breathing Exercises

The reason why this is the go-to response for stressed people is because when you are stressed, your breathing becomes fast paced. The Cleveland clinic explains that stress triggers a fight or flight response in your body. Your body goes into survival mode as it thinks it is in danger. Some symptoms of this include, racing heart rate and blood pressure increase, this means that you are breathing quickly and heavily in order to move nutrients and oxygen into important muscles of your body.

Benefits of Belly Breathing

Belly breathing has many good things about it. It helps calm your nervous system, which is important when you're stressed. It activates a nerve called the vagus nerve, which helps your body relax. When you breathe slowly, your heart rate also slows down, and your body feels less stressed. It helps you control your feelings, like anxiety and fear, so you can think more clearly. This kind of breathing also helps your lungs work better by taking in more oxygen. It can even help you sleep better because it calms your mind. By practicing regularly, you can feel calmer and more relaxed every day.

How to Practice Diaphragmatic Breathing

Certain conditions like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) do make it difficult to work the diaphragm effectively. Your lungs rise and fall naturally, however with COPD air often becomes trapped in your lungs. Make sure you speak to a healthcare professional in case you are facing any difficulties while breathing.

To start, find a comfy spot. You can lie down with your knees bent or sit with your feet flat on the floor. Put one hand on your belly and the other on your chest. Now, breathe in deeply through your nose. Let your belly push out while your chest stays still. Hold your breath for a moment. Then, slowly breathe out through your nose or with your lips a little bit closed, letting your belly go back in. Do this four to six times, slowly and deeply. As you get better at it, you can do more breaths. Practice this every day, even when you're not feeling stressed, to feel calmer all the time.

Cortisol is one of the body's most powerful hormones, which is essential for survival, yet capable of quietly undermining health when chronically elevated. The line between beneficial training stress and harmful overload is thinner than most athletes realize, and the body's early warning signals are easy to dismiss.

Understanding how cortisol responds to exercise and when that response tips from adaptive to destructive is foundational to training smarter, recovering better, and protecting long-term health.

Why Cortisol Matters

Cortisol is a vital, life-sustaining hormone essential for survival and adaptation. During physical exertion, it ensures the immediate mobilization of energy by triggering the breakdown of stored carbohydrates and fats (gluconeogenesis and lipolysis) to fuel working muscles. Additionally, it maintains vascular integrity and acts as a powerful anti-inflammatory agent, safely modulating the immune system to protect the body against extreme inflammation caused by exercise-induced tissue damage.

When Exercise Becomes Stress

Exercise is naturally an acute stressor, but it transitions into a harmful chronic stress when training loads exceed the body's ability to recover. High-intensity, prolonged aerobic exercise or extreme high-volume resistance training, combined with inadequate rest, sleep disruption, and external stressors, keeps the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis constantly activated. When the natural 24-hour cycle of cortisol is disrupted and if the body does not get a long enough period of low cortisol exposure, exercise transitions from a positive adaptation (eustress) into destructive physiological strain.

Beyond Stress: How Excess Cortisol Reshapes the Body

The physical remodeling that chronic cortisol causes is profound and operates at the molecular level. Protein degradation occurs through activation of the ubiquitin–proteasome system. Cortisol further suppresses anabolic pathways by inhibiting mTOR signaling and reducing insulin-like growth factor 1 activity, leading to a sustained decrease in protein synthesis.

Visceral fat cells, the deep abdominal fat surrounding internal organs, have more cortisol receptors than fat cells elsewhere in the body. When cortisol levels remain elevated, these receptors essentially attract and store more fat in the midsection.

While Ozempic or Wegovy offer weight loss benefits, a significant caveat is the risk of regaining the kilos. This is not only a waste of money and effort but may also affect overall health.

About 70 per cent of people who stop these drugs eventually regain much of the weight they lost, often within 18 months.

Now, US researchers have developed a new minimally invasive procedure that resets the gut, and in early trials, has shown potential to help people maintain weight loss after stopping these popular drugs, which contain semaglutide — a GLP-1 receptor agonist — as the main ingredient.

Presenting the research at the Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2026, the team noted that the procedure works by renewing the lining of the upper small intestine. It potentially “resets” metabolism and helps preserve the benefits of weight loss.

The technique is called duodenal mucosal resurfacing. In a clinical trial, people who underwent the procedure regained far less weight compared to others after discontinuing the medication.

"Finding a treatment that allows patients to stop these medications without weight regain or loss of metabolic benefit is a huge unmet need," said lead author Shelby Sullivan, director of the Endoscopic Bariatric and Metabolic Program at Dartmouth Health Weight Center and professor of medicine.

"These findings indicate that this minimally invasive procedure may provide lasting weight-loss maintenance."

How The Procedure Works

Duodenal mucosal resurfacing is an investigational endoscopic treatment that uses controlled heat to remove damaged tissue from the inner lining of the duodenum, the first section of the small intestine just below the stomach.

This process, which ablates the unhealthy mucosal layer, encourages the growth of new, healthier tissue.

The treatment targets the small intestine, where many of the hormones affected by GLP-1 drugs are produced. Over time, diets high in fat and sugar can alter the lining of the duodenum, changing how the body processes food and regulates hormones. These changes can contribute to insulin resistance and metabolic disease.

By restoring a healthier mucosal layer, the procedure aims to reset the body's response to food, helping to stabilize metabolism at a lower body weight after stopping medications like Ozempic.

How Was The Study Conducted?

The findings are based on an early group of participants with six months of follow-up data. Among 45 people in this cohort, 29 received the resurfacing treatment while 16 underwent a sham procedure.

All participants had previously lost at least 15 per cent of their body weight using tirzepatide before stopping the drug. On average, patients lost about 40 pounds while on GLP-1 therapy. Six months after discontinuing the medication, those in the control group regained significantly more weight. Participants who received the sham procedure regained about 40 per cent more weight than those who underwent the actual treatment.

In addition, patients who had more extensive resurfacing regained only about 7 pounds and kept more than 80 per cent of their weight loss.

By comparison, the control group regained roughly twice as much. The gap between the two groups continued to widen from one to six months after the procedure, suggesting the benefits may persist and even strengthen over time.

"What's particularly encouraging is that the benefit appears to increase over time rather than fade, and that it behaves like a drug in terms of dose response," Dr. Sullivan said. "That gives us confidence that we're targeting the right biology."

No serious complications were reported from either the device or the procedure. Recovery is relatively quick, with most patients returning to normal activities within about a day.

At a time when most people follow a sedentary lifestyle, exercise is nothing short of medicine. However, for someone who is lazy, workouts can take a good deal of effort — but what if we told you that there are some simple exercises that will not take much of your time and can be done easily while lying flat on your back? According to experts, without having to lift a finger, you can get in shape.

Best workouts to do in bed

Researchers at Teikyo University in Tokyo, Japan, found that people can improve their agility, balance, and flexibility by engaging in a simple exercise programme that involves three exercises. These exercises engage the leg muscles and core in an easy and safe position. Writing in the journal PLOS One, the study authors compared the routine to Pilates, and experts said that it can help prevent falls and support early rehabilitation.

Adults are recommended to do two and a half hours of exercise each week, but about a third of people do not meet this target. In this study, 39 healthy men and women in their 20s, with optimal flexibility, balance, speed, and strength, were involved. They were all tested before and after a two-week regimen of lying down and working out. The exercises they were asked to perform were:

1. Tense the abs for five seconds while pressing them with the fingers—repeat three times
2. Lifting the hips off the ground to form a bridge pose, keeping the feet flat on the ground—hold for five seconds and repeat 10 times
3. Bending one leg at the knee and holding the ankle at 90 degrees, clenching and unclenching the toes; ensure that the heel slides along the floor towards and away from the body—repeat three times with each leg

Fifteen days later, participants showed significant improvement in standing balance, flexibility, and agility. However, they did not show improvement in raw muscle strength, jumping ability, or grip strength tests. Scientists said that these improvements were likely due to better muscle control rather than increased muscle mass. They also noted that no prior research has shown an exercise programme that is short and performed in a supine position to be effective in this way. However, this routine, which showed improvements in flexibility, agility, balance, and stability, shows promise. It could also be helpful for rehabilitation in older adults.

What is exercise snacking?

Exercise snacking refers to an approach created for people who struggle to find time for long gym sessions. Instead of spending hours at the gym, people can perform small bursts of exercise throughout the day. These sessions are an effective way to stay active without needing to block out time specifically for fitness. They can be spread across the day, with mini workouts lasting five to 10 minutes and repeated multiple times. The benefits are significant when practised consistently, especially for those with desk jobs or those suffering from diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, or even depression.