Everyone knows stress is a huge problem. It attacks us from every angle– traffic, deadlines, work colleagues, bills, personal relationships, taxes, health issues, and more. Stress has changed from being a necessary reaction of the body to fight-or-flight situations (think: a water buffalo charging at you from 15 feet) to an ever-present nuisance, wearing us down and degrading our health. The Mayo Clinic says “Stress that’s left unchecked can contribute to many health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes.”
Stress also creates a vicious cycle. According to Psychology Today, “frequent exposure to high levels of stress hormones exhausts the body’s physical resources, impairs learning and memory, and makes people susceptible to depression.” These symptoms can prevent you from dealing with what caused the stress in the first place, trapping you in an unhealthy high-stress state.
4 Brothers Took a 14-Year Journey in the World of Nutrition to Create StressKiller
In 2003, Christian D’Andrea was working on a documentary called “HALO: Freefall Warriors” for the Military Channel. While filming on base, he came across a military energy bar. That discovery led to a partnership with military nutrition labs and the founding of a nutrition company. For the last 14 years, he and his brothers Mark and Paul have dedicated themselves to improving people’s health by delivering premium nutrition. One example of their success is that they led a campaign to educate the military on the dangers of trans fat, eventually convincing the brass and leading to its removal from military specs.
Along the way the brothers have gained access to military research on performance, including on how soldiers could combat stress. Joined now by their brother from another mother, Aleco Bravo, the team of four continued their drive to help people by spending years combing through research on stress and anxiety. What they found was astonishing: despite the fact that stress is such a universally recognized problem, and despite the fact that there are a ton of studies on how to reduce stress, nobody had taken the time to put all the best anti-stress nutrients in one package before. 
That has now changed, as they took it upon themselves to create StressKiller, the ultimate blend of stress- and anxiety-reducing ingredients. It launched earlier this year and is now sold on GNC.com and on Amazon. And the brothers are here today to share their research with you so that you can reduce the effects of stress in your everyday life, focus on resolving the issues that are causing that stress, and break the cycle of stress.
StressKiller works by providing 5 key stress-reducing nutrients:
1. L-Tyrosine – In one of the cooler (literally) experiments we’ve seen, researchers stressed out their subjects by exposing them to freezing cold temperatures. The researchers measured two groups (one given a placebo, and one given l-tyrosine). The result: the group given l-tyrosine performed better on cognitive tests (math skills, coding map compass, and pattern recognition), and had improved happiness and mental clarity.[1]
How does it work? Research has shown that sustained work periods longer than 12 hours, often involving sleep loss and fatigue can reduce levels of substances called catecholamines (such as dopamine and norepinephrine), leading to stress, anxiety, mood deterioration, and decreased performance.[2] Taking the amino acid l-tyrosine, a precursor of catecholamines, can increase depleted levels of norepinephrine in the brain, reducing stress and anxiety and improving mood and performance.[3]
2. L-Theanine –researchers have long suspected that l-theanine, an amino acid present in green and black tea, affects brain function. What they found was amazing: when given in doses higher than that found in a typical cup of black tea, l-theanine “relaxes the mind without inducing drowsiness.”[4]
Another clinical study found that “l-theanine clearly has a pronounced effect on attention performance and reaction time response in normal healthy subjects prone to have high anxiety”[5]
The research led the respected Cleveland Clinic to conclude: “It is said to generate creativity, a state of wakeful relaxation, and higher learning via the ability to ignore distracting information during complex tasks.”[6]
3. Magnesium citrate – magnesium is an important mineral for your body, keeping cortisol levels low and preventing stress symptoms.[7] Ironically, physical and emotional stress can lower your levels of magnesium, since the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline release magnesium from cells.[8] This creates a vicious cycle where stress leads to magnesium deficiency, which in turn leads to worse symptoms of stress. So keeping magnesium levels balance in your body is an important way to ward off the symptoms of stress and anxiety.
One thing to be aware of when looking for magnesium supplements is something called bio-availability… i.e. what your body actually can absorb. StressKiller uses magnesium citrate, which has been found to show “superior bioavailability after 60 days of treatment when compared with other treatments studied.”[9]
4. B-Vitamins – renowned for their ability to provide natural energy, B-vitamins are now gaining fame for their ability to lower stress. Researchers studied 60 participants over 3 months, measuring work demands, mood, anxiety and strain. They found that the group taking B-vitamin supplements reported an “almost 20 percent improvement in stress levels.”[10] The leader of the study, Professor Con Stough, said “Anything we can do to reduce work-related stress is a good thing. By lowering stress, we also lower the risk of health problems such as cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety.”
5. Vitamin C –Vitamin C is another nutrient that has been studied and found to have beneficial effects on stress levels. German researchers performed a study on 120 people, assigning them the stressful task of speaking in public and performing math problems. Those taking the vitamin C supplement had significantly lower cortisol levels and blood pressure than the group without vitamin C.[11]
What’s surprising about vitamin C is that the Recommended Daily Allowance is decades-old and was originally set to ensure that we had enough vitamin C to ward off scurvy. None other than Linus Pauling himself wrote that this amount should be increased to 250 mg to 4,000 mg per day so people could get the full array of health benefits from vitamin C.[12] StressKiller contains 500 mg of Vitamin C.
No one approach will get rid of all the stress in your life, but it’s important to use all the weapons at your disposal to give yourself and your body a chance to break the cycle of stress.
This a sponsored post on behalf of StressKiller, ShapAble was financially compensated for publishing this post