By _____________, you can fool your body to stop firing stress hormones.

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Meditation activates the body's relaxation response, which slows down the fight-or-flight signals and reduces the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. With regular practice, your baseline stress hormone levels tend to drop and your brain becomes less reactive to stressors, so situations evoke a smaller hormonal response. The other options don’t produce this calming, hormonal dampening as reliably: poor sleep tends to raise cortisol, sugar can trigger hormonal spikes, and running raises cortisol during the activity even though it can help long-term stress management.