All About Anxiety
Having occasional feelings of anxiety is a normal part of our emotional lives.
You may experience anxiety when facing life stresses, like a big meeting at work, a test in school, or when you have a big decision to make.
But if these feelings are ongoing, excessive, and intense, they can interfere with your day to day life.
They can disrupt your work performance, academic studies, and your relationships.
I’m Dr.
Antonella Aguilera-Ruiz, a Sacramento naturopathic doctor with a focus on mental health.
And if anxiety is a frequent companion of yours, there are naturopathic solutions that can help.
Today we’ll explore the details behind anxiety – what it is, the different types of anxiety disorders, and some naturopathic approaches that can help.
This article discusses mental health related topics that some readers may find troubling.
Reader discretion is advised.
What Is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a human emotion, just like joy, sadness, depression, ecstasy, and fear.
It’s perfectly normal to feel anxious when there’s something specific to be anxious about.
But an anxiety disorder is different.
With an anxiety disorder, you’ll feel all the symptoms of anxiety, but there’s no specific event to tie it to.
Anxiety disorders are sometimes accompanied by panic attacks.
Panic attacks are repeated episodes characterized by sudden feelings of anxiety and terror that can last for several minutes.
Anxiety and panic attacks can interfere with your daily activities.
They are difficult to control and exaggerate the actual danger or stress you perceive when they occur.
Having an anxiety disorder and panic attacks may lead you to avoidingavoid places or situations that trigger these feelings.
We don’t yet fully understand all the causes of anxiety disorders.
But we do know certain factors can contribute to their development.
This can include things like:
Genetic factors
Previous traumas
A thyroid disorder, like hyperthyroidism
Heart disease
Type 2 diabetes
Withdrawal from an addictive substance
Irritable bowel syndrome
Certain medications, like salmeterol used to treat asthma, Armour Thyroid used to treat hypothyroidism, among others
Certain nutrient deficiencies, like iron, magnesium, or vitamin D
How Do I Know If I Have An Anxiety Disorder?
Symptoms of an anxiety disorder are persistent and can interfere with your daily activities and emotional wellbeing.
Panic attacks have more intense symptoms that usually dissipate after an episode.
However, the general feelings of anxiety can persist.
Some common signs and symptoms of anxiety include:
Feelings of nervousness or restlessness
Increased heart rate
Hyperventilation, rapid breathing
Fatigue
Trembling
Sweating
A sense of impending danger, doom, or panic
Inability to focus on anything other than present anxiety
Gastrointestinal problems
Difficulty managing your worry
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All this can be difficult to deal with, and unfortunately it can be a vicious cycle.
Your anxiety symptoms may cause you to avoid situations that trigger your anxiety, which can cause you to feel irritable and isolated, which can further aggravate your anxiety symptoms, and so on.
Are There Different Types of Anxiety Disorders?
There are several different types of anxiety disorders, and each one of them can affect you differently.
Let’s take a look at the five most common ones.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder, GAD, involves having exaggerated anxiety and worry that persists for several months.
GAD can make you feel like there is impending doom and causes your worry to be out of proportion for even simple things.
This can affect and impair your daily activities and routine as well as your personal and social relationships.
Generalized anxiety disorder typically develops slowly and can occur at any time in life.
It’s often accompanied by other anxiety disorders or depression.
The general feeling of worry can also come with physical symptoms such as headaches, irritability, sweating, fatigue, hot flashes, trembling, and muscle tension or pain.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Obsessive compulsive disorder involves ritualistic behaviors and actions and fearful ideas.
These obsessions are characterized by repetitive thoughts and impulses, which create excessive stress and anxiety.
These intrusive and unwanted thoughts are difficult to control.
OCD also involves compulsions, or repetitive behaviors, that make you feel compelled to perform certain actions as a way of trying to control or reduce anxiety.
Panic Disorder
If you have a panic disorder, you may feel repeated episodes of unexpected and intense anxiety, which can peak within minutes.
These episodes are known as panic attacks.
The physical symptoms of panic attacks may include shortness of breath, dizziness, chest pain, and faintness.
Panic attacks involve feelings of intense fear, impending doom, or catastrophe, along with loss of control.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this can be scary.
It can lead you to anticipate having another one, which can itself trigger feelings of anxiety in certain situations.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, can occur after being exposed to or experiencing a terrifying or traumatic event.
Events such as death, war, accidents, or natural disasters can lead people to have an anxiety disorder.
This may include feelings of elevated fear, sadness, anger, and worry.
When these feelings are ongoing or become more serious, it can cause you to relive the traumatic event in their daily life.
This is particularly true for certain sensory triggers that may remind you of a traumatic event.
This might cause you to avoid situations where you know those triggers might occur, but of course it’s not always easy to do so.
Social Anxiety Disorder
Social anxiety disorder is, like the name suggests, specifically related to social situations.
With social anxiety, you may feel embarrassed or self conscious in social situations.
These feelings can lead to feeling anxious about being perceived negatively and judged by other people.
This type of anxiety disorder can be limited to specific situations.
These include certain social interactions, or eating or drinking in front of other people.
It may also be so severe that it can trigger anxiety symptoms when being around other people at any time.
Other Types Of Anxiety Disorders
While we discussed in more detail the five most common types of anxiety disorder, there are many other types that can occur.
Anxiety disorders can also manifest itself because of specific physical health problems.
Children can experience selective mutism, which limits their ability to speak in certain situations.
This can interfere with school, work, and public and personal social function.
Children can also experience separation anxiety, where they have high levels of anxiety when separated from parents or guardians.
Anxiety disorder can also be substance induced.
This type of intense anxiety is directly related to the misuse of drugs and medications or exposure to a toxic substance.
Anxiety disorder can also be the result of specific phobias that a person has.
Being exposed to that phobia can lead to anxiety and a desire to avoid that situation or object, and may also cause panic attacks.
Can Your Diet Help Reduce Anxiety?
While there’s been research in the area of diet and mental illness, it has mostly focused on depression.
The research has been challenged by two factors.
One factor is that the grand majority of studies have been done in animal models.
This can be helpful in the early days of researching a topic, but it’s somewhat limited in providing more concrete clinically relevant information.
What we observe in rats may not be true in humans, especially when we take into consideration a more multifactorial disease experience like anxiety.
The second factor affecting the research in this area is that most trials that have looked at giving diet as a treatment intervention weren’t actually looking at individuals diagnosed with anxiety.
While anxiety was measured, participants in the majority of studies had another medical illness or were healthy.
This is different than having anxiety (diagnosed by a healthcare practitioner) and being given a diet, then watching what happens.
But, we have some data in this scenario.
Diet in those with an anxiety disorder
In 2009, researchers compared two different treatments for individuals with moderate to severe anxiety.
One group was given “naturopathic care” and the other was given psychotherapy.
The naturopathic group was given the following:
Dietary counseling
Deep breathing techniques
Multi vitamin
Ashwagandha
The other group was given:
Psychotherapy
Deep breathing
Placebo
Both groups had a significant improvement in their anxiety.
The naturopathic care had a greater improvement of symptoms compared to the psychotherapy group.
The diet instructions were relatively conservative:
Reduce intake of stimulants (caffeine, cigarettes, chocolate)
Eat small, meals at regular intervals
Increase consumption of fruit, fish, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains.
Worth highlighting that the last point is essentially principles of the Mediterranean diet or a whole-foods, unprocessed traditional pattern of eating.
In the second trial, done in 2015, participants had depression and/or anxiety and were assigned to a group that met with a dietician and exercise physiologist or connected with someone via the phone.
Both groups actually had an improvement in symptoms.
And there were no major differences between the two groups.
This trial was personalized in that each participant worked with the practitioner to make individualized nutrition or exercise goals.
Examples being, adding more vegetables, or eating more fish or reducing “junk food”.
Essentially, the results are a little befuddling because the movement and diet group didn’t fare better.
The participants had already been getting treatment in primary care and both groups spoke with someone regularly.
Maybe, that’s just as important as the diet piece and indirectly helps someone focus on positive changes.
Herbs and anxiety
There are some herbal remedies that have been shown to decrease anxiety symptoms.
Those include: chamomile, saffron and curcumin.
While these are delicious additions to food and can be part of a varied diet, if you want to explore them as a supplement, please be sure to consult with your healthcare practitioner.
Celiac disease and anxiety
Finally, although you may think of Celiac disease primarily as a digestive concern, you may be surprised to learn that there are well established neuropsychiatric symptoms that may be possible.
One of those being, anxiety.
In those with Celiac, removing gluten is anti-anxiety.
Does this mean everyone with anxiety should go gluten-free?
No.
However, as part of the work up for anxiety it’s important to look at your whole health picture including your past medical history, because the anxiety might be part of an underlying disease condition that may have been missed and screening for Celiac can be a way to clarify your treatment options.
Book Your Appointment With Wild Lemon Health Today
I’m Dr. Antonella Aguilera-Ruiz, a Sacramento naturopath, and if you’re dealing with feelings of anxiety, I can help.
We’ll work together to uncover the root of your anxiety and find natural solutions that can help.
I’m offer a free 15 minute discovery call to answer questions and be sure I’m the right fit for you.
During that consultation, we’ll chat about your health concerns – mental or otherwise – and how naturopathic medicine can help.
