Anxiety is a natural feeling that a healthy person can control. In a person with a normal psyche, anxiety occurs only in a stressful situation. It can be restrained or we can just forget about it. But if you feel anxiety for a very long time – months and years, you can’t cope with your excitement for some reason and without it, it prevents you from living and causes discomfort on a physical level, it may be worth a visit to a specialist.
Anxiety disorder is a real disease that can and should be treated. We should treat it with the help of a doctor. By anxiety, a person worried about himself and his relatives is afraid to lose or find himself guilty of something, imagines accidents, illnesses. In some cases, he cannot understand what caused the panic and believes that this is some kind of foreboding. It is difficult for him to relax, sometimes even to fall asleep. This condition may be accompanied by depression, so the disease is often called an anxiety-depressive disorder.
Anxiety disorder can be caused by family situations, past unhappiness, or other stressful situations. Quite often, it causes thyrotoxicosis – an increased level of the hormone produced by the thyroid gland. In any case, you can talk about the disease – and therefore, show it to the doctor (psychotherapist) if the condition has been haunting you for a long time and is not caused by any objective reasons. However, there are these objective reasons: stress, severe exhaustion, and sometimes illness, lead to a mental disorder.
How does anxiety manifest on a physical level?
Most clearly, an anxiety disorder shows itself at the level of emotions. However, there may be physiological symptoms that indicate a disease:
• heart palpitations not caused by physical activity;
• sweating: a person literally “breaks through” then during the next panic attack or at the sight of an object that causes alarm;
• discomfort in the stomach or intestines – severity, even pain;
• dry mouth, when drinking much water does not help;
•dizziness;
• trembling in the body;
•headache.
Since such changes in physical condition occur, your weight may also change. You must have heard that during stress a person begins to eat a lot. This can lead to obesity, as a person cannot stop. In the other case, a person refuses food because of deep depression. These two conditions are not normal, so it is very important to initially control the process of food intake.
Organic disorder
Organic anxiety disorder is a condition caused by physiological causes. Anxiety is a symptom of thyrotoxicosis, coronary heart disease, vascular pathologies of the brain, hypoglycemia and many others. As a symptom, anxiety disorder accompanies PMS, menopause.
With an organic anxiety disorder, the patient’s hands tremble, he is fussy, cannot sit calm, rubbing his hands or neck, twitching his leg. He sweats, his heartbeats frequently. The patient cannot focus his eyes on one subject for a long time, speaks quickly, and abruptly interrupts the conversation. However, he cannot explain to himself or his doctor what exactly is bothering him. Sometimes this condition is perceived as a norm or a premonition of something bad. Sometimes the patient finds cause. But when checking, it occurs very often that this reason does not matter to the patient.
Is it possible to cure yourself?
Anxiety disorder does not pose any danger to society, it is skillfully “disguised” by ordinary excitement, it is difficult to recognize. But if you understand the cause of constant anxiety, you can try to recover on your own.
Like depression, anxiety disorders can sometimes be treated without the help of specialists. To eliminate symptoms, you can:
• engage in relaxation and meditation (below we describe the methods of meditation and yoga exercises);
• change your lifestyle, arrange a long rest or quit your job altogether, which causes overwork;
• restore the regime, increase the duration of sleep, establish proper nutrition;
• get rid of factors causing stress.
Traveling, a new hobby, a new environment, and friends, a change of job and environment can somehow affect a person suffering from increased anxiety. But this is far from being always effective. Real depression and anxiety disorders (regardless of the type) cannot be treated effectively without the help of a specialist.
How do you know if you have an anxiety disorder?
• Feel unusual panic, fear, and heaviness;
• There is a tendency to lose control, succumb to obsessive thoughts about past traumatic experiences;
• You wake up from frequent nightmares;
• They tend to wash their hands often;
• You have problems with sleeping;
• Hands and feet sweat unusually often;
• Frequent heartbeat.
How can yoga help get rid of anxiety?
Regular practice of yoga helps to remain calm and relaxed in everyday life, and also gives the strength to accept the events, without experiencing anxiety. Ideally, the practice of yoga includes a full range of asanas (body postures), pranayama (breathing techniques), meditation and the ancient philosophy of yoga. All this in a complex has allowed patients suffering from anxiety to recover and with new strength to meet the possibilities of this life.
Each of us can live a life full of confidence, free from fear. The following yoga practices will help calm a restless mind.
Move your body and relieve your mind of stress with asanas
These yoga poses will help you achieve body health and a happy state of mind. Asanas help relieve stress and cleanse the entire body of negativity.
• Dhanurasana (bow pose);
• Matsyasana (Fish Pose);
• Janu Shirshasana (One-Legged Forward Bend);
• Setubandasana (Pose Bridge);
• Marjariasana (Cat Stretch);
• Paschimottanasana (Two-Legged Forward Bend);
• Hastapadasana (Standing Pose with Tilt Forward);
• Adhomukha Shwanasana (Dog pose face down);
• Shirshasana (Headstand);
• Shavasana (Corpse Pose).
Breathe correctly with pranayama to relieve anxiety
Try the following breathing techniques:
Kapalabhati;
Bhastrika;
Nadi Shodana Pranayama (alternate breathing through the nostrils) is effective for relieving the stress of the whole organism.
Brahmari Pranayama (“Bee’s Breath”)
Foods That Can Help The Body Relieve Anxiety
To date, there is much evidence of the role of magnesium in the prevention and treatment of mental disorders. The low magnesium content in the diet of experimental animals led to a sharp increase in the level of anxiety and the deterioration of their behavior. Therefore, foods rich in magnesium can help a person feel calmer. The main sources of magnesium include leafy greens, as well as legumes, nuts, pumpkin seeds, and whole-grain products.
Zinc-rich foods also contribute to reducing anxiety: oysters, cashews, liver, beef, and egg yolks.
Fatty fish, such as wild salmon, mackerel, containing omega-3 fatty acids, can have a positive effect on the nervous system. A study among medical students in 2011 was one of the first to demonstrate that omega-3 can reduce anxiety. In this study were used dietary supplements containing omega-3 fatty acids. Earlier, omega-3 fatty acids were associated only with an improvement in depressive states.
A study published in the journal Psychiatry Research in 2015 demonstrated a relationship between the effects of probiotic products and a reduction in social anxiety. Eating probiotic products such as pickles, sauerkraut, kefir has led to a reduction in anxiety symptoms.
Also curious is the use of a vegetable that is not quite popular so far and is healthy for our health – asparagus. Due to its sedative effect, asparagus extract and asparagus drinks are used in alternative medicine in China.
Foods rich in B vitamins, such as avocados and almonds, are also active defenders of the nervous system. They improve mood through the ability to stimulate the release of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. Avocados and almonds are a safe, simple “first aid” medicine for managing anxiety.
This article may be helpful if you have any symptoms of anxiety disorder and would like to deal with it. Do yoga, add to your diet the foods that we described above and your mental health will be improved.
