What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is that deep feeling of uneasiness that your body makes in response to stressful, dangerous, or unfamiliar situations. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 40 million adults (19.1% of all US adults) suffer from anxiety and 6.0 million adults suffer from panic attacks (~2.7%). What’s more, this trend is only getting worse every year and the most common solutions for anxiety are completely failing people!

Each of the common approaches to help anxiety work in various ways, but they all have this one thing in common: none of them TRULY address the source of your anxiety and instead act as a mere band-aid attempting to help the symptoms. Let’s discuss what causes anxiety and how to help it, naturally.

Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety

• Constantly feeling nervous, restless, and uneasy.
• Panic attacks
• Constantly worrying
• Increased heart rate
• Cold and sweaty hands and feet
• Heart palpitations
• Difficulty sleeping

Causes Of Anxiety

Chemical Stress

The term “chemical stress” can also be referred to as anything that is stressful to our internal health. This includes nutrient deficiencies, toxicities, blood sugar dysregulation, infections, high stress hormones, and so on. Nutrient deficiencies are an important one because specific nutrients (cofactors) are needed for the brain to make Gamma-Amino-Butyric-Acid (GABA). GABA is considered to be the main inhibitory neurotransmitter (brain hormone) in the body. This means it helps calm your brain and reduce any unnecessary over-activity in your brain. Most people lack the nutrients to produce GABA and thus result in a lot of anxiety (more on this later). We have to remember nutrient deficiencies occur either due to poor nutrition/diet in the first place, or toxicities or infections that deplete us of our nutrients. It is ESSENTIAL that these toxicities and/or infections are addressed for optimal GABA production and decreased anxiety.

Another important internal source of anxiety is high cortisol due to blood sugar handling problems (dysglycemia). When blood sugar is too high, you can develop insulin resistance and when it is too low, you can develop reactive hypoglycemia. Both of these lead to the adrenals kicking out cortisol in attempts to improve blood sugar levels. Read our articles on blood sugar here.

Emotional Stress

Most people are very familiar with emotional stress. We’re talking about stress from relationships, work, life, etc. These are very common sources of anxiety. Even deeper things like what we find purpose, joy, and hope in, can greatly influence us emotionally. We’ll talk more about some natural ways to address this later in this article. For now though, it is important to mention that many people struggle with emotional instability (guys and gals) or simply not being able to handle and process emotions well. This problem is largely rooted in one’s gut health. Hence, if you have a lot of emotional instability, you may want to focus on gut health. Great news is I have a full article on good gut health (here) as well as many other articles pertaining to our gut. Find that collection here.

Physical Stress

Physical stress includes any type of stress to your physical body/structure. This category is the least commonly known of the three. Injuries (old and new), fascial imbalances (SUPER important), and physical traumas (car accidents, falls, surgeries, etc) all belong in this category. These all cause increased stress to the body, increase stress hormones and inflammation, decrease lymph flow, and most importantly cause a lot of distress to our nervous system. All of which contributes to anxiety.

Reverse Your Anxiety

(It’s 100% possible…)

1. Increase GABA

As mentioned earlier, GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter (brain hormone) in the nervous system. That means that it helps reduce excess/unneeded neurological activity thus calming the brain down. What’s more, GABA is made from Glutamic acid which is HIGHLY excitatory (very stimulating). Going from a highly excitatory brain chemical to a highly inhibitory brain chemical results in huge decreases in anxiety and overall brain function. Thus, getting the necessary cofactors will increase GABA production and provide immediate reduction in your anxiety. If you want maximal and long-term results, however, you have to address the reasons for the nutrient deficiencies, toxicities, infections, etc. 

Increase GABA through essential cofactors such as Magnesium, B6 (P5P), or Passion flower, to name a few — there are upwards of 10+ nutrients that we check in our office when patients are deficient in GABA.

2. Balance Blood Sugar

Blood sugar becoming too high or too low can spike cortisol levels leading to increased stress and anxiety. If you struggle with low blood sugar, you’ll experience things like sweet-cravings, increased anxiety if you miss a meal, and eating will relieve your anxiety. If you struggle with high blood sugar due to insulin resistance (most common), you’ll experience sweet cravings, fatigue after meals, difficulty losing weight, and eating will not relieve your sweet cravings. Help to properly regulate your blood sugar through adequate and quality sources of protein and fats, reducing carbs, intermittent fasting, and getting consistent movement. Blood sugar is a really important topic and I gave you a very short version here. If you want the full break down on all things blood sugar, you’ll find that here. 

3. Address Emotional Stressors

Process, express, and effectively manage your emotional health through meditation, prayer, healthy relationships, healthy environments, journaling, a healthy gut, and when necessary, counseling or therapy. All of these things help one way or another with focusing your mind, expressing gratitude, enjoying life, connecting, and being able to overall properly manage your own emotional health. 

4. Address Physical Stressors

In a world where life has become so stationary, movement is a crucial form of therapy for anxiety as it helps with blood circulation, releasing dopamine (the feel good hormone), moves lymphatic fluid, and so much more. Also consider the importance of fascial injuries as the fascial system can be a large source of stress on the body. Apart from using Systems Health Care to balance the fascial system, I recommend patients get a massage ball roller to use daily for personal maintenance/support. Simply roll over every area of your body with a firm pressure ~5-15min each day. This can be life changing for anxiety, inflammation, and also your sleep!