3 Ways to Significantly Improve your Anxiety
Anxiety is something that I’ve experienced throughout my life. So, if you too, also experience anxiety, know that you are not alone. Living with anxiety is not always the funnest way to go through life, but I’ve accumulated quite a few tools to make it much more manageable. There will always be seasons of life where anxiety might pick up and seasons that will feel more calm and stable. That is life. But, there are ways to calm the storm of everyday, unnecessary anxiety. So, let’s dive right in.
Anxiety, to put it really simple is a sensitization of the nervous system. What this means is that the body produces adrenaline (epinephrine and norepinephrine) more easily. So, a small trigger, that can oftentimes go unnoticed by the conscious mind, is picked up by the subconscious mind triggering a hormonal reaction, aka your body releases adrenaline. Adrenaline is the hormone that gives you symptoms of anxiety: shortness of breath, difficulty taking a deep breath, palpitations, jitteriness, feelings of impending doom, feeling like you need to run or leave the space you’re in, racing thoughts, shaky hands, upset stomach, nausea, urgency to evacuate your bowels, dark thoughts, etc. The reason why I am explaining this is because these are NORMAL things that happen with the release of adrenaline. There is nothing actually wrong with your body and you are not going to die (even though adrenaline tells you that you are). Adrenaline is usually released during life-threatening events, hence the dark thoughts to spring you into action. No need to compound the anxiety with more anxiety thinking there is something wrong with you and that your body is dysfunctioning. Your body is working exactly the way it is supposed to. The problem is that your nervous system is sensitized to external stimuli. This can be from PTSD, traumatic events, using stimulants (even socially accepted ones), a poor diet, genetics, a rough childhood, and many other things in our environment.
So, here are my 3 tips for significantly improving anxiety:
Box breathing and purposefully letting your body go limp
Box breathing is a type of breathing that has been clinically shown to calm down the nervous system. This is how you practice it: breathe in for the count of 4, hold your breath for the count of 4, exhale for the count of 4, and hold your breath for the count of 4. Repeat. While you are practicing the breathing technique, allow your body to just go limp. You can do this either while sitting or laying down. Just feel your leg muscles relax and your arms soften at your sides. If you’re sitting, just get really slouchy and loose. Make sure to let your belly hang loose too. Try to keep the breathing going for at least a few minutes at first, and then work up to 5-10 minutes. When you let your body go limp you are signaling to your body to stop producing adrenaline and to calm down. Adrenaline is supposed to put you into fight or flight mode, which is meant to urge you to fight or flight and engage all of your muscles. By relaxing your muscles, it sends a signal to the brain that you are no longer in danger. While you certainly can use this tool on an as-needed basis, try scheduling a time to do this every day. Consistency is key when re-training the brain to know that you are indeed safe.
Cut out Stimulants
This one can be hard for many, because there are so many socially accepted stimulants these days that are actually quite harmful on the adrenal glands because they cause the body to produce adrenaline. To name a few: caffeine (all forms even chocolate), sugar (all forms even fruit), and social media (it was designed this way to give us hits of adrenaline and dopamine). Caffeine, I think is an easy one to understand, but most people don’t realize how much sugar is also affecting them in a negative way. Most of us know to avoid things like sugary sodas or candy, but most of us don’t know that eating an acai bowl or fresh pressed juice can have the same affect on the adrenals. And, I’m not touching on the fact that the latter actually has nutrients and the former does not, because yes, that is true. But, when it comes to adrenal health and anxiety, the sugar will have the exact same impact on your blood sugar levels and subsequently on the adrenals. When your blood sugar spikes, the body rushes to clear out the sugar with insulin, but when the sugar is cleared out, the blood sugar crashes back down. The body wants homeostasis, so the adrenals release adrenaline which then signal to liver to make sugar through a process called gluconeogenesis, aka the liver makes sugar, to stabilize the blood sugar levels. This is a normal process done by your body in response to the stressors of too much sugar. It’s how your body stays alive. But, this constant release of adrenaline will leave you feeling anxious, and it will come at seemingly random times during the day, not necessarily after you eat the sugar. Do you often wake up during the night or early in the morning and feel wide awake? This could be due to this. Try cutting out sugar and caffeine for 3 weeks and notice how you feel. If you are addicted to these stimulants you will notice withdrawal symptoms and you may feel pretty crappy in the beginning, but stick with it. Once you release the addiction, you will actually stop craving them and feel a lot more stable throughout the day.
Increase soluble fiber in your diet
When your body is under constant stress and releasing a lot of adrenaline, the body uses soluble fiber to bind with excess hormones in the gut to take them out of the body. The problem is most people’s diets are very low in soluble fiber. When adrenaline is all used up it gets sent to the liver which then gets put into bile. When we eat soluble fiber, it binds onto the bile, with the goal for it to be released from the body through a bowel movement. If this doesn’t happen 90% gets reabsorbed back into the bloodstream. This means that adrenaline is compounding, leading to chronic anxiety and even panic attacks (that feel like they come on very easily or completely out of nowhere). The biggest source of soluble fiber in our diet comes from legumes—beans and lentils. Fun fact: contrary to popular belief, beans don’t cause gas. The gas is created from excess hormones in the digestive tract. These excess hormones will cause all carbohydrates and sugars to ferment quickly causing a buildup of gas (hello, chronic bloating). The problem is the buildup of hormones, not the food. So, you can actually use beans/soluble fiber to bind onto the hormones and take them out of the body. Since the soluble fiber is able to bind onto the hormones because it is mixed into bile, you must eat the beans away from fats in your diet, because it will instead bind onto the fats instead of the bile. You want to keep them 1 1/2 hours away from your fats. You can also substitute psyllium husk for the beans as it is also high in soluble fiber. The way I do this is by taking psyllium husk or an eating a bowl of beans in between my meals. Or, you can just keep your meals fat-free when you eat beans and then eat your healthy fats at one meal of the day. If you are feeling very anxious or having a panic attack, try eating 2 spoons of beans, 1/2 tsp of psyllium husk in warm water, or 2 capsules psyllium husk every 20 minutes until you feel better. You can also do this if you can’t sleep or get woken up in the night and can't get back to sleep. This will quickly take out the excess adrenaline. Check out my online pharmacy to see the psyllium husk I recommend.
So, those are my 3 tips to improve your anxiety. They worked wonders for me, and I hope they do for you too.