• How to Head Off Stress & Anxiety Before They Happen

    How to Head Off Stress & Anxiety Before They Happen

    If you suffer from stress and anxiety, you probably want to avoid future run-ins with these problems. Of course, stress is inevitable, but you can learn to cope with it in a functional, healthy way. Here are some tips for staving off stress and anxiety before they catch up with you.

    1.) Good Nutrition

    This is listed as number 1 for a reason. It is one of the most important and effective means by which you can cope with stress and anxiety and prevent them from taking over your life. Some nutrients and foods that are good for proper brain and body function are:

    • Essential Fatty Acids, such as those found in olive oil, salmon, flax seeds, and other unrefined vegetable oils should be sought out and deliberately included in the diet.

    • Vitamin D

    This vitamin plays a significant role in mood regulation. In fact, has been used to treat people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

    2.) Regular Exercise

    This is also very important for avoiding the negative effects of stress and anxiety. Don’t wait until you feel stressed or anxious; like good nutrition, make exercise a part of your regular routine.

    Exercise increases circulation, and also induces the body to produce endorphins. These brain chemicals profoundly affect your mood and response to stress.

    Exercising with realistic goals is also important. You don’t want to bring on anxious feelings by “failing” at an enormous exercise goal like running a marathon right away when you’ve never run before.

    Keeping your goals realistic – say running an around a quarter-mile track once and walking another 3 laps – can boost your confidence and give you a sense of accomplishment. These are great weapons against stress and anxiety.

    3.) Positive Self-Talk

    You may need help in learning how to break negative self-talk patterns. Many of us have developed patterns of thought that automatically involve self-abasement.

    For example, if you make a mistake on a piece of paperwork, your mind may automatically begin “beating you up,” and you’ll have thoughts that you can’t do anything right, you are terrible at paperwork, and so forth. Learning to recognize this pattern and redirect your thoughts to more positive ones can help prevent further stress and anxiety.

    4.) Deep Breathing

    It may seem silly to focus on breathing as part of preventing stress and anxiety. Everyone knows how to breathe, right? Yes, everyone knows how to breathe, but few people know how to breathe properly.

    Deep breathing is the deliberate taking of breath that helps focus your thoughts and energy. It also promotes the circulation of oxygen throughout the body. Exhaling deeply and fully is also important, as this more thoroughly eliminates toxins from the body.

    5.) Rest

    Getting adequate sleep is essential for helping your body cope with stress. Everything seems bigger, scarier, and more worrisome when you are exhausted.

    6.) Know the Symptoms

    Learn to recognize your body’s cues that it’s experiencing too much stress and its resulting anxiety. Pay attention to things like feelings of restlessness, fatigue, anxious thoughts, and muscle tension. Once you learn to recognize the stressful trend, you can stop it before it takes hold.

    anxious woman

  • This Might Make Your Anxiety Worse

    Foods & Drinks That May Increase Anxiety

    If you suffer from anxiety, you may blame certain triggers in your environment for bringing on anxious feelings. But what you eat and drink can have a profound effect on your body’s chemistry. Some foods and drinks may actually worsen your anxiety.

    Here are some of the culprits:

    Drinks

    Coffee

    As you might have expected, the caffeine in coffee can make anxiety worse. It causes constriction of blood vessels and that feeling of the “jitters.” It can also cause or worsen insomnia. In addition, coffee inhibits the absorption of Vitamin C, an important nutrient for optimal mind and body function.

    Soft Drinks and Colas

    Even if you choose caffeine-free, sugar-free soft drinks, you are still drinking a beverage that can worsen your anxiety. The high-acid content of dark colas produces an acidic environment in the body. In order to alleviate this acidity, calcium and magnesium are leached from your bones.

    Both of these minerals are crucial to proper brain and muscle function. In fact, muscles can not relax properly without calcium and magnesium. The tense muscles associated with anxiety are therefore exacerbated.

    So if you choose a clear, caffeine-free, sugar-free soft drink, it won’t worsen your anxiety, right? Wrong! The artificial sweetener in these drinks, aspartame, may have significant cognitive effects. It may indeed worsen the psychological aspect of anxiety.

    Alcohol

    At first, this seems like the opposite of caffeine, and therefore a good idea for anxiety sufferers. But actually, alcohol consumption (beyond a small glass of wine a few times a week) can worsen depression and inhibit the absorption of key nutrients.

    Foods

    Chocolate

    While chocolate is often considered the “feel-good” food, it contains significant caffeine and large amounts of sugar. As discussed above, caffeine has the opposite effect that an anxious person wants and needs. The sugar is another problem and is discussed below.

    Excessive Sugar

    By “excessive,” some nutritionists mean anything over 5 tablespoons of refined sugar daily. While you may think that would be easy, it’s not. Sugar is in everything, and 5 tablespoons is just 1 tablespoon more than 1/4 cup.

    If you drink several large glasses of sweet iced tea, you have probably drunk close to 1/4 cup of sugar. And that does not take into account the sugar in your foods, either hidden (such as in frozen foods) or obvious (such as “frosted” cereals).

    So why is sugar a problem? For one thing, the body uses Vitamin B6, which is crucial to mood and proper hormone function, to metabolize sugar. In other words, sugar depletes your body of this and other important nutrients. It can also create highs and lows in mood, and bring on a post-sugar “crash,” or low blood sugar.

    Refined Flour

    Refined flour acts much like sugar in the body. And it has none of the essential fatty acids, fiber, and other nutrients that whole grains do.

    Highly Processed Foods

    Many processed foods are full of preservatives, dough “conditioners” (in the case of store-bought bread products), artificial flavors, and artificial colors. Some of these can pass through the blood-brain barrier, affecting cognitive function.

    Tartrazine (FD&C yellow #5), commonly found in candy, gum, margarine, and many other processed foods can disrupt the hormone balance in the body.

    This Might Make Your Anxiety Worse 2

  • Living with Depression

    Living with Depression – Life’s Not Over

    For those living with depression, every day can be a challenge. For family members of depressed people, it’s sometimes hard to know what to do, and you may feel like you’re walking on eggshells. Understanding depression can go a long way in helping deal with this illness, and there are some coping tips that may help. Here are some suggestions.

    Get the Best Treatment

    The first step for a depressed person is to get treatment – but it’s equally important to get the best treatment, say experts. This means taking the time to get the help you need or helping your depressed family member get optimal help.

    Include Family in Therapy

    While the depressed individual may not want family members present in every counseling or therapy session, it may be a good idea to include family members at least some of the time. The therapist can then see a slice of the family dynamic, and the family members can gain a better understanding of the issue. Some family members are more likely to believe a therapist’s “take” on things than take the depressed person’s word for it.

    Including family may also help other family members to better understand how to treat the depressed individual, and what things they can say or do to support the depressed person.

    Parents of Teens

    Because teenagers are a high-risk group for developing depression, sources say, the parents of teens may benefit from some tips on living with a depressed teen. Here are some suggestions.

    * Develop a tough skin. Teens who are depressed may yell at you to leave them alone, to go away, or to stop talking to them. For teens, this may be a sort of test of your parenting – the teen may be testing to see if you care enough to press through the anger and continue trying to reach them. Parents who truly do care may miss this aspect and just give up after being yelled at. Instead, remember it’s not personal and your teen still needs you.

    * Listen. Busy parents often forget to listen, and how important it is. Parents sometimes need to stop running and take a break to listen and talk. A parent-teen “date” or retreat can help – maybe a mother-daughter shopping trip or father-son fishing excursion.

    * Encourage your depressed teen to problem solve. As parents, we just want their struggles to go away; but giving them the tools to cope is a gift that will last a lifetime. It’s okay to help, encourage, and prompt your teen; but experts say your goal as a parent is to get their brains working on solving their own problems.

    Nurture Relationships

    As a depressed person, it may be hard to maintain friendships. But supportive friends are important for your depression management and coping. Try to make a point of nurturing these relationships; it will help you break out of yourself and focus on someone else.

  • Signs and Symptoms of Depression

    Depression – Signs and Symptoms

    How do you know when you’re just having a hard time and are stressed out, or if it’s something more serious? When is it clinical depression? While a doctor is the only one who can make a qualified diagnosis, there are some signs and symptoms of depression that can signal your need to see a doctor. Here are some of those signs and symptoms.

    Morning Blues

    According to medical sources, feeling particularly depressed in the morning is a sign that you may have depression. Feeling sad all day is also part of the depression, but the morning blues – perhaps making you just want to stay in or go back to bed – are particularly likely to be connected with depression.

    Anger

    Many people don’t realize that recent research points to a connection between anger and depression. Blowing up and yelling at people without being able to control it may signify depression.

    Irritability

    Slightly different from anger, irritability is more about feeling snappish or easily frustrated and/or annoyed than angry blow-ups. Irritability connected to depression may make you feel really on edge all the time.

    Overwhelm

    Do you find yourself wanting to give up because things seem like they’re just too much? Do you say, “I just can’t take anymore,” often? Depression can make you feel overwhelmed and over-stressed even when your schedule is not terribly demanding. Even a simple request for you to do something may send you over the edge and make you feel super-stressed.

    Feeling Inadequate

    People with depression may constantly compare themselves to others. As noted above, a not-too-demanding schedule may seem overwhelming to a depressed person, thus making the depressed person feel inadequate that he/she can’t handle a schedule that others seem to handle fine. This sets up a cycle of feeling inadequate.

    Insomnia or Excessive Sleepiness

    Ironically, depression can cause some people to lose sleep, while it makes others want to sleep all the time (hypersomnia).

    Lack of Interest

    Are you just not interested in any outside activities? Are things you once looked forward to just burdensome things you have to trudge through and get done? This may mean you have depression.

    Changes in Weight

    In another irony of depression, both weight loss and weight gain may be symptoms of depression. Generally, if you gain or lose 5% or more of your body weight in a month, it may mean depression.

    Indecision

    Depression can make you feel like you can’t make a decision, even simple ones. Your schedule just seems like gibberish when you look at it; you may not show up for things you have on your calendar or get dates wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, of course, but if this is a chronic problem or you just can’t seem to get a handle on your schedule even when you sit down and try to figure out what to do and what to skip, it may mean depression.

    Inability to Concentrate

    Depressed people often have trouble concentrating and focusing. Your mind may wander, even to thoughts of death or suicide, and you may feel like you just can’t get it together.

    sad depressed woman