Posts Tagged happiness

Anxiety and Diet

Jul 20th, 2009 Posted in disease | no comment »

Is that your fourth cup of coffee for the day? Then that explains your run-away anxieties over small matters that others take on as normal life events – moving house, having a baby, credit card bills, and the eternal battle with the bulge. Anxiety can be triggered by poor eating habits and excessive coffee and alcohol intake. If you are guilty of the two bad habits, it is time now to change your lifestyle.

There are many different things which can cause anxiety and trigger attacks, but your diet and other lifestyle factors make a big difference. By limiting your intake of alcohol and caffeine, you can keep your anxiety levels lower and reduce anxiety attacks. Since caffeine is a stimulant, consuming excessive amounts of caffeine can worsen anxiety problems.

Too high an intake of alcohol or caffeine can knock your natural biochemical balance out of line and cause your nervous system to become overactive. Caffeine’s stimulating properties produce a feeling of elation, followed by anxiety as it makes its way out of your system. By cutting back on caffeine (or giving it up altogether), you’ll have more energy naturally and feel a lot calmer in general.

Alcohol is of course a depressant. Again, there is elation at first, followed by a fatigued, often anxious state. You should reduce or eliminate your alcohol intake if you want to reduce the frequency and severity of your anxiety attacks. It’s fine to have a drink or two on occasion, but if alcohol tends to cause you to become more anxious, then it should be avoided altogether. Make sure to drink enough water every day; dehydration causes your moods to destabilize and can also set off anxiety or panic attacks.

Eating smaller levels can also keep your anxiety under control. This keeps your blood sugar level steady; start with breakfast since this kicks off your metabolism for the day. Choose a healthy diet with lots of fresh vegetables, fruits and whole grains. A healthy diet boosts your serotonin levels, which gives you a sense of well-being and calm.

You should also incorporate tryptophan-rich foods into your diet. This amino acid is necessary for the production of melatonin and serotonin, which regulate moods and help you get restful sleep. Foods which are good sources of tryptophan include nuts, bananas, oats, dairy products, soy-based foods and poultry.

You also need plenty of fiber in your diet to combat anxiety. This regulates blood sugar. Menopausal women need extra calcium to reduce depression, fatigue and irritability. Anyone with anxiety issues may want to avoid the following foods which are problematic for many people – corn, shellfish, eggs, dairy product, wheat and nuts.

Salt is also something you should take in moderation. Since your body naturally produces sodium, too high of a dietary intake of sodium leads to high blood pressure and water retention as well as mood swings. Avoid junk food, fast food and other foods which contain excessive amounts of sodium. Curtail or eliminate artificial sweeteners and refined sugars as these can also increase your anxiety level and even worsen panic attacks.

Your diet has a lot of bearing on your overall anxiety level and a good diet can make anxiety attacks less frequent and less severe. However, if your anxiety is getting the best of you, see a doctor for their advice.

About the Author:

Panic Attacks: What Are They, and Why Do They Happen?

Jul 15th, 2009 Posted in disease | no comment »

Have you ever had a panic attack? If you have, you know that they feel absolutely awful. At their worst, they can actually feel like they’re going to take your life. And in fact, that can actually happen — but before you panic, let’s take a deep breath. In general, panic attacks are absolutely harmless, and they come because they are triggered by stress, resolving on their own. Medical experts, however, no longer think that they are harmless if you experience them very frequently. Why do they happen? We’ll talk about the symptoms in a minute, but first, let’s talk about what causes them. Panic attacks are not the result of any disease, but instead are the result of an overblown response to fear and stress.

When a person is confronted with a stressful situation, he may fight or flee. As a consequence, his body reacts to the situation and exhibits symptoms of panic attacks. During a panic attack, the body is flooded with epinephrine or adrenaline and the abnormal levels of the hormone triggers the body’s response to the stress. The experience may be as short as fifteen seconds or as long as thirty minutes. It has not been established yet why women are more prone to panic attacks than men.

What makes panic attacks so disabling is that they are unpredictable, so that they can be experienced anywhere, anytime. People who suffer from them never know when they’re going to experience one. When a panic attack begins, there first may be mounting fear, followed by several symptoms. Panic attacks can occur in stressful situations for anyone occasionally, but if you experience frequent panic attacks, you have panic disorder.

Panic disorder is different from but related to the condition of panic attacks. You experience panic attack symptoms, which can be liberally disabling. For example, you may have feelings of terror or dread, shortness of breath, a racing heart, trembling or shaking is, an upset stomach, tingling sensations or numbness, a feeling that you’re joking, suffocating, or even that you might die — or least lose control.

What causes panic attacks? The mind and the body react to intense fear. In the physical sense, it is traced to genetic malfunction. You can have panic disorder if a family member experienced depression or had episodes of panic attacks. However, medical science cannot pinpoint the exact causes of panic attacks because not all causes are known but the following have been known to cause the onset of these disabling attacks: genetics, stress, and medication.

Stress triggers panic attacks. Persons trying to cope with a separation or grief, and anxiety brought on by feared symptoms of diseases are vulnerable to panic attacks. One may not be able to know he or she is having a panic attack when mounting fear escalates to levels that can send a person to “lose control” of the situation. The body reacts exaggeratedly to the “fear factor” when there is no reason to be terrified.

If you suffer from severe panic attacks, most likely both your mind and body are reacting to fear. For example, if you already are under severe stress or if you suffer from depression, your body can have panic attack reactions, which exacerbates your mental fear, which further provokes physical symptoms, and so on. Panic attacks themselves can become a vicious cycle. It may become so bad, sadly, that thinking of having a panic attack can in fact actually cause one. Your mind first registers fear, then your body responds.

If you have panic attack symptoms very frequently, be sure you see your doctor. Rule out any physical disorders that can be causing your panic attacks, such as medication side effects. If you don’t have any physical conditions causing the panic attacks, medications can help control them, and therapy and counseling may also help. These types of sessions can help you get to the root of your fears, and a trained therapist can expose you to these fears under controlled conditions so that you face them and ultimately neutralize them; this can allow you to get your life back.

About the Author:

A Treatment for Anxiety is Meditation

Jul 13th, 2009 Posted in health | no comment »

Although anxiety can be present in various levels of severity, it is none the less a serious condition with which millions of people are faced with each and every day of their lives. While for some people anxiety may be little more than a nuisance, for others it can be extremely debilitating as these people are forced to live with the threat of frequent panic attacks. Irrespective of how slight or how severe your anxiety level is, it’s vital that you seek proper treatment.

The most common treatments for anxiety include prescription medication and therapy/counseling. However, there are those that profess a different, holistic approach to treating anxiety. This approach entails engaging in meditation therapy and it has been known to provide excellent results for even those that deal with incredibly high levels of anxiety.

Most people have a certain preconceived notions surrounding meditation and mediation therapy. For some, meditation is a “spacey” concept that has little real world value. In actuality, meditation is an excellent process for reducing the anxiety that affects the mind since it involves engaging the mind in a calming effect. This shuts down much of the “noise” the mind must contend with when it suffers from high anxiety.

Contrary to what many people believe, basic meditation can in fact be done even when you’re walking or moving. For the most part, meditation requires that you clear your mind of thought, primarily by distancing yourself from images, thought, events and people. Furthermore, in addition to being able to meditate on something in particular, one can also meditate with a totally clear mind instead. Interestingly enough, one method which has proved to be extremely popular, is to meditate on a Zen koan

This is a stylistic approach to a question that has no answer. A Zen Koan is used to develop the skills needed to search one’s own intrinsic character. This may seem somewhat daunting but in actuality it is simple. By allowing the mind to calm down and remove much of the ‘noise’ that is consistently present the anxiety is allowed to fade away.

Learning the basics of mediation is not all that tough. There are many free resources on the internet that detail the subject. Simply following their detailed tips can lead to at least a rudimentary understanding of what is needed to get the most out of a meditation session.

Of course, it’s only to be expected that there’ll be many people that may have reservations about meditating, particularly by themselves, given that some people are not keen on such solitary endeavors and as such, they would rather have a little company. In that case, joining a Yoga class could solve the problem. Yoga integrates meditation into its sessions and that allows the mind to achieve the much needed calming effect to reduce stress, anxiety, panic, and depression.

Practicing yoga in your home is also recommended when you are not in class. This is helpful to achieve a habit of solitary meditation. Alleviating your anxiety will be accomplished. This is not a new concept. Meditation has been a method of relieving anxiety for many thousands of years. Why has it been used for so many years? Because it works. This is the reason that meditation should be tried by those who have anxiety problems.

Meditation as a means of eliminating anxiety is nothing new. It has been performed for thousands of years. There is a reason for this longevity: it works. That is why those suffering from anxiety should definitely give it a try.

About the Author:

Counseling and Therapy for Anxiety

Jul 13th, 2009 Posted in health | no comment »

As any sufferer can attest to, having to deal with anxiety and panic attacks can be notoriously difficult and because this condition can virtually destroy the quality of a person’s life, seeking professional treatment is vital. In this case, the most common approach is to seek counseling and therapy from a duly qualified mental health professional.

The reason why therapy and counseling are so often used is because they aim to uncover the root cause of the problem. Once the root cause has been determined, then suitable treatment can be used in order to undo the damage. Of course it goes without saying that in order to get the most out of such session; one has to have realistic expectations.

The first thing that should be realized is that one therapy session is not a total cure for the anxiety problems. The expectations that many deeply hidden secrets will be revealed by a counselor and cure the anxiety is not a reality. Counseling will attempt to turn the affects of anxiety around by increasing the steps of the sessions. The quick-fix does not work. Only time, persistence and regular sessions will achieve the end result of turning the damaging effects of anxiety around.

One should also bear in mind that while there are standardized psychological tests, the specific questions asked and also the actual approach will vary from one mental health professional to the next. Of course, each mental health professional will have their own methods for administering these tests in order to make a diagnosis. As such, there’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach with regards to counseling or therapy sessions.

This brings up another point: there is no right or wrong answers to any questions the therapist might ask. Simply answer all the questions that are posed to you in as clear and direct a manner as possible. It is also critical to be truthful in your responses and avoid holding anything back during the questioning. This will simply undermine the potential success of your therapy sessions.

The counseling sessions are not just the series of questions that you must answer. You may also ask questions of the counselor in an attempt to understand your problems and to help in the reduction of the problems you are having with anxiety.

Keeping a journal of how the anxiety is affecting you and what you have done to deal with this problem since the beginning of the therapy is another thing you may do when you are not in the sessions. This may help to show you what it is that may cause the attacks to start. Through keeping this journal you may better understand your behavior and see if you think the sessions are helping.

Therapy sessions are the number one way of treating anxiety. They may not only help to decrease your feelings of anxiety but may help to turn around the effects of other psychological problems that you may be experiencing which will be brought out during these sessions. For those who want to regain control of their lives this is a sanctioned way of doing so.

About the Author:

How Can Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts Be Overcome?

Jul 10th, 2009 Posted in disease | no comment »

If panic attacks are something you deal with, you’re all too aware of how powerful thoughts can be. A panic attack can be set in motion by a single intrusive thought that gets you worrying about your health, your family, your job; whatever it may be. Before you know it you’re overwhelmed with panic and anxiety.

Having these kinds of thoughts from time to time is perfectly normal, but people coping with anxiety and panic disorders have a problem avoiding these intrusive thoughts. These worries lead to anxiety and then progress onward to panic or into depression. The longer you allow these intrusive thoughts to occupy your mind, the worse things get. It can easily become an obsessive pattern of behavior.

As these thoughts continue to plague your, your body reacts. You lose sleep and you lose the taste for food. Other people may find it difficult to understand your behavior and dismiss your fears as impossible quirks. You may discuss your fears endlessly with family but those intrusive thoughts won’t go away fast enough. As you lose weight and experience dreaded symptoms, your panic increases and your panic attacks become frequent.

Many of those who live with chronic anxiety, panic and depression are afraid to get help. They often think that seeking medical treatment means being committed against their will to some sort of institution, or simply fear being stigmatized as depressed. This is one thing they really needn’t worry about . Panic attacks can be managed, prevented and in most cases, cured completely. In order to get control of those intrusive thoughts, you have to learn to turn those negative thoughts into positives.

Banishing these intrusive thoughts often starts with lifestyle changes. By keeping occupied with your career, with volunteer work and spending time with friends, you can keep things a little more under control. By taking your focus off of yourself and placing it elsewhere, you may see those intrusive thoughts causing you problems less and less often. These thoughts can cause a lot of trouble and while no one has total control over what crosses their mind, we all have the ability to change the way we react to these thoughts.

When those negative intrusive thoughts pop in your mind, tell yourself that these are monsters trying to fool you. If a voice tells you that something awful will happen, snap out of it and tell yourself that whatever happens, you can handle it. Reacting by creating fun images to those negative thoughts gives them a weak force. This strategy is minimizing the fear factor. In time, you can manage those intrusive thoughts.

Loneliness and fatigue nourishes negative thoughts. Spend more time with your loved ones and your dearest friends. Work and laugh together to let off steam. The adage that laughter is the best medicine still holds true these — the more you have fun and laugh along banishes those intrusive thoughts in time.

If you prefer therapeutic counseling, seek a group in your locality. In these sessions, you will find people who can share your thoughts and your fears. The support they give can help you control your thoughts. In due time, you will learn how to master your thoughts, make that positive shift to regain your life.

About the Author:

Panic Attacks while Driving

Jul 8th, 2009 Posted in disease | no comment »

You may have been driving for decades and never had a problem and then it happens without any advance warning. You begin feeling dizzy, find it difficult to breathe and you’re filled with dread which becomes even worse once you think of the possibility of losing control of the vehicle. You may be having a panic attack and after having this happen to you, you might fear driving again.

You might receive the advice to drive more often to confront your fears. In your case, the panic attack is brought on by the thought of driving and no amount on confronting your fears can help you. But the panic attacks can be triggered anywhere and at unexpected moments. But what should you do if you have a panic attack while driving? Knowing what to do can ease your anxieties in case it does happen while you at the wheel.

If you have not experienced a panic attack you might not recognize the clammy hands, shakes, and mounting terror as a panic. Your anxiety may be brought on by worrying over your safety on the road, a car breakdown in the middle of nowhere, or getting trapped in traffic.

If you feel a panic attack setting in, stop driving. Pull over and breathe deeply until you start to relax; you’re not going to be able to drive safely while having a panic attack.

A panic attack may take a few seconds or a few minutes, so take your time until you have calmed your nerves. If there’s a bottle of water in the car, take a sip; dehydration can turn on those nasty attacks. If you have had those spells, be ready for future attacks. Always have your prescribed medication handy. Pop a pill and wait for the attack to subside. A bottle of water on the ready is a smart way to ease your way out of those attacks if you sense the familiar symptoms. Brown paper bags should be always available. You’ll need this to regulate the amount of air you breathe in. Lastly, relax. Don’t fight the attack. Ride with it.

Preventing those attacks is better than a pound of cure. To avert panic attacks, take vitamin B complex as part of your preventive regimen. This vitamin family is recommended for people who are stressed out. Since Vitamin B complex is water soluble, there is no harm in taking the vitamins daily to supplement your diet but ask your doctor for the correct daily dosage for your age and gender.

Always follow the recommendations of your physician and make sure to attend any one on one or group therapy sessions consistently. The support that being around others who suffer from panic attacks provides can be invaluable.

Never drive alone if you’re prone to panic attacks while driving; you may even want to have other people do the driving if you have attacks frequently. Having someone else along in the car can keep you calmer and prevent you from being overtaken by the fears that trigger panic attacks.

About the Author:
Powered by Yahoo! Answers

Business Articles Team-Blog.BrandHandBag.biz is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache