96% Of Us Are More Stressed Than Our Moms Were; Cut Yourself Some Slack
On the Today show this morning, they reported that a whopping 70% of moms in the U.S. say mothering is “incredibly stressful.” On top of that, 96% feel we are far more stressed than our own mothers were. While I can certainly relate (I am a working mom with two kids), I always find reports like that interesting, because I think they can paint a picture of us as martyrs, when in fact, we’re the ones who typically bring this stress upon ourselves. And if we would just cut ourselves some slack, we could probably alleviate a lot of this angst.
Yes, things like the economy, financial insecurities, job losses, family illnesses and caring for aging parents are stressful. There’s no doubt about that. And sometimes those situations leave us little choice in how harried our lives are–at least temporarily. But then there are other stressors that we do choose, like a more intense parenting style, packing too much into our daily agendas, higher expectations for the type of lifestyle we lead and striving for a life of bigger and better that Americans are famous for.
All of this can not only lead to us walking around like over-stressed zombies, but it can be responsible for a decline in our overall health, wellness and happiness–not just for ourselves, but for our spouse and children as well. Chronically stressed moms tend to be more insensitive to their kids (we’re probably all guilty of not looking up from our iPhone on occasion when our kids are trying to tell us something important). Studies also show that a parent’s ability to manage stress is a strong predictor of the quality of her relationship with her children and how happy they are.
To combat this, Today show contributor and psychologist, Michele Borba, prescribed various “mom de-stressors” like giving ourselves a 5-minute “time out”, learning deep breathing techniques, dancing with our kids in the living room, taking time to be spontaneous like baking the dog a birthday cake, and finding a “mommy coach” in a mom chat room. All of which sounds a little, well, ridiculous if you ask me. Not because I don’t think those things could help relieve a little stress (except for baking the dog a cake–isn’t that just adding more to-do’s to our already crazy list?), but because those tactics don’t really get to the heart of the issue. They just give us so-called coping techniques, when what we really need are solve-the-problem techniques.
Which brings me to my point: Outside experts, coaches and even friends are not going to make our stress go away. The only person who can do that is us. It boils down to personal responsibility, in my mind. Meaning, no one is making us live a life of chronic stress. No one is making us work so much just so we can afford a bigger house than we really need. No one says we have to be the class mom, the soccer mom, the PTA chair or the lead volunteer on every community project. No one says we have to spend 24/7 with our kids. In short, no one, except us, is forcing us to be the supermom. The same supermom who is chronically stressed-out, irritable and tired, according to this report.
Ladies, isn’t it time we cut ourselves a bit of slack?
It’s high time we say, screw-it to feeling like we have to do it all and be it all. We don’t have to work so much just so we can buy more things we don’t need. We don’t have to be the go-to volunteer for every school and community project. We don’t have to get all of the chores done every day. And we don’t have to drive our kids here and there and everywhere. We don’t have to be perfect. You get my drift.
Like I said, yes, sometimes there are unfortunate circumstances in our lives that leave us no choice but to pick up a second job or dealing with a family illness, and those are certainly not fun. But what I’m talking about is the rest of our lives, beyond those situations. We are the only ones who can cut down on our stress–not by using some silly coping techniques, but more so by lowering the bars we set for ourselves.
Because, really, we are the only ones who set it so high to begin with.
Photo: thinkstock.com
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Demi Moore Reportedly Hospitalized Over ‘Whip-Its’; Couldn’t She Have Just Had Some Wine?
After days of rumors, reports now indicate that “whip-its” could have been the drug of choice for Demi Moore and the reason she was rushed to the hospital earlier this week. And here I thought sucking the air out of whipped cream bottles was just for teenagers to do as a cheap and stupid way of getting high when working at Ground Round or Ben & Jerry’s.
Media outlets are now claiming the actress reportedly had a seizure after inhaling nitrous oxide at her home. Known commonly as doing “whip-its,” the activity generally involves inhaling the gas from a whipped cream dispenser for a cheap, quick high, which can produce effect similar to alcohol.
But not all the side-effects from “whip-its” are as simple as that. Adverse reactions can include nausea, dizziness, fainting–and in the case of Moore, a seizure due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. Other reactions can happen over time, such as vitamin B12 deficiencies and negative impacts on DNA and cell growth.
“Whip-its” are usually reserved as a stupid thing that teens do–not someone of Demi’s age and social status. If she was really that stressed-out over her failed marriage with Ashton Kutcher, couldn’t she have just had a few glasses of wine? Surely that would have been a more respectable way to handle things.
Meanwhile, her soon-to-be ex is reportedly partying in Brazil and Demi remains in the hospital.
Photo: nydailynews.com
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At 62, Vera Wang Looks Healthy And Awesome In Harper’s Bazaar
Fashion and healthy bodies don’t always get along, but in a gorgeous spread for the February edition of Harper’s Bazaar, Vera Wang is doing her darndest to merge the two. Images from the shoot displaying the 62-year-old fashion icon’s healthy, awesome-looking body have just been released, and all I can say “Damn, Vera.”
The point of the spread wasn’t to show off Wang’s muscular gams and enviable arms–it was to give the world a tour of her epic new Beverly Hills mansion. In fact, she says, she didn’t even mean to end up in the swimsuit–she’d initially envisioned a corsted top with a boyshort or something less revealing. But the swimsuit makes sense–Wang says that she, unlike many celebs, actually uses her pool regularly, which explains her athletic body.
Wang, who is also photographed in a smart dress and a pantsuit, admits in the magazine that the idea of a swimsuit shot making it into the magazine made her a little nervous, stating that usually, she’s so modest at the beach, she usually looks “like Lawrence of Arabia.” And, to be fair, the swimsuit is by no means revealing–though, for a woman who’s made her life behind the seams (sorry, I couldn’t resist that pun), being photographed as the model must seem a little strange. And, despite the amazing images, she’s still modest. From the article:
Asked if she’s impressed with the results, as someone even half her age should be, she sighs. “No, honey, I’m a little horrified. But I still love that bustier.”
Sure, Wang has always been thin, and yes, these photos have clearly been touched up a little. But it’s pretty inspiring to see a woman who’s not only honest about her age, but about what her body looks like, in the pages of a fashion magazine.
You can see the rest of the images here.
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Demi Moore Called Paramedics To Treat Her Exhaustion; Why Didn’t Anyone See This Coming?
Demi Moore was taken to a hospital by paramedics on Monday night after an emergency call, and today her rep issued a statement saying she’s being treated for exhaustion due to the stresses in her life. But after her strange interview in Harper’s Bazaar at the beginning of the year, and her ever-diminishing frame in the two months since her divorce from Ashton Kutcher, wasn’t it obvious she needed some help?
According to New York Daily News, the Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed that she’d called for help on Monday night. This afternoon, Moore’s rep issued the following explanation:
Because of the stresses in her life right now, Demi has chosen to seek professional assistance to treat her exhaustion and improve her overall health. She looks forward to getting well and is grateful for the support of her family and friends.
Headlines are already speculating about the cause of Moore’s “exhaustion”–some are citing drug abuse. But it’s been obvious for some time that she wasn’t coping well with her divorce; in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar earlier this month, she openly admits that her weight has become dangerously low, explaining that she struggles to accept her body as it ages and even “…now experiencing my body as extremely thin — thin in a way that I never imagined somebody would be saying to me, “You’re too thin, and you don’t look good.”
In the same interview, she also made disconcerting statements about her emotional insecurities:
I would say what scares me is that I’m going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I’m really not lovable, that I’m not worthy of being loved. That there’s something fundamentally wrong with me.
Which, it should be said, all sounded like a woman being totally honest about her body image and emotions in the interview, but given her dramatic weight loss and sudden absence from Twitter (where she was formerly active), it’s not altogether shocking that she’s now hitting a wall.
Reports say that Moore might be in a rehab facility; after her emergency call on Monday, she was rushed to an unknown hospital in the L.A. area. We hope she gets better, and hope that the people around her are able to come to her rescue so that paramedics don’t have to.
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Psychedelic Mushrooms Reduce Brain Activity (And That’s A Good Thing)
In my college days, I was no stranger to the odd hit of acid or bag of ‘shrooms, and I’ve long believed in the power of drugs like these to be therapeutic under the right circumstances. I’m reading a book right now, in fact, by Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert), a Harvard psychology professor turned yogi and spiritual leader who was part of that whole 1960s scholarly cohort (including Timothy Leary) studying psychedelics. But although serious scholars (and lay people like myself and my college friends) have been studying psychedelics for decades, no one has been quite sure just what affect they have on the brain—until now.
It turns out, serious academic study of psychedelics is back in vogue, only with less mysticism and more neuroscience this time around. And neuroscience is opening up whole new realms of possibilities for the study of psychedelic drugs. In a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, British researchers used brain scans to measure what physically went on in people’s brains when they took psilocybin, the drug contained in ‘magic mushrooms.’ Their results were surprising—but could potentially lead to some novel treatments for depression.
Contrary to what the researchers expected, the psilocybin didn’t lead to an increase in subjects’ brain activity. Instead, reduced it. I’ll let Time’s Maia Szalivitz explain:
Under the influence of mushrooms, overall brain activity drops, particularly in certain regions that are densely connected to sensory areas of the brain. When functioning normally, these connective “hubs” appear to help constrain the way we see, hear and experience the world, grounding us in reality. They are also the key nodes of a brain network linked to self-consciousness and depression. Psilocybin cuts activity in these nodes and severs their connection to other brain areas, allowing the senses to run free.
“The results seem to imply that a lot of brain activity is actually dedicated to keeping the world very stable and ordinary and familiar and unsurprising,” says Robin Carhart-Harris, a postdoctoral student at Imperial College London and lead author of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That’s generally a good thing—if your brain took in all the stimuli in your environment, you would never be able to focus on anything. But psychedelic drugs—and practices like meditation—allow us to tune into all the things our brain would normally tune out.
Interestingly, the two brain regions that showed the most reduced activity on psilocybin were the medial prefontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). An overactive mPFC is linked with rumination, obsessive thinking and depression. All of the depression treatments that have proved effective—from Prozac to electroconvulsive therapy to talk therapy—reduce activity in the mPFC.
Neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, who gave a briefing about the study, said the results shouldn’t encourage you to “go out there and eat magic mushrooms. But…this drug has such a fundamental impact on the brain that it’s got to be meaningful — it’s got to be telling us something about how the brain works. So we should be studying it and optimizing it if there’s a therapeutic benefit.”
I hope they do. And I hope findings like these encourage folks in the U.S. Department of Justice to reconsider its classification of psilocybin as an illegal, Schedule 1 drug, a class of substances considered to “serve no legitimate medical purpose in the United States” which sets up all sorts of restrictions on their scientific study. Considering marijuana is also a Schedule 1 drug here, though, I won’t hold my breath about psilocybin. But maybe, just maybe, neuroscience will have the power to legitimize the study of psychedelics in a way Leary and his gang of merry mystics never could?
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Can’t Stand Your Co-Worker’s Perfume? There’s A Reason For That.
You know that co-worker whose perfume smells really bad? Or that friend’s house that reeks of dirty socks? If you can’t stand these smells and they give you headaches, you may not just be overly-sensitive to bad odors, you may actually suffer from a chemical intolerance.
According to a new study from psychology researcher, Linus Andersson, at Umeå University, normally our smell perceptions diminish pretty quickly after we first get a whiff of a friend’s scent of her apartment. Most people tend to notice a smell as soon as we enter the door, but then the smell goes away. For the lucky people with a chemical intolerance though, that smell persists. And in some cases, we perceive that it’s getting stronger.
This hypersensitivity is due to our brain activity. People without a chemical intolerance showed a reduction in brain activity to certain smells over a period of time, while those with an intolerance did not. The inability to grow accustomed to certain smells was seen by heightened reactions in the brain, leading researchers to believe that it’s not all in our heads–or noses, as the case may be. Being intolerant to certain smells is something we are hard-wired for.
The study also showed that sensitivity to smell impacts the entire body, including the nose and mouth. Chemically intolerant people react stronger to substances that irritate the mucous linings of their nose and mouth, and they cough more when they inhale something like capsaicin, the hot compound in chili peppers. Interestingly enough, the researchers also report that up to 10% of the Swedish population are bothered by everyday smells, whereas roughly 2% experience severe symptoms.
I’ve always thought I had a smell disorder. Certain perfumes and colognes, in particular, really bother me. I get headaches and am just generally grossed-out by their strong smells. My husband usually doesn’t notice the smells I do, leading him to believe that I smell things that aren’t really there–sort of a phantom smeller, I guess. But, I was the first to detect a dead squirrel in our attic once. I am able to determine that certain foods have gone bad in our refrigerator the minute I walk in the door. And I can be downstairs and tell if our kids have dirty laundry upstairs that hasn’t made its way to the washer yet.
Of course, this hypersensitivity also comes with certain downfalls. I must confess that I once threw out my mother’s “God-awful” perfume and claimed I didn’t know what happened to it, simply because I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve also changed seats at the movie theater more than once to get away from “old lady” or “old man” smells. And one time I even had to ask an employee to stop wearing her perfume to work. I mean, it trailed behind her like Pigpen.
But, at least now, thanks to science, I can say I have a medical explanation for my “rude”behavior.
Photo: perfumeshrine.blogspot.com
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Gossiping May Be Malicious, But Here’s Why It’s Good For Our Health
As much as we don’t like to admit it, most of us probably gossip from time to time. Learning that so-and-so just broke up with so-and-so can be too juicy to keep to ourselves, right? It’s malicious, back-stabbing and reputation-ruining, but that doesn’t stop us. And according to a new study, it might not have to. Researchers are now saying that this so-called “information sharing” can actually be good for our social and psychological health. Here’s why.
Published in this month’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists tested “prosocial” gossip, which is essentially warning others about untrustworthy or dishonest people.
For the study, researchers conducted four experiments. First, they observed 51 volunteers playing a game. When one player did not play by the rules and hoarded points, the observers’ heart rates increased, and most seized the opportunity to slip a “gossip note” to warn new players which helped to alleviate their negative feelings and frustration.
The second experiment had 111 participants fill out a questionnaire about their levels of altruism and cooperativeness. When they noticed that one player had cheated, observers reported feelings of frustration, and once again felt better after passing a gossip note to others.
In the third experiment (the most interesting of all), participants were asked to pay money if they wanted to send a gossip note. And a large majority of them agreed and forked over the cash to gossip.
And in the last experiment, 300 participants from around the country were recruited via Craigslist to play several trust games online. When players were told that others could potentially gossip about them, most became more generous in the game. It seems that the threat of being gossiped changed their behavior to be a better person.
C-author of the study, Robb Willer, said:
Gossip gets a bad rap, but we’re finding evidence that it plays a critical role in the maintenance of social order.
Oh yeah, maintaining social order…that’s why we gossip. Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that sometimes it just feels good to know how messed-up someone else’s life is compared to our own.
Photo: Thinkstock
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Yes, Even Mentally Ill Women Have Reproductive Rights
File this in the really, they can do that? category: A judge in Massachusetts tried to order a mentally ill pregnant woman to have an abortion, and thereafter be sterilized. Thankfully, an appeals court intervened.
According to the Boston Globe, the 32-year-old pregnant woman, identified by the pseudonym Mary Moe, was schizophrenic, bipolar and had been hospitalized several times. Earlier this month, judge Christina Harms declared her incompetent, and ordered her to have an abortion, even though she was Catholic and opposed it. The judge said she could be “coaxed, bribed, or even enticed” into hospital for the surgery. He also directed that she be sterilized “to avoid this painful situation from recurring in the future.”
Whoa, right? Even if the woman was incompetent or unable to care for a child, the judge could certainly have ruled that, instead of having an abortion against her wishes, she give the baby up for adoption. I’m not one of those abortions-are-bad-because-all-babies-could-be-adopted! types, but it does seem like a pretty good option when a woman doesn’t want an abortion but can’t care for a child. And I’m pretty sure forced sterilization is never okay.
The state’s appeals court struck down the decision, writing:
“The personal decision whether to bear or beget a child is a right so fundamental that it must be extended to all persons, including those who are incompetent.’’
It also balked at the sterilization order, “a directive that several legal specialists said they had not heard of in recent memory,” according to the Globe.
“No party requested this measure, none of the attendant procedural requirements has been met, and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air.”
Of course in situations like these there needs to be balance between respecting the reproductive and bodily autonomy rights of mentally ill women, and the interests of any children they might conceive. And there is the health of unborn baby in utero to consider—Moe apparently refuses to even acknowledge she is pregnant or get obstetrical care. But if we started policing how much care or testing every pregnant woman receives … well, as Jezebel’s Anna North notes, that’s a slippery slope:
Abortion politics get complicated when the pregnant person is mentally ill or very young — but when we start taking away the right to choose based on our own view of mental competence, we go down a very slippery slope. A fourteen-year-old girl needs the right to carry her pregnancy to term, even if her family doesn’t like it — and similarly, we can’t start stripping away women’s reproductive rights because they have schizophrenia. [...] Sadly, this country has a long history of forcibly sterilizing those the government deems “feeble-minded” or otherwise defective. Part of atoning for that crime is to make sure that we stay out of the business of deciding who’s worthy of having a kid.
Besides which, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are not untreatable. Even severely mentally ill women can get better. Sometimes mental illness is even triggered or compounded by pregnancy.
I don’t know much about the laws (or ethical thinking) on making women in situations like these get an IUD, but that seems like a potential solution—IUDs are safe, long-lasting and reversible. And women who are truly a danger to themselves or their fetuses while pregnant could be placed under supervised care. At any rate, there are less extreme ways than abortion and sterilization to look out for the health of even the most severely mentally ill women and their unborn children.
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Strange TODAY Show Story Reminds Us That “Hysteria” Is Still A Thing
Yesterday on the TODAY Show, a group of 12 teenage girls from New York discussed the sudden, bizarre onset of a Tourette’s-esque disorder that’s resulted, for no clear reason, in all of them displaying tics, twitches, and uncontrollable outbursts. And while the epidemic itself sounds strange and interesting (there’s a RadioLab about a similar outbreak), it’s the clinical diagnosis by a doctor on the show that made me pause–Conversion disorder…or mass hysteria. Really? With it’s gendered, pejorative, and non-scientific roots, that’s still a word that’s being used medically?
The ailment that’s befallen the girls who appeared on the TODAY show may be slightly beyond the reaches of an easy medical conclusion–it’s a pretty strange set of behaviors, and all environmental causes have been rules out–but is hysteria really the right word to apply to a group of a dozen teenagers, who are already prone to being talked about and viewed in diminutive terms? Doesn’t that sort of downplay the severity of the experience for the people suffering?
Hysteria, which is usually used to describe a frantic, irrational, or uncontrolled state of mind (you know, like the way women get) has a pretty loaded background. Stemming from both the Greek and Latin words for “uterus,” hysteria is essentially what medical professionals used to diagnose crazy women with, when their wombs were to blame for their insanity or irrational thought processes. In the past, it’s been used to describe everything from psychotic episodes to mild mania.
And, it seems, it’s still being widely applied to situations of extreme group behavior and unexplained oddities. Like the one of the twitching girls in New York. And to be honest, I didn’t realize it was still something I could be diagnosed with, if I were to present with womanly symptoms, like uncontrollable tics or a frenzied state of mind.
The meaning has shifted away from the uterus-specific roots, but the implications are still there. Linking fragility of mind to the female reproductive organs still sits a little uncomfortably with me–and I don’t think I’m alone. And while it’s true that medicine seems to always be the last to know when a word has simply become too incorrect or too loaded to use–many medical professionals were using or continue to use “transvestite” to describe those in the transgender community–hysteria is definitely one that’s long past its prime.
Regardless of what’s found to be the cause of the girls’ behavior–there are plenty of junior detectives on TODAY Show’s Facebook page ranging from vaccines to mold toxicity to other rare neurological disorders, and I’m fairly sure none of them are correct–the final, gendered, inconclusive, umbrella-term, diagnosis is what’s bothersome. Maybe it’s time to finally get that particular diagnosis off the books, or at least, re-name it to something less specific to my womanly parts.
Here’s the video of the TODAY Show segment. What do you think?
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Image: The TODAY Show
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How Anxiety Could Be Wrecking Your Physical Health
Even though a reported 20% of the American population is now on mental health drugs, we still don’t talk about the related conditions and diseases nearly enough. Yes, depression makes the headlines often and people are finally becoming more open about it, but what other other mental health conditions like anxiety? That’s one that affects 40 million adults in the U.S., but do you really know what it is and how to tell if you are suffering from it? And do you know how it can affect your physical health? To find out, we consulted Dr. Catherine Ulbricht, founder of Natural Standard Research Collaboration, clinician at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of Natural Standard, The Authority on Integrative Medicine. Here is what she had to say:
What exactly is anxiety and why don’t we hear as much about it as depression?
Anxiety is an unpleasant complex combination of emotions including fear, worry, and nervousness. It originates from a person’s often excessive and unrealistic thoughts about a perceived threat, event, or other situation and may hinder physical and psychological abilities. Anxiety disorders are sometimes more difficult to diagnose than depression, and as a result may be misdiagnosed and under-reported.
Is anxiety as common as depression?
According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA), anxiety disorders affect 40 million adults age 18 and older in the United States. This totals 18% of the U.S. population and women are 60% more likely to be affected than men. Interestingly enough though, only 39% of those with anxiety disorders are receiving treatment.
If someone is suffering from anxiety, how would they know it? Wouldn’t some people just tend to think they are more high-strung or nervous by nature?
While most people are affected by some form of mild anxiety over common life events, generalized or severe forms of anxiety are characterized by more than typical everyday worries. They’re often accompanied by specific physical and psychological symptoms. More extreme types of anxiety disorders may cause the person to become unable to perform normal everyday activities, such as performing their job or going grocery shopping, and it may seriously affect both short-term and long-term physical health. A diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder is given when a person worries excessively about everyday problems for at least 6 months.
We know there are a number of ways anxiety affects us mentally, but how about physically? Can it wreak havoc on our bodies?
Of course. The primary symptoms of anxiety disorders are fear and worry. However, anxiety disorders are also characterized by additional emotional and physical symptoms. Physical symptoms of anxiety negatively affect the brain, heart, lungs, muscles, stomach, and overall bodily functions. This may lead to inability to function normally and may seriously affect many systems in the body over time.
What are some of the short-terms effects anxiety can have on our bodies?
Short-term effects of anxiety affect many organs and systems in the body, including the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological, respiratory, and muscular systems. Cardiovascular symptoms involve the heart and blood vessels and include heart palpitations (irregular heartbeat) and angina (chest pain). Gastrointestinal symptoms involve the stomach and digestive tract and include stomach upset, nausea, and diarrhea. Neurological symptoms involve the brain and nerves and include vertigo (dizziness), insomnia (inability to sleep), irritability, hot flashes or chills, and overall mental confusion. Respiratory symptoms involve the lungs and include shortness of breath or difficult, labored breathing. Muscular symptoms include tremors and muscle tension or aches.
What about longer-term effects? How can unresolved anxiety affect our physical health after months or years?
Long-term effects of misdiagnosed, unresolved, or inadequately treated anxiety involve the same areas, but in a more extreme form. For example, the cardiovascular effects may include hypertension, recurrent heart attacks, and worsening of mitral valve prolapse. Gastrointestinal effects may include worsening of indigestion, heartburn, ulcers, and irritable bowel syndrome. Neurological effects may include chronic tension headaches and worsening of other pre-existing psychological conditions such as depression and bipolar disorder. Endocrine effects may include worsening of adrenal gland dysfunction, blood sugar disorders including hyperglycemia, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Effects on the respiratory system may include worsening of pre-existing asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
What are some of the most extreme ways anxiety can affect our physical health?
Anxiety has been associated with an increased risk of heart attack. Anxiety disorders may also lead to development of alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse, delusions, and an increased risk for suicide. Individuals with some forms of anxiety, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, may experience physical injury such as skin problems from excessive washing, injuries from repetitive physical acts, and hair loss from repeated hair pulling.
OK, how about treatments for all of this? What are some of the best ways to deal with these physical effects?
Treatments are specific to the cause of anxiety, but can include counseling, psychotherapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy. You can also incorporate physical exercise, relaxation therapies for stress reduction, such as meditation, yoga, and deep-breathing exercises, eating a healthy diet and making sure you get adequate sleep. Medications, including anti-anxiety agents and antidepressants or thyroid-regulating medication can also help.
Also, there are other alternative therapies, such as St. John’s wort, acupuncture and certain herbs, but those have unclear or conflicting reports of effectiveness.
Anxiety may have very negative effects on work, school, and relationships, and may decrease the individual’s overall health. It affects each person differently, and so it is necessary to consult with a healthcare provider for treatments specific to one’s individual condition. Individuals experiencing severe symptoms that are not easily treated or that do not quickly subside, should seek immediate medical attention.
Photo: Thinkstock
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