Tips on How to Reduce Anxiety Naturally

Anxiety

Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress. The ways to reduce anxiety naturally include exercising, yoga or meditation, taking long walks, sleeping soundly for 7 hours at night, avoiding drugs or alcohol, and using natural supplements like herbal tea can help with anxiety Anxiety is characterised by excessive thoughts of worry and tension that researchers believe could be caused by a combination of factors from genetics to environment to brain chemistry. The symptoms generally include nervousness, tension, restlessness most of the time, increased heart rate, rapid breathing, feeling of panicking or trembling, difficulty focusing or concentrating, issues with sleep, etc.

Overview

You may have felt pangs of worry and anxiety at some points in your life. Everyone does. How to reduce anxiety may never have crossed your mind, as feelings of anxiety often pass. That’s true for the general population, but not for a percentage who feel a debilitating sense of doom and no matter what, the feeling remains stubborn. In clinical terms, Generalized Anxiety Disorder is characterized by excessive thoughts of worry and tension. Furthermore, these thoughts are persistent. Expecting the worst out of any situation may make such people the butt of mockery, but anxiety is no joke.

What is Anxiety?

For the person who is anxious, there seems to be no way out of feelings of anxiety. How to reduce it doesn't even cross the minds of such individuals who feel such an impending anticipation for disastrous consequences, often, without any logical reason. Individuals find it difficult to stop worrying and cannot control it, though, the will seems present. When an individual finds it difficult to control stress and anxiousness at more times than not, there is cause for worry. This differs from a person who feels anxious due to a specific stressor that warrants concern. In any given year, anxiety affects around 2 - 3% of the population, and research shows that women are more prone to it than men. Anxiety comes on in a gradual manner, beginning at the start of a period of your life and traversing across your lifespan. The risk, research suggests, is most between childhood and middle age.

What are the Causes of Anxiety?

Getting nervous about a particular event with those “butterflies” in your tummy is just fine, and very normal indeed. However, millions of people in the world live with anxiety of a more serious kind. How to relieve anxiety is the top-most consideration for these people who find that the disorder interferes with day-to-day functioning and their employment, not to mention relationships. Although there seems to be no cause for anxious feelings to crop up, there are definitive causes for the anxiety to affect some people.

Here are some explanations:

• Underlying medical conditions

Heart disease, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, respiratory conditions, drug abuse and withdrawal, chronic pain and irritable bowel, alcohol withdrawal and rare tumours that cause fight-or-flight responses due to hormones, may trigger feelings of extreme anxiety.

• Hereditary factors

If a person in your family has had anxiety, you may be at risk for acquiring it.

• Childhood anxiety

If you have had anxiety disorder in childhood that was largely untreated, you may be prone towards it in adulthood.

• Side effects

Certain drugs may cause side effects that prompt anxiety reactions.

• Risk factors

Research has shown that some individuals are at a distinctive risk for getting anxiety disorders. For instance, children who have gone through trauma are at higher risk of getting anxiety. The build-up of stress also encourages anxiety reactions that can develop into full-blown anxiety disorders.

What are the Symptoms of Anxiety?

How to reduce anxiety naturally is one of the things that professionals stress on while thinking about treatment for anxiety disorders. This is especially relevant as medication should be the last option. However, in order for the condition to be managed appropriately, you should be able to tell the signs and symptoms as soon as you have an inkling that there’s a problem at hand. It's time to see the doctor if you experience the following:

• If you are nervous, tense or restless most of the time

• If you excessively sweat

• If you have an increased heart rate often

• If you have a sense of impending panic, harm or danger

• If you breathe too rapidly

• If you tremble

• If you feel excessively tired or weak for no plausible reason

• If you have problems with concentration due to some kind of generalized worrying thought

• If you have issues with sleep

• If you feel you’re losing control of your worry

• If you think certain things trigger anxiety and you wish to avoid them

Coping Strategies

If you want to know how to decrease anxiety, the answer may not lie in simply visiting a professional alone. Although experts can tackle the problem, you can try ways of alleviating anxiety if you have the will to do so. Consider the following ways to relieve symptoms of anxiety:

• Get help quickly

As with any condition or illness, nipping the problem in the bud, so to speak, is the best solution. If you wait, the disorder is harder to treat.

• Exercise and interaction

Remain active if you feel any symptoms of anxiety, participating in any activities that make you feel happy and alive. Exercise is the key to many answers for medical issues and psychological conditions. Exercise reduces stress hormones like cortisol and releases endorphins which make you relaxed. Being socially active helps too, and connections with relations and friends is a great anxiety buster.

• Avoid alcohol and/or drugs

The worst thing to do is to self-medicate and have alcohol when you are feeling anxious. A mistake many people make is thinking that medication and/or alcohol will calm you down.

• Sleep well

Exercise improves the quality of your sleep, so you should make sure you exercise and sleep for at least 7 hours per night.

• Have natural supplements

Natural supplements like herbal tea, ashwagandha, omega-3 fatty acids, kava kava and lemon balm are known to alleviate anxiety symptoms.

Fitness Tips: Stay Healthy, Manage Stress

Mental and physical health are connected closely. Here are some practices that will take care of your physical health and also help you de-stress at the same time.

• Taking long walks

• Working out/Playing a sport

• Drink a lot of water consciously (There are apps to remind you about it)

• Practice yoga, a meditation

• Maintain meal timings and exercise timings. A sense of orderliness reduces stress as well as improves health.

How to ease anxiety: Ways to feel calmer right now

When you feel like anxiety is getting the better of you, try these tricks:

• Share what you are feeling with someone you trust. This might help reduce some of the weight on your mind.

• Give yourself a reality check. Ask:

  • On a scale of 1 to 100, how likely is it that the thing I’m anxious about will happen?

  • Do I have good reasons to think something will go wrong?

  • Is there a chance I’m overly worried?

• Redirect the nervous energy into something productive like cleaning or even something artistic like painting.

• Use breathing techniques that calm your system such as

• Book yourself a therapy session with a professional therapist. More details are mentioned below.

Treatment & Diagnosis

Sometimes, self-treating anxiety is just not enough, and it keeps coming back. If you see these signs, you should probably consult a mental health professional:

• Constant anxiety

• Anxiety that gets in the way of your daily activities, like work or social life

• Anxiety about things that don’t actually threaten you

• Panic attacks

Final Word

Tackling anxiety is a challenge, but one that can be met with natural remedies and catching it early. If it's anxiety you have due to an underlying medical condition, visit Bajaj Markets to know about health insurance solutions. 

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