Anxiety - Longtitudinal Study

AFBMH.org.
Here's is an excellent magazine article, based on a longtitudinal study into Temperement. If you have wanted to know, in an easy to read manner, a lot about anxiety, this is an article for you.

Click on the link for the full article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/magazine/04anxiety-t.html

Link between anxiety and depression and being fat

Common mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression, may increase a person's risk of obesity, and people with repeated episodes of these disorders are particularly at risk, British researchers say.
In the study, published in the Oct. 7 online edition of the BMJ, researchers analyzed data from four medical screenings of 4,363 British civil servants aged 35 to 55 conducted over 19 years (1985 to 2004). Each screening included assessment of mental health and measurement of height and weight.
Read more .... http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=631691

Are you Stressed?

Feeling unusually anxious or stressed? Answer our simple questionnaire compiled by the Royal College of Psychiatrists to find out if you are likely to be suffering from severe stress or an anxiety disorder

Stress and anxiety are normal human feeling and can be useful, for example when we are expected to meet deadlines a healthy level of anxiety will spur us on to complete projects on time. Stress and anxiety become a problem when the feelings are strong enough to have a detrimental effect on your life or if they go on for too long. Eventually they can become an illness affecting your mental and physical health.

Anxiety disorders have symptoms in the mind and the body. If you answer yes to around half or more of the questions over each of the categories below, it may be an indicator that you are suffering from an anxiety illness.

MIND

1. Do you feel worried almost all of the time?

2. Do you feel tired or lacking in energy all of the time?

3. Do you have episodes of panic?

4. Are you unable to concentrate on a task for more than for as long as you used to be able to.

5. Do you feel unusually irritable, with tasks or people or get angry quickly?

6. Are you finding getting to sleep difficult or are you waking earlier than usual?

BODY

7. Do you ever experience a strong or rapid heartbeat?(sometimes known as “palpitations”)

8. Do you find yourself sweating excessively when you are not exercising?

9. Do you have regular or constant pain or tension in your muscles?

10. Do you find yourself breathing quickly or more heavily at times of anxiety?

11. Are you experiencing indigestion or diarrhoea?

If you're worried you may be suffering from an anxiety illness visit your GP

Remember to breeeeeathe!

Believe it or not a lot of people forget to breathe properly when they get stressed or anxious. It must be because we go into the 'flight or fight' response. That's a left over from cave man and woman days when life was very much about survival. If you were walking along in your leopard skin outfit (maybe saber tooth tiger matching top and bottoms??!!) and some mean beast (no not your partner - more like a woolly mammoth!) came along, there was a strong tenedency to go "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" and run - or fight.

When that happened our autonomic nervous system kicked in, often without us knowing and all sorts of things happened to our body, like our eyes focused more on the object of danger. When the flight or fight response kicks in we also don't concentrate on things around us as much. The blood starts to go to our legs and arms and less so to our stomach (not much point in digesting food with imminent death in sight!) and of course our breathing changes to shallow, short breaths. A few other things change aswell but I guess you get the message.

Of course now days there's not too many woolly mammoths roaming the street (well none really if you really needed to know), so this left over protection device tends to react to more mundane things like a bit of stress or anxiety. Not that I'm trying to minimise stress or anxiety but it's not quite like trying to avoid the jaws of a monster! But then again may be it does feel that way sometimes!

The point of this post is to remind ourselves to breathe and recognise what is going on with our body at these times. It's a perfectly normal thing and can be overcome by observing. You know observing is a powerful thing. So often we are caught up in being us! We are there, totally focused, deep in the experience, which is great if it's a very pleasurable experience like eating chocolate - ha ha! But a handy hint when things are not so good is to become the observer. Recognise the signs of what is happening, especially with our bodies (faster heart rate, sweating, shallow breathing etc) and then take action. That includes breeeeeeathing. Short circuit the flight or fight process by doing something like breathing differently. Deep breath in, hold it for a second, then breathe out. For me the magic number seems to be 20. I can never seem to get to 20! At around maybe 10 to 13 I am much calmer. So count each breath, make the breaths long and deep, and observe!