Living With Anxiety

Anxiety is the most common form of mental illness in the United States. This is more than depression!! It's estimated that approximately 10% of teenagers and 40% of adults suffer from an anxiety disorder of some kind.

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For a long part of my life, I’ve had both anxiety and depression. It has crippled me in many aspects and only recently am I beginning to have control over it. It has been a dictation of my actions and has endangered and/or ended many friendships and relationships. It's an extremely slow process and not easy in the slightest, but probably one of the funniest yet real ways I've heard to look at it is: "Am I being a twat?" Although anxiety is no laughing matter, it always helps to have a little humor in everything.

Some symptoms of anxiety include:

• Stress
• Tension
• Feeling snappy or irritability
• Panic
• Restless thoughts
• Racing heart
• Fatigue
• Sweating
• Fear
• Insomnia
  
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  There are also multiple forms of anxiety that include Panic disorders, social anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, separation anxiety and more! The causes for these can also vary from drugs, genetics, and even simple stress. Fighting these disorders is by no means easy. Its been around a pretty long time.
  
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  An important thing to remember is we all can feel anxious from time to time. Not everyone who gets anxious about something has an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders are an illness that can prevent you from doing everyday tasks and disrupt your flow. Someone with an anxiety disorder will be more difficult to help than someone who is just anxious. Mainly because a large part of the healing process or at least trying to control it (from my experience anyway) is that the person has to put in a large amount of work to overcome it. A lot of logical reasoning and regulated meditation. Which is no easy task if you're having a complete breakdown. What might help for some might only make things worse for others. For instance, pointing out to someone that they're having an anxiety attack might help one person realise their situation and help them think and calm down, while it could make it worse for someone else who can't quite control their thoughts and reactions as well in the situation.
  
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  There are multiple tips for helping to avoid anxiety attacks, but again, it may not work for everyone. Here are just a few of them:
• Eat well-balanced meals
• Get enough sleep
• Take a step back
• Limit caffeine and alcohol intake or leave them out all together
• Exercise daily(feeling good about yourself can make a big difference)
• Be around positivity
• Listen to music that makes you feel better
• Get a hug (Did you know that hugging increases oxytocin and decreases the activation of the fear center in the brain? Just make sure you know the person isn't uncomfortable with touching. That energy could actually make it worse!)
• Indulge your senses
• Fix your attention
  
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  I myself have been trying to cope being around energies and people that can help me stabilize my mind usually without saying anything. Learning a lot about the heart and what I've written about called heart virtues, putting all of that together with knowledge of energies and the power of words and thought have been a large key for me in beginning to overcome these anxieties. It's slow but any progress is good progress.
  
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  So why am I writing this? A recent study actually peaked my interest to write about it. A new study has suggested that anxiety could be early signs of Alzheimers years before it shows!

Rather than just looking at depression as a total score, we looked at specific symptoms such as anxiety, when compared to other symptoms of depression such as sadness or loss of interest, anxiety symptoms increased over time in those with higher amyloid beta levels in the brain.

Explains geriatric psychiatrist Nancy Donovan from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
What is amyloid beta? It's actually a protein that is linked to Alzheimer's disease. Amyloid beta causes clumps to form plaques that disrupt communication between neurons.

That disruption is thought to be a chief culprit behind the cognitive impairment of Alzheimer's disease, but it could also be implicated in the condition's pre-clinical phase, potentially as far back as 10 years before memory decline is diagnosed.

Now, of course, this is only a new finding and studies are still ongoing to determine whether anxiety actually is an early warning sign for Alzheimer's, but if it does turn out that anxiety is an early indicator, could that mean that up to 55% of people are at risk? Surely not all cases of anxiety are linked to Alzheimer's! Donovan explained to the Boston Herald:

This is not a definitive result, but it does strengthen the argument that neuropsychiatric changes might be associated with this amyloid. As a screening mechanism, it's probably not sensitive enough, but if you can measure multiple risk factors in the same individuals, then it becomes more useful.

Please DO NOT become anxious because of this as it is only a study that has yet to be confirmed. There are ways to prevent or even cure Alzheimer's and ways to deal with anxiety, and if all else fails there is professional help to try and control your anxiety that doesn't have to include (nor should they) pharmaceutical drugs. I hope this writeup can help some people understand the severity of anxiety or help some who are suffering find ways to cope with it.

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