Anxiety Guides

Mindfulness is a condition of being aware of the present moment instead of focusing on what’s bound to happen or what just happened. It does have a peaceful and calming effect if just like millions of anxiety disorder sufferers, you are inclined to worry about the future because of the past. We all tend to focus on previous experiences that we keep on overlooking some present observations – how comfortable our beds are after a very tiring day, or how it feels when your feet touches the floor, or how the music can relax our nerves. These are the things that we will never notice because our minds are too busy worrying what’s going to happen tomorrow.
One way to start is to eat very slowly – focusing on lifting the food to our lips slowly as we feel the texture in our mouths, without chewing just yet. Next, concentrate on the taste of the food first, then chew slowly, then swallow. This type of mindful eating can bring so much awareness into the present during all three meals – which can pretty much discard our worries, fears, and other negative thoughts.

But what happens outside when practice seems to fail? When we’re rushing our way to work, we’re stuck in traffic, and when all problems and worries just dump our brains and feelings? How could we possibly go back to that mindfulness state?

This indeed poses as a challenge. Once presented with this challenge, it’s a great opportunity to practice mindfulness – to pause and think we’re still breathing, we’re still alive, and we as humans are gifted with the capacity to disentangle our minds and psyche out of the distressing circumstance. Whenever possible, walk slowly and breathe slowly. Pace back and forth while thinking about inhaling, then exhaling, and just that. Or focus on how relieving a glass of water could be during a really hot weather.

Once our minds clear out of all negative, even just for minutes or seconds, our brains are recharged with positive energy to enable us to think clearly and rationally.

Religioius Extremism, which is largely faulted for terrorism, may have anxiety at its root cause. This is what researchers today have found out that too much anxiety may cause us to be so radical in our religious beliefs, and findings of which are already published in the latest issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Over 600 participants were exposed to anxiety-provoking situations, and were afterwards asked to describe their daily goals, and rate their degree of religious convictions. Researchers also asked if they were willing to give up their lives for their faith or sympathize with war in defense of their religious ideals.

All studies showed one thing – the more anxious the conditions were, the more the participants exhibited religious extremity. Religious zeal were the most pronounced among participants who exhibited higher self esteem, were more action oriented, and more eager – and this only showed that they were the most vulnerable to anxiety and the most hopeless about their daily life goals.

Lead researcher Ian McGregor from York’s Department of Psychology looks closely into these findings. In our brains lie a basic motivational system called RAM or Reactive Approach Motivation which is hugely responsible for tenacious behavior. “This is what causes people to feel ‘locked and loaded’ on whatever ideal their minds are focused on. This is what makes them feel powerful while other feelings or hesitations recede. This study demonstrates that humans can always lean to RAM for short term relief of anxiety problems, and feel relaxed and peaceful afterwards.

Proponents of this study also gauged the participants’ superstitious beliefs towards a controlling God to differentiate between religious zeal from a meeker type of devotion.

“When threats provoke anxiety, this causes paranoia which in turns submits us to external forces beyond our control. More often, bold people are more vulnerable to religious extremism to relieve their anxiety.”

Gender differences also play a major role when it comes to dealing with stressful situations and psychological disorders, particularly with anxiety. If women have greater rates of anxiety disorders compared to men, men deal with anxiety and depression through alcohol cravings. A study linking emotional responses to anxiety has pointed out such differences in dealing with anxiety. If women would like to confront their depression and anxieties, men would rather seek diversion and turn to alcohol. When men become upset, they are more likely to want alcohol.

The study, as being headed by Tara M. Chaplin, associate research scientist at Yale University School of Medicine, acknowledges that men and women have natural differences in dealing with stressful situations. Women for example, are more apt to admit that they are anxious or depressed – leading to a lot of anxiety disorders, while men are more exposed to alcohol use disorders because of this resultant craving in times of distress.

About 54 healthy adult social drinkers were sampled and profiled into the following: stressful, neutral/relaxing, and alcohol-related, all in separate sessions and separate days in random. Chaplin, along with other colleagues, assessed their subjective emotions, cardiovascular arousal based on blood pressure and heart rate, self-reported alcohol craving, including behavioral and body responses.

It was confirmed that women confessed more anxiety and depression compared to men, while men’s stressful emotional arousal was connected to alcohol cravings.

“After listening to the stressful story, women reported more sadness and anxiety than men,” said Chaplin, “as well as greater behavioral arousal. But, for the men … emotional arousal was linked to increases in alcohol craving. In other words, when men are upset, they are more likely to want alcohol.”

On the average, men drank more alcohol than women, and these findings also showed that men had more experience with alcohol. This only meant that whenever they are anxious and depressed, alcohol is a way to cope. Researchers speculate that this may either be a learned behavior or it may have something to do with known gender differences in brain pathways.

Researchers were also able to confirm that emotionality, as a societal acceptance, is more prevalent in women than in men – particularly with anxiety and depression.
There is a greater societal acceptance of “emotionality,” particularly sadness and anxiety, in women than in men, noted Chaplin.

This goes to show that whenever women are depressed, they are more likely to focus on all the negative aspects of the distress. They tend to over-analyze, do a mental replay about their negative emotions, and this could only spell higher anxiety disorders and a compromised mental health. Men on the other hand, would want to distract themselves instead to gain control of the distress but diversion and/or evasion – they will always try harder not to think about it. Findings also show that men have greater blood pressure responses to distress, but no reports of anxiety and depression exist.

Norwegian researchers have long proven how the drug or the pharmacological version of ecstasy can make a post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patient more interested and responsive to psychotherapy, as it was also found out to have lasting improvements.

People who have experienced severe traumas like torture, war, sexual assaults, abuse, and disasters are perfect targets for PTSD, and are expected to linger through the after-effects. Anxiety levels are heightened, emotional reactions are uncontrolled to the point of being irrational, intrusive memories affect sleep and concentration, evasion, feelings of embarrassment, even nightmares are always experienced by these people. Though a lot may be able to cope with the condition which should fade by itself, there are others who don’t have as much capacity to contain so much trauma. This is the time when pharmacological treatments are already necessitated to relieve anxiety and depression – just so psychotherapy treatments can work.

Teri Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen, a psychologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, were able to strike a perfect balance between psychotherapy and controlled use of the pharmacological drug ecstasy called MDMA (3,4 methylenedioxy-N-methyl-amphetamine). A related US study conducted by Michael Mithoefer was able to prove remarkable success with such combination. Neuropsychological tests demonstrated that in traditional therapy with a 3-month treatment program, none of the 21 PTSD sufferers experienced any improvement. With the combination of MDMA in small doses along with psychotherapy, patients were reported to experience significant improvements and were more apt to trust their psychotherapists more. They were lesser afraid and lesser evasive. Results were good without any serious and lasting side effect, plus a better mental ability after the treatment.

MDMA has been found out to release the ‘stress’ hormones noradrenalin and cortisol necessary to activate that emotional learning which reduces fear in the long term. Studies show that MDMA is a good emotional enhancer which helps the PTSD patient to feel safer, more in control, and be able to connect with memories with the right emotional processing.

The researchers however note that the use of the drug is controlled and administered by a licensed physician just for the short term, and that researchers do not recommend taking the happy pill over the counter as a quick fix or a daily pill to simple anxieties.

If an adult as a child did not take daytime naps from age 4 to 5, anxiety is often exhibited that may strongly continue on to adulthood. This has been what researchers were able to prove at a study conducted at the Pennsylvania State University.

Results of this study and research abstract have been presented at the Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

Studies have shown that children aged 4 to 5 who did not take their usual daytime naps were reported to have higher levels of anxiety, hyperactivity, and depression compared to those children who took their daytime naps until this age.

Brian Crosby, PhD, who is a postdoctoral fellow of psychology at the said university, acknowledges that prior studies have already been conducted linking childhood napping and anxiety. The proponents of this study were just too happy to illustrate how daytime napping is just as crucial for children in this age bracket and how it affects their daytime functioning. Most of the time, daytime napping has been overlooked because many still rely on the total night time sleep.

“Still we couldn’t say when or what age a child is ready to give up his daily naps, there is no scientific development yet. But I would encourage parents to provide a daytime nap for their children and include this in their daily schedules – given the importance of such in a child’s functioning.”

The said research gathered data from more than 60 children having the ages of 4 and 5 who were grouped as napping (which has totaled to 77%) and non-napping (of about 23%) basing on a data for actigraphy. Napping children were reported to sleep at an average of 3.4 days per week, and this group had about 55% of white non-Hispanics and 53% were boys. Caretakers and/or parents were asked about their child’s usual weekday and weekend rise times and bed times, family demographics, napping patterns, and a complete profile of differing behavioral assessments. This actigraphy data on a per child basis were continuously gathered from 7 to 14 days.

Researchers further conclude the vital importance of childhood daytime napping as it hugely affects anxiety, depression, and hyperactivity – more importantly on anxiety which is increasing on numbers everyday. Optimal age to entirely give up the daytime naps has not been determined yet, so until such development, childhood naps will continue to influence anxiety levels even in later adulthood.

Though the study was originally conducted to observe patients suffering from dementia, results have shown that apple juice can decrease anxiety, agitation, and delusion. This small study funded by an apple juice company is already published and readily viewable in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias. When proponents of this study added about 8 ounces of apple juice to 21 dementia patients, each having moderate to severe dementia, their individual carers reported about 27% improvement in behavior that anxiety and agitation are significantly reduced a month after consistent apple juice intake. Apple juice obviously did not alter anything else in these patients’ cognitive performance but all the notable results were in the behavioral performance.

The Alzheimer Society ruled out that apple juice is not capable of improving dementia, and that the study, though very promising, do have limitations, that apple juice is still not praiseworthy to be considered as a miracle cure.

The effects of apple juice however have significantly reduced occurrences of anxiety and agitation. Even if the study focused originally on dementia sufferers, apple juice can still provide the same promise in anxiety sufferers as the small and underfunded study has opened a lot of doors for further research that could establish more conclusive evidence. The health benefits are many, and given the fact that apple juice comes from an organic source, any side effect should be very minimal to zero.

As of yet, the results are merely suggestive and is not yet considered the ultimate cure for anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder or GAD, even phobias. Apple juice won’t hurt; apart from the many health benefits agitation and anxiety can be controlled. Though it has been demonstrated how apple juice can reduce occurrences of anxiety, a test or a study is still needed to firmly establish whether or not it can be a natural alternative for these anxiety disorders.

If you want to treat anxiety by means of self-help, start with the attention process.

A study was conducted at the University of Granada with the primary objective to improve anxiety treatments by targeting attention. The proponents of this study delineated two types of anxiety – one of being a trait expressing a tendency to feel restless and anxious, and the other being in a state.of anxiety triggered by external factors, which according to these experts, are more immediate and intense. This study came from the Experimental Psychology and Behavioral Physiology of the University of Granada, where such results are expected to be released in the elite journal of Psychological Science.

Such difference has not been established given the reason that both types are similar anyway – that the individual suffering from the anxiety, in both types, suffer the same absorption of negative information. To counter this, the study has proposed that the attention process must be diverted to absorb positive information rather than the negative. The study looked into the possibility whether these anxiety subtypes entirely affected attention.

An attention test was conducted to two groups of participants – one having low anxiety while the other group having been induced to an intense state of anxiety, and after which, inducing them to a positive emotional state. Results showed that there is a difference in attention processing; those in a low anxiety state responded positively while those in intense anxiety situations remained alerted with negative information. The attention processes of those in a trait anxiety was more receptive to positive emotional state while those in an intense level of anxiety did not do well on the attention performance.

The explanation behind this was that, the cognitive networks of those participants having high anxiety values were reported to have an over function of the alerting system that hugely affects the attention processes.

Further, the study has concluded that these 2 subtypes of anxiety are important in determining whether attention can be diverted in treating out anxiety. The influx of negative information has to be substituted with positive information to exercise mind control and to inhibit the negative triggers following an anxiety attack. This study is most helpful in developing further therapies for anxiety disorder patients to control their attacks, and the first step should be is to target attention.

When one is induced in a state of safety, and the memory captures it, anxiety is revealed to have been inhibited, according to a research done at the University of Puerto Rico, School of Medicine and funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Center for Research Resources. Though this study has been observed on rats, the findings however suggested promising potentials for an effective treatment for anxiety disorder.

When rats hear a sound they normally associate with an electric shock, they freeze. This can be countered by exposing them to the same sound without the associated electric shock. It’s in the same manner that a protein works the same way when administered. This protein, called BDNF or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, is one of the class of proteins that promote survival and growth of neurons.

This kind of treatment however, does not eliminate the fear neither a preconditioned memory of such fear. The new memory however has a new association which reduces the fearful condition since it now connotes safety. This is what extinction training does. After the rats were exposed to the electric shock, they froze, but when infused with BDNF, the rats showed little freezing to the tone.

The drug has been found out to induce the same positive memory. Results of this study are already published in the June 4 issue of Science.

Experiments however noted that this experiment did not extinguish the fear neither did it erase the fearful memory. It was all about mind training that the tone did not associate with the shock which triggers the fear, as the BDNF showed the same results. Those rats particularly low in BDNF were the ones performing poorly with the experiments, given the fact that low BNDF in the hippocampus means that it is unable to control memory and fear extinction, therefore propagating anxiety. This is believed to be connected with people suffering from anxiety disorders like having PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. People suffering from this are found to have smaller hippocampuses.

NIMH Director Dr. Thomas Insel notes that a lot if evidence associates BDNF in a lot of mental disorders. He further suggests that effects of the BDNF has to be augmented that will provide a pharmaceutical treatment for a lot of anxiety disorders, particularly the PTSD, that may include depressant medications and exercise.

Researchers designed CALM, or Coordinated Anxiety Learning and Management, which allowed greater flexibility on the choices of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, pharmaceutical medication, or both; that also provided real-time monitoring of Web-based outcomes monitoring to more effective treatment decisions – along with a computer-assisted program to enhance CBT by non-expert care managers who assisted primary care clinicians in maintaining adherence to treatment plans. Results show that this was more effective in relieving anxiety symptoms with a lessened functional disability. These are all published in on Journal of American Medical Association.

University of Washington School of Medicine expert Peter Roy-Byrne, M.D presented these findings at a JAMA media briefing themed on mental health.

It was further suggested that efforts to continuously improve the quality of mental health care should be driven towards evidence-based treatments applied in real-world practice taking into consideration the various patient characteristics and skill of the mental health care provider. If one approach was proven effective, collaboration should be established the same way it helped for depression – since anxiety and depression had common occurrences.

A study was conducted by Dr. Roy-Byrne and his colleagues to look closely on the proposition that flexible treatment intervention is more effective in targeting the 4 most common anxiety disorders – PTSD, GAD, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder. The intervention program CALM considered the complexities of real world clinical settings while maintaining fidelity to tried and tested treatments.

Results of this study revealed that those on the flexible intervention program had lower scores of anxiety symptoms.

Treatment flexibility in terms of varying sessions and types, including different criteria for follow-up treatments, along with telephone and in-person contact has shown to directly target multiple anxiety disorders based on the results of clinical effectiveness. It was then concluded that this treatment model should be constantly applied to help patients battle their anxiety disorder.

Though implementation of this model may require unavailable reimbursement mechanisms, the success of this model has demonstrated for greater feasibility and effectiveness in treating anxiety.

Archives of General Psychiatry has published that prevalence of mood and anxiety disorder is higher in older adult women even as conditions declined with age.

National representative estimates has been sampled in 2, 575 survey participants aged 55 and above bu Amy Byers, Ph.D., MPH of University of California, and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Results revealed that 5% of these participants suffered from mood disorders with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. About 12% were shown to suffer from agoraphobia, panic disorder, other phobias, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 3% of which reported to have co-occurrences of mood and anxiety disorders. Researchers emphasize the importance of knowledge and awareness among these age groups because even as hidden and undertreated, health outcomes are largely affected.

Though women of age 55 have higher scores of mood and anxiety disorders than those of age 64, it was reported that common occurrences are found on women than in men.

Their conclusion: “The study aims to provide evidence in policy planning and research that help define mental health care priorities along with future psychiatric research. These findings underline the importance of individual and co-occurrences of mood and anxiety disorders in older groups, as these results show that there is a major need for further studies pertaining to risk factors, severity, and course to effectively address intervention, prevention, and other mental health care requirements. These numbers are expected to grow along with the exponential rise of the US population, along side with the public health burden of late-life mental health – further suggesting the need for continued monitoring of mental health care status in varying adult age groups.”