Читать книгу Anxiety For Dummies - W. Doyle Gentry, Laura L. Smith - Страница 53

Stress and anxiety often provoke people to binge on unhealthy foods and substances, which may lead to increased anxiety over the long run. In Chapter 11, we discuss foods that may help you calm your moods and alleviate your anxiety. Here, we tell you how to avoid foods or drinks that may worsen problems with anxiety.

Notice whether you have special sensitivities to certain types of food. Whenever you feel out of sorts or especially anxious for no particular reason, ask yourself what you’ve eaten in the past couple hours. Take notes for a few weeks. Although food sensitivities aren’t generally a major cause of anxiety, some people have adverse reactions to certain foods, such as nuts, wheat, dairy, shellfish, or soy. If your notes say that’s true for you, avoid these foods!

Alcohol may be very tempting to people with anxiety. Although alcohol may relax you in small quantities, too many anxious people try to self-medicate by imbibing. People with anxiety disorders easily become addicted to alcohol. Furthermore, in excess, alcohol can lead to a variety of anxiety-like symptoms. For example, after a night of heavy drinking, alcohol can leave you feeling more anxious because it clears the system quickly and the body craves more. That craving can lead to addiction over time. Even a couple of glasses of wine in the evening may help you sleep initially but disturb the quality of your sleep leading to fatigue in the morning. So, anxious people need to be cautious about their use of alcohol.

Caffeine can also spell trouble. Some people seem to thrive on triple espressos, but others find themselves up all night with the jitters. Caffeine lurks in most energy drinks as well as chocolate, so be careful if you’re sensitive to the effects of caffeine.

Speaking of energy drinks, these sometimes contain unusually large quantities of not only caffeine but also other stimulants. You’ll see herbal stimulants such as taurine, guarana (loaded with caffeine), ginseng, and ginkgo biloba, among others. Reported adverse effects include nervousness, sleeplessness, abnormal heart rhythms, and seizures. If you have excessive anxiety, you don’t want to be chugging down these concoctions.

Finally, lots of people get nervous after eating too much sugar. Watch kids at birthday parties or Halloween. Adults can have the same reaction. Furthermore, sugar is bad for your body in a variety of ways, such as spiking blood glucose levels and contributing to metabolic syndrome (a condition that often leads to high blood pressure and diabetes).