How Food Can Reduce Your Anxiety

The food you eat can have a big effect on your anxiety. It can affect the way your body deals with anxiety-provoking situations and your diet may also be one of the actual causes of your anxiety! So take a look at the 5 tips below and see how you can improve your diet, eat the right foods and reduce your anxiety.

Reduce your caffeine

If you experience anxiety, then one of the first things you can do is to remove caffeine from your diet. Caffeine makes your heart race, makes you urinate more and makes it difficult to sleep - all of these are also symptoms of anxiety. Caffeine will just make you feel worse and make it difficult to judge whether your symptoms are a result of anxiety or from the caffeine! So not only will you not be sure what is causing the symptoms, you might also find that you are suffering from the symptoms twice - not a good situation! Caffeine can be found in tea, coffee, chocolate (particularly dark chocolate), fizzy drinks and some medication. Check the labels to be sure. Too much alcohol and/or nicotine will also increase the symptoms of anxiety, so it is best to steer clear of these stimulants too.

Try these vitamins and minerals

Magnesium helps relaxes the muscles and reduces adrenaline. Taking a magnesium supplement can help with a range of anxiety-type symptoms such as palpitations, faintness, hyperventilation and insomnia. You may also want to consider taking a Vitamin B complex supplement which can be beneficial or eat more of the following foods: leafy green vegetables, whole grains and fish.

Ditch the refined sugar

Reducing the amount of refined sugar you eat may also help to control anxiety. The sugar found in refined foods such as white bread, ready made biscuits and cakes and processed food will create mood swings - when you have eaten these types of food you will initially feel great, then as the effect wears off you start to come down from the 'high'. These mood swings can trigger anxious feelings and the physical side effects such as shaky hands or palpitations can also trigger anxiety. By changing your diet so that you eat less processed food and more fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, fish etc, you will be giving your body a head start in controlling anxiety and its symptoms.

Drink more water

It is really easy to become mildly dehydrated and this will affect your body. This is one I always struggle with and when I make an effort to drink more water, I always feel less anxious... Mild dehydration can result in symptoms like dizziness, clammy hands and headaches - again, this will either worsen existing anxiety symptoms or make you think you're anxious when you're not! If you don't enjoy drinking large amounts of water, try adding a slice of lemon or lime as flavour. A cup of hot water mixed with fresh lemon juice is a great start to the day and lemon has digestive and antiseptic qualities.

When to eat meals

Some people also find that their anxiety starts or becomes worse just before mealtimes. It is thought that low blood sugar just before mealtimes may cause this. You can help prevent this by eating small but frequent meals which will help to stabilize your blood sugar levels - big gaps between meals destabilizes your blood sugar. Rather than eating three main meals a day, try eating five or six small meals throughout the day and see if this improves your anxiety symptoms.

So there you go. 5 great tips to improve your diet and reduce your anxiety. When trying any of these suggestions, keep a diary from the beginning so you can keep track of how you feel - it does not need to be complicated. Just making a note each day of the time and type of anxiety symptom (or lack of anxiety symptoms!) will help you see if your symptoms are lessening or maybe even disappearing so you can decide if your dietary change is working for you.

2008 Karen Field and Break Free From Anxiety.

Karen Field, CMIM, Dip Anxiety M., is an Anxiety Management Coach specializing in teaching people how they can learn to manage their anxiety. You can learn 5 proven techniques to break free from anxiety in her free e-course at http://www.breakfreefromanxiety.co.uk/free/

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