Stop anxiety with these new strategies

CNN: What’s the biggest misunderstanding people have about anxiety?

Dr. Ellen Vora: Anxiety is not simply a genetic chemical imbalance. It’s largely based in the state of the physical body, which is something we can change.

Recognizing what I call “false anxiety” allows us to take steps to get our body into a better balance, which helps ease anxiety symptoms. This is the hopeful, empowering message I want to convey.

CNN: How does the mind-body connection impact anxiety?

Vora: Today, many people recognize that mental health impacts the body. They understand top-down messaging — that a thought like, “Oh, no, I have a test tomorrow!” could impact their physical body, say, with an upset stomach.

Less widely recognized is the delicate and deeply interconnected web of back-and-forth communication between body and mind.

Modern life assaults our digestive tract through chronic stress, processed food and pesticides. The compromised ecosystem of bacteria in our digestive system leads to an unhealthy, inflamed gut lining, which triggers a message to the brain, “Things are not OK down here.” When our physical body is out of balance, it tells our brain to feel anxious.

CNN: How has your investigation of anxiety informed your perspective on depression?

Vora: Many patients in my practice have both depression and anxiety. Sometimes they toggle between them. Other times the two states coexist. Chronic anxiety can deplete us over time, leaving us in a hollowed-out state of depression. Both are manifestations of the brain saying, “I’m not OK.”

CNN: What coping strategies can help?

Oftentimes, I like to start with stabilizing blood sugar because it has such a quick impact on our day-to-day anxious feelings.

The definitive solution, to eat a blood sugar-stabilizing diet with fewer refined carbohydrates and more protein and healthy fats, is a lovely strategy. But if that’s 180 degrees from how you’re eating now, here’s a short-term fix: Every few hours, eat a spoonful of sunflower, almond or other nut butter, ghee or coconut oil. This creates a safety net that can blunt any blood sugar crash. Many patients have told me this intervention alone stopped their panic attacks.

CNN: You advise some patients to eat more meat. Why?

Vora: A lot of patients come to me only eating smoothies, matcha lattes, chia seed pudding or big salads. Their constant shakiness comes from their diet lacking substance. A semi-vegetarian diet where meat is not the centerpiece but more of a condiment is probably a sweet spot for wellness.

Panic attacks and a sense of always feeling on edge can stem from a body never getting grounded with adequate nutrition. A warming, nourishing and well-rounded diet can ease symptoms of both anxiety and depression.

CNN: If you could wave a magic wand, what nutrition protocols would your patients adopt?

Vora: I don’t want to encourage people down the path toward feeling fragile, obsessive or fearful about food. That’s not helping anybody’s anxiety. Generally speaking, I encourage people to err on the side of eating real food and avoiding fake, processed food.

The idea is to approach food the way your great-great-great-grandmother’s culture did, by eating a balance of minimally processed protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats, and generally eating what’s local and in season. If you come from a mixture of different lines of ancestry, pick and choose and then listen to your body.

Generally, what works for our bodies echoes where on the planet we descended from. Overall, try to eat real food that was grown with integrity, ideally on small, sustainable farms with humane animal husbandry practices rather than large factory farms and concentrated animal feeding operations.

CNN: What does “completing the stress cycle” mean, and why is it important?

Vora: Balancing your nervous system is critically important to regulating anxiety.

Feeling anxious or going into panic happens…