Physical Side Effects of Anxiety in the Body

Anxiety exists in the body, and there are physical side effects of anxiety. We can experience anxiety symptoms throughout our whole being; indeed, anxiety impacts our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and sense of physical wellbeing. Symptoms of severe anxiety can be frightening and lead to even more anxiety. Anxiety invades the body, an unwelcome guest that overstays its unwelcome. The physical side effects of anxiety can cause difficulty and even agony.

Stress Leads to the Physical Side Effects of Anxiety

Life is full of stressors. It can feel as though we're bombarded by an endless deluge of demands, pressures, and worries. These force their way in and cause our thoughts to race day and night, relentlessly and ruthlessly.

Events outside of us are interconnected with our thoughts about those events, and both are connected to our emotions. Events, thoughts, and feelings create anxiety in the body, and the center of anxiety in the body is the brain. A look at the brain helps us understand the physical side effects of anxiety.

The brain is a wonderful, intricate, amazing organ: divided into different areas, housing multiple complex structures, creating neurotransmitters, producing or triggering the production of hormones like the stress hormone cortisol, crisscrossed by axons and dendrites, and so much more. It's the brain that reacts to our outer and inner worlds, and it's the brain that produces thoughts and emotions and anxiety. Anxiety is truly in your head because it's in your brain.

When the brain is mobilized, without a break, to face stress and anxiety, our entire body feels the impact. Anxiety is truly in the body, which results in physical side effects of anxiety that are harsh (Release Emotions Stored in the Body for Eating Disorder Recovery).

Physical Side Effects of Anxiety Mimic Other Health Conditions

Anxiety in the body makes us feel ill in a variety of ways. In addition to symptoms like migraines, nausea, aches and pains, sweating, and more, physical side effects of anxiety can directly mimic many serious health conditions. A partial list of conditions that anxiety makes us experience:

• Acid reflux
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Asthma
• Food intolerances/allergies
• Heart conditions

The physical side effects of anxiety can be so insidious that they confuse and baffle health consumers and professionals alike. I was once diagnosed with asthma and was treated for years without success. Finally, I explored anxiety as a cause. As I addressed my anxiety, my "asthma" disappeared.

Anxiety was in my body, and the physical side effect was asthma-like. My brain's response to unrelenting anxiety was to react in a way that caused the same inflammation in my lungs that asthma would cause. Anxiety in my body felt like asthma .

The same type of brain activity in response to chronic anxiety leads to other symptoms as well. Anxiety and physical illness like to confuse people and cause general misery.

What to Do About Physical Side Effects of Anxiety

It's very important to avoid assuming that physical health problems are absolutely physical side effects of anxiety. If you are experiencing physical symptoms, the first step is to visit your doctor or healthcare provider to rule out physical illness. Sometimes, anxiety can make an existing physical illness worse, so getting that checked is crucial.

It's also important to treat anxiety. There are many different approaches to reducing anxiety. Medication is helpful in some cases; after all, anxiety is brain-based. There are also great benefits to working with a therapist to learn how to deal with problematic thoughts, to develop tools to regulate emotions in general and anxious feelings in particular, and to explore the underlying causes of anxiety. Learning about anxiety and managing it, finding support, and confronting it head-on are also helpful.

Anxiety isn't just a thought or a feeling. It's in the body, too. The physical side effects of anxiety can be extreme. They can also be improved.