While anxiety and stress are not the same, they are closely related and connected. About 20% of the American population struggles with anxiety and it is the most common psychiatric disorder. Anxiety is the feeling of fear, worry, or unease. It can be tied to stressors in our life, or we can feel generalized feelings of anxiety. Anxiety can be a symptom of stress or something that happens as a result of stress.

We can see it show up in the body related to nutrient deficiencies, neurotransmitter imbalances, and hormone imbalances. Think of anxiety as a signal from your body that something is out of balance and needs to be regulated better.

We often think of anxiety as something mental or emotional tied to things going on in our lives or things we have gone through and carry with us – and that is absolutely true. Though, we can end up in this loop where this manifests in the body as a stress response and has a cascading effect on throwing our hormones out of balance, and burning through our nutrients.

While nutrients will not make anxiety and stress just “go away” or solve everything difficult we’re going through, what nutrition can do is help us have a stronger foundation to better cope with stress and anxiety.

Stress is a physiological response that happens in the body in response to a stressor. Normally we associate stress with a hard job, difficult family problems, busy schedules, or hard exams, but we can become stressed due to imbalances in the body not necessarily caused by those external factors. Nutrient imbalances, blood sugar increases, and low hormone levels can all lead to stress. It is important to understand that stress is not always just a product of a stressful lifestyle and that sometimes the stress you feel is an indicator something is imbalance internally. When these imbalances occur our cortisol production is increased from the adrenal glands, which sets off a cascade of negative effects in our body. Luckily there are stress reducing foods that can ease the cortisol imbalances.

Stress is a physiological response that happens in the body in response to a stressor. Normally we associate stress with a hard job, difficult family problems, busy schedules, or hard exams, but we can become stressed due to imbalances in the body not necessarily caused by those external factors. Nutrient imbalances, blood sugar increases, and low hormone levels can all lead to stress. It is important to understand that stress is not always just a product of a stressful lifestyle and that sometimes the stress you feel is an indicator something is imbalanced internally. When these imbalances occur our cortisol production is increased from the adrenal glands, which sets off a cascade of negative effects in our body. Luckily there are anti-stress foods that can ease the cortisol imbalances.