Anxiety seems to be everywhere these days and yet it’s often ignored or masked by conventional medicine. Find out the underlying cause of this nervousness and what food and lifestyle changes you could make to help reduce anxiety.
1:40 - Hormones involved in panic or feelings of impending doom
5:40 - Foods and essential oils that help with Anxiety
7:20 - Eating protein in breakfast
9:30 - Omega 3 to 6 ratio and inflammation
11:10 - Foods that make anxiety worse
14:50 - Getting to the root cause of anxiety
Trying to find an integrative medicine or functional medicine doctor who understands what you're going through? Lam Clinic does Telemedicine all over the world and is only a phone call away.
1. Educate yourself by visiting our website: www.lamclinic.com
2. Call our office at 714-709-8000 to schedule an appointment.
FIND US ONLINE HERE:
» Website: https://www.lamclinic.com/
» Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lamclinic
» Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lam_clinic/
» Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lamclinic
» YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWtdb4L5h5EuxKvkNq3M7yw
Anxiety seems to be everywhere these days and yet it’s often ignored or masked by conventional medicine. Find out the underlying cause of this nervousness and what food and lifestyle changes you could make to help reduce anxiety.
1:40 - Hormones involved in panic or feelings of impending doom
5:40 - Foods and essential oils that help with Anxiety
7:20 - Eating protein in breakfast
9:30 - Omega 3 to 6 ratio and inflammation
11:10 - Foods that make anxiety worse
14:50 - Getting to the root cause of anxiety
Trying to find an integrative medicine or functional medicine doctor who understands what you're going through? Lam Clinic does Telemedicine all over the world and is only a phone call away.
1. Educate yourself by visiting our website: www.lamclinic.com
2. Call our office at 714-709-8000 to schedule an appointment.
FIND US ONLINE HERE:
» Website: https://www.lamclinic.com/
» Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lamclinic
» Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lam_clinic/
» Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lamclinic
» YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWtdb4L5h5EuxKvkNq3M7yw
Anxiety is an increasingly common complaint in the modern world, and yet often dismissed or ignored by conventional medicine. It can affect every part of your life and your health and if it isn't managed, it can be devastating to your health and happiness. Hi, this is the Dr. Lam show, and I'm Dr. Carrie Lam. In this show, we talk about different symptoms and disorders and how they relate to adrenal fatigue. My medical focus is on anti-aging, family medicine, and how natural remedies can be combined with conventional remedies for better health.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Hi, I'm Dr. Jeremy Lam. I specialize in internal medicine, anti-aging and regenerative medicine. Welcome to the show, we hope you find it useful. If you do, please like and rate the show so that we can spread our message and continue to support people who suffer from adrenal fatigue. Today, we're going to discuss anxiety and how to deal with it. We hope you find it helpful. Many adrenal fatigue sufferers tend to have feelings of nervousness or impending doom, and if you're one of these people, we're here to talk about why you are having these feelings of panic and of impending doom and nervousness? Dr. Carrie?
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:In the setting of adrenal fatigue panic, that feeling of impending doom or nervousness really comes down to few hormones or neurotransmitters. The main one is called adrenaline, or also known as epinephrine. And it also has a sister hormone known as norepinephrine. Epinephrine, and norepinephrine are the fight or flight mechanisms inside your body, They get released when your body is dealing with stress. This is especially the case for acute stress, like skydiving, bungee jumping, when you see a tiger in the jungle or your boss yells at you, these are the hormones that are released. Epinephrine is released from the adrenals and norepinephrine can come up in your brain. Unfortunately, in this day and age, people are just used to dealing with chronic stress, which leads to the release of cortisol. Dr. Jeremy tell us a little about how cortisol is affected.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:When you're dealing with constant stress everyday, then your body eventually runs out of the capability to regulate cortisol. Our bodies weren't made for this chronic stress. It was made so that when we encounter that stressor, the tiger, or lion in the jungle, we can run away from. But in today's modern world, there's just stressors all around. So epinephrine and norepinephrine have to step in to play. When you start feeling this sense of impending doom, because the cortisol is not regulated in people with adrenal fatigue, they experience nervousness. On one side, you have epinephrine and norepinephrine and on the other side, cortisol to help balance the fight or flight and manage your stress. When your adrenals are fatigued, or dysregulated, then you might not have enough cortisol to balance out the epinephrine and norepinephrine making your heartbeat very fast.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:We hear about people getting epinephrine when we do CPR, right? It's one of the drugs given in order to constrict your blood vessels so the blood gets pumped from your heart to the brain. Epinephrine is good for acute conditions, but not good for long term. That's why the adrenal releases cortisol as it's in fact a steroid that's anti inflammatory. It balances out, like a seesaw for epinephrine, and norepinephrine and help reduce inflammation. When the adrenals are fatigued it cannot produce enough cortisol, leading to excess epinephrine and norepinephrine in the blood, and that's why your heart beats fast affecting your circulation. You feel exhausted and experience anxiousness. So does this description of anxiousness and anxiety sound familiar to you? Are you struggling to perform everyday activities because of your anxiety? We don't want anyone to live that way and yet so many people are living and hiding their feelings because they feel ashamed that they need help with anxiety. Don't worry about that. Our team can help if you call us at 714-709-8000. For a free initial phone call, we can talk about your anxiety and try to get to the root cause and how to lessen or eliminate altogether as we'll go into more tips on how to beat anxiety.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Certain foods actually, can help with anxiety like for example, camomile tea. It is very soothing, and is called a sleepy time tea. Chamomile has been shown to calm your nerves and calm your nervous system. If you want to try the tea, you can try boiling some of the flowers that you can buy from the store and drink it right before you go to sleep. Just remember, if you do drink it before bed, you might wake up and go to the bathroom.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:There are some essential oils that are very calming for your body like lavender, which is great for aromatherapy. Just to relax, you can massage into your neck, shoulders, to help calm your nervousness, and your sense of doom or panic. You can put those essential oils through a diffuser and breathe it in slowly. There are other essential oils that you like Dr. Jeremy.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Another good one is the herb, rosemary, which is an essential oil that you can also put in the diffuser and again, help calm you down. You can try putting it on your pillow if it helps you sleep. I love the smell of rosemary, so putting it on the pillow is nice and it helps a lot.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:There's also another tip of eating protein for breakfast to help with anxiousness. I know it's very interesting. How does eating more protein in your breakfast help calm your system?
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Well Dr. Carrie, when you wake up in the morning, you go through a whole night of fasting. So your body is just aching for some food. So instead of eating a sugary breakfast like pancakes, waffles, which is typical American breakfast, eating more protein helps balance it so that you don't have a big insulin spike. Eating protein with your carbs is very important to avoid that sugar crash. People with adrenal fatigue are more prone to the sugar crash as well and it can dysregulate your cortisol levels and cause your symptoms of feeling very anxious. So protein not only with breakfast, but with all your meals is very important. And do you have any suggestions on any good proteins? Dr. Carrie.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:Every time you eat a snack, make sure there's protein with it. So let's say it's a fruit like apples, you want to have some almond butter or some kind of nut butter with it. Or if you're eating breakfast, you can definitely have eggs or avocado or a handful of nuts, because they all have good protein and fat content. This can also be applied to if you wake up in the middle of the night with anxiousness, eat some nuts, keep them by your bedside. Sometimes you even wake up feeling anxious, so eating protein as a snack can be a good thing - protein or good fat.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:All right, excellent. You're making me hungry actually.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:Delicious.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Alright, so the last one of the the foods is really omega threes and omega sixes. And you want to talk a little bit more about that.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:The ratio of omega threes to omega sixes is very important in inflammation. Omega threes can be found in good fish, freshwater fish, oil, flax seeds, chia seeds, and omega sixes can be found in corn oil, safflower oil, soybean oil. So most of the vegetable oils, and you want to make sure that the omega threes - omega six ratios is good in your system in order to reduce the amount of inflammation. Because, if you have too much omega sixes, then you have more inflammation going on, which could also go towards making anxiousness worse. That's why it's important if you want to be less inflammatory, to take the right amount of omega threes, and be just cognizant of your omega threes don't make omega six ratios.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:So as we talk about foods that are good for your anxiety, and the one that wasn't, how many of these foods do you actually find yourself eating regularly, and what changes we experience if you make them a part of your daily diet. Try adding them slowly and find out and if you'd like more information on foods that are good for your anxiety, talk to our team at 714-709-8000 for a more individual approach to anxiety foods. And now that we've discussed foods that are good for your anxiety, let's look at some of the foods that could be making your anxiety worse. And the first one that we've already talked about is omega sixes. And so let's move on to our second one, which is alcohol.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:Alcohol is very hard on your system. A lot of people drink to calm them down when you feel jittery, it might help to suppress your nerves. But remember, your body has to metabolize that alcohol in your body,especially in your liver. This can make you crash even more after you drink alcohol if you're not used to it. It congests your liver and so that's definitely something you should avoid. Very closely related to this, is caffeine.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Caffeine is found in coffee. But oftentimes, it's also soda, chocolates and teas. A lot of people drink that cup in the morning to get more energy and the downside to getting more energy is that you have to come down from having that energy. This ends up building up more nervousness and jitteriness. So try to avoid caffeine. And you know, if you've been drinking coffee for a while, then your body gets used to the caffeine. So don't stop abruptly as you'll get withdrawals from stopping too quickly. It's very wise to wean off.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:People find it hard to let go of their coffee, they get overstimulated and their adrenals get fatigued even faster. The another food to avoid is carbs and sugars. And we touched about that when we talked about eating protein because carbs, simply put, you burn through them very quickly, and gives you that instant energy rush. But with that instant energy rush might also get the feelings of anxiousness and insulin spike. So in order to prevent that from happening, replacing simple carbs and complex carbs with fiber or protein with the fat is very important. So definitely staying away from simple carbs and simple processed sugars is important.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:And finally, coming down to number five on our foods to avoid for anxiousness and panic, is food additives. Now everything has a lot of additives, especially in today's world, whether it's pesticides, dyes, preservatives. These additives, get built up in your body, and sometimes they become toxic and you can't clear them out. As a result, you feel very congested, causing these feelings of anxiousness. So even when you try taking healthy foods or supplements, you cannot process them and that's where your feelings might come up, and become more pronounced. Try to eat organic and plant based as they are good.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:So we talked about foods to eat and foods to avoid. But there are also lifestyle tips that are very important to remember to heal, reduce and eliminate anxiety, Getting to the root cause of what is causing the anxiety is still very important. Whether it's a gut problem, because your microbiome is in charge of making a lot of neurotransmitters. If your neurotransmitter is not balanced, due to toxins, it produces antibodies causing autoimmune issues, It leads to anxiety, and hormone imbalance. Also you might have a sympathetic response. So getting to the root cause is important. Just taking an antidepressant or an anti anxiety medication is not good enough, There are other natural ways is to do some breathing. Dr. Jeremy, tell us about breathing techniques.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:The way you breathe can actually help activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Because there's a nerve that runs along the diaphragm that can help calm your system. You can look up our adrenal breathing exercise app to guide you on ways you can breathe to help decrease your anxiety. And that's very, important, especially in adrenal fatigue.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:And it's free, and you can do it often. The number one thing I like to say, for my patients, is to reduce stress through breathing, using diaphragm and belly. It's not just the full deep breath, because sometimes it can be very stimulating, even for those with adrenal fatigue. So calming 70% of a breath, and that app will definitely help you. That's all that we have for today. We hope that you found this show very helpful, and that encourages you to improve your diet, your health, your lifestyle at the same time. Please subscribe to the Dr. Lam show. If you found it helpful, that will you get quick access to any new content that we create. And it also helps us become more visible to those who really need the content we produce. Thanks for joining us and remember that we're always here to empower you to take control of your health.